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From Prisoner to Prosperity: New Evidence in Venture Smith Saga
Newly discovered details of the remarkable life of Venture Smith—a former African slave who purchased his freedom and ultimately became a successful Connecticut businessman—will be presented in “From Prisoner to Prosperity: New Evidence in Venture Smith Saga” at the New Haven Museum by the two historians who led the charge in bringing Smith’s story to light: Chandler B. Saint, and Robert Pierce Forbes, Ph.D., of The Documenting Venture Smith Project. Among the evidence to be presented is a previously undiscovered Yale University connection. The free presentation will be held on Thursday, February 18, at 6:00 p.m. at the New Haven Museum, with a snow date of Wednesday, March 16, 2016, at 6:00 p.m.
The two historians will show compelling evidence that there was more to Smith’s life than was previously thought, says Forbes, including Smith having been taught by a tutor from Yale University. In addition, Saint will show to the public for the first time the footage of his visit to the slave fortress in Anomabo, West Africa, where Smith was held captive prior to being shipped to Rhode Island. The emotionally powerful footage shows a village bypassed by the modern world, where the slave-auction block and the “door of no return” that Smith would have experienced remain intact. Attendees will witness Saint’s haunting trip in the same type of canoe used to ferry Smith and others from the fortress to a waiting slave ship.
Venture Smith is perhaps the best-documented of the approximately 12 million survivors of the Middle Passage from Africa. Born a prince in a small African kingdom, he was taken as a slave to New England at 10 years old. Through hard work and indomitable will, he was able to purchase his and his family’s freedom, and, by the time of the American Revolution, became a prosperous merchant and farmer in Haddam Neck, Connecticut. In 1798, he published his autobiography, one of the great early works of American literature. For more than a decade, the Documenting Venture Smith Project has harnessed the expertise of an international group of scholars in diverse disciplines to reconstruct Venture’s life as a testament to the power of the human spirit.
The Documenting Venture Smith Project has taken the lead in promoting a serial UNESCO World Heritage Site around the lives of two men vital to the campaign to end slavery: Venture Smith, and William Wilberforce, Britain's most famous abolitionist. The proposal links and expands existing World Heritage Sites—the Anomabo fort in Ghana, and historic Bridgetown and its garrison in Barbados—with proposed new sites in Kingston-upon-Hull in the UK and Haddam Neck, East Haddam, and Stonington, Connecticut in the US. The sites provide a chain linking together the lives of two individuals who fought with success against transatlantic slavery, and remind us of the capacity of the individual and of the human spirit to overcome chattel slavery and to change the world for the better.
Chandler B. Saint, a historian and preservationist, is president of the Beecher House Center for the Study of Equal Rights and co-director of the Documenting Venture Smith Project. He is the co-author of “Venture Smith: Making Freedom,” published by the Documenting Venture Smith Project, 2015.
Robert Pierce Forbes is the senior historian at the Documenting Venture Smith Project. He is an authority on the early American republic and the principal of Forbes Research, a historical consulting firm. He has taught at Yale University and the University of Connecticut.
Representative Rosa DeLauro is a long-time supporter of the Documenting Venture Smith Project, which dovetails with two of her central concerns: educating young people and combating modern slavery. She is the narrator of the preface on the audio CD version of Venture Smith’s “Narrative,” and was essential to the effort to provide a copy of “Venture Smith: Making Freedom” to every school library in Connecticut.
The New Haven Museum event coincides with the exhibit at the Hartford History Center, “Making Freedom—The Life of Venture Smith: In His Own Voice,” which provides an overview of the life of Venture Smith.
About the New Haven Museum
The New Haven Museum, founded in 1862 as the New Haven Colony Historical Society, is located in downtown New Haven at 114 Whitney Avenue. The Museum is currently celebrating 150 years of collecting, preserving and interpreting the history and heritage of Greater New Haven. Through its collections, exhibitions, programs and outreach, the Museum brings 375 years of New Haven history to life. For more information visit www.newhavenmuseum.org or facebook.com/NewHavenMuseum.
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Date and Time
Thursday Feb 18, 2016
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM ESTFebruary 18, at 6:00 p.m.
Location
New Haven Museum, 114 Whitney Ave. New haven, CT
Fees/Admission
free
Website
Contact Information
203-562-4183
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