beggars-opera:This house in Concord Massachusetts was built in 1716 by Benjamin Barron for himself a
beggars-opera:This house in Concord Massachusetts was built in 1716 by Benjamin Barron for himself and his wife Betty. While many such houses survive from this time period with plaques to remember their owners, ironically Benjamin Barron’s name isn’t a household one - it is the enslaved people in the Barron’s lives that are most remembered by history. When Betty was nine years old, she accused her family’s Native American slave, Tituba, of witchcraft, which led to the Salem witch trials. Later in life, Betty and Benjamin owned an African slave named John Jack. After Benjamin’s death, John Jack was able to buy his freedom, and when he eventually died as well, just before the Revolutionary War, a local loyalist protesting the hypocrisy of slave-owning patriots bought him a gravestone with this inscription:God wills us free; man wills us slaves.I will as God wills; God’s will be done.Here lies the body ofJOHN JACKa native of Africa who diedMarch 1773 aged about 60 yearsTho’ born in a land of slavery,He was born free.Tho’ he lived in a land of liberty,He lived a slave.Till by his honest, tho’ stolen labors,He acquired the source of slavery,Which gave him his freedom;Tho’ not long beforeDeath, the grand tyrantGave him his final emancipation,And set him on a footing with kings.Tho’ a slave to vice,He practised those virtuesWithout which kings are but slaves. -- source link