Cesar Phelps

The 1770 bill of sale enslaving Cesar to Charles Phelps

Cesar was born around 1752 and spent part of his early years enslaved to settlers in northern New England. On March 13, 1770, Charles Phelps Jr. purchased “A Negro fellow named Cesar about eighteen years of age sound and well in every part” from William Williams of New Marlborough in the Vermont territories where Charles Phelps Jr.’s father was living. It is unclear whether Cesar chose the last name “Phelps” for himself or whether it was assigned to him by his enslaver Charles Phelps Jr. or perhaps Charles Phelps Sr.

Correspondence between Charles Phelps Jr. and his father suggests that when eighteen-year-old Cesar first arrived at Forty Acres, he and Peg, an enslaved woman in her late twenties with two young daughters, may have had some sexual “indulgences.” In the year following his arrival, Cesar suffered injuries that impacted his ability to work for the Phelps Family. In December 1771, Elizabeth noted that Cesar had frozen his finger, and in June 1775, she remarked that his hand was terribly swollen. By the end of July, he was sent to doctors in Northampton for medical treatment “for the recovery of the use of his right hand now almost wholly useless.”

These issues, along with the tensions between Peg and Cesar, led Charles Phelps Jr. and his father to discuss whether Charles Phelps Sr. should purchase Cesar and whether he could adapt tools that would enable Cesar to labor effectively despite his injured hand. 

Ultimately, Cesar was not sent to Charles Phelps Sr. but instead went to serve in the revolutionary army, possibly in Charles Phelps Jr.’s stead. Cesar’s name does not appear in the battalion lists, so it is also possible that he worked as a servant at the camp.