by Jonathan Tucker

This is the eighth in a series of articles about MacIntyres in general and the life and descendants of Micum McIntire, a Scottish prisoner of war who settled in York, Maine. This article is about African slaves owned by Micum’s descendants. The article is subject to revision as new information becomes available.

The most definitive and comprehensive current source for information on MacIntyres in general is the newly-published book, “Clan MacIntyre: A Journey Into the Past,” Martin L. MacIntyre, Regent Press, Berkeley, CA, 2018, second edition. Copies may be purchased by contacting Martin at martin.macintyre@juno.com. 

The definitive geneaology is “Descendants of Micum McIntire,” Robert Harry McIntire, revised edition, 1983, Bookcrafters, Chelsea, MI. Used copies can still be obtained from time to time through online booksellers. Those interested in new copies should contact Dan Davis, 1 Stanley Avenue, Kingfield, ME, 04947 (snailmail only). There is an earlier version published in 1940—it is less complete but still useful.

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SLAVERY AMONG EARLY McINTIRES

The English Puritan soldiers who captured Micum (Malcolm/Calum) McIntire at the Battle of Dunbar on Sept. 3, 1650 saw him as a Scot, a Gaelic-speaking clansman, and—worst of all—a Highlander, a member of different, barbarous, and inferior race. After his capture, Micum survived a forced death march, starvation, incarceration, disease, attempted execution, and a 6-8 week winter crossing of the North Atlantic in the hold of a small merchant ship—trials that killed many of the lesser men captured with him. After serving out a 7 year indenture at mills in Oyster River and Cocheco (Dover, New Hampshire), and working for a time at mills in what is now South Berwick, Maine, Micum settled in York, Maine sometime between 1668 and 1671. He married Dorothy Pierce, the widow of a distant cousin, and he and Dorothy had three sons—John, Daniel, and Micum Jr. In York, Micum and his family survived several violent episodes of the French and Indian Wars. Micum died in October 1705, at about 80 years of age.

In the mid-to-late 1600s and through the 1780s, slavery was—as it had been for centuries—a normal feature of social and economic life in the British empire and its colonies, as well as in most major cultures throughout the world. Slavery was endemic—it was everywhere. Although located on the northern frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, York was no exception.

There were varying levels of servitude, including temporary bonds of compelled indenture like the one Micum McIntire had been forced to complete. Yet, while the English quite seriously considered Scots to be a separate, inferior race, Scots were still white. Without their language, accent, dress, or customs to set them apart, they were visually indistinguishable from the English. Early Scots in New England suffered significant discrimination. Many made a concerted effort to learn English, to lose their ‘barbarous’ accent, and to adjust their customs (and even their surnames) to “pass” in the Puritan English colony. This included adopting the cultural worldview and economic assumptions of the ruling English colonists around them.

The enslavement of Native Americans and African men, women, and children, however, was a different matter. For them, “passing” was not an option (though it increasingly became an option for their mixed-race children). In the British worldview of the time, the significant racial and cultural “differences” of black Africans in particular made it easy to see them as less than fully human, and therefore appropriate for ownership and lifelong enslavement. Despite early and persistent religious and cultural discomfort with slavery in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the New England colonies, slavery was a powerful and centuries-old economic institution. From a legal standpoint, slavery did not end in the Massachusetts Bay Colony until the 1780s. In practice, it lasted decades longer.

No record has been found indicating that Micum McIntire or his children ever owned a slave, although there were certainly slaves in York by the time Micum arrived in York in 1668-70. In fact, York, Wells, and Kittery were the principal region for slavery in southern Maine. Perhaps the memories of Micum’s homeland and his own forced servitude were too fresh, or he never cared to “pass” as English, or he and his three sons simply never accumulated enough wealth as a pioneering subsistence farmers, hunters, fishermen, and woodsmen to afford to buy another human being. But Micum McIntire’s grandchildren and their children and grandchildren accumulated more substantial means, and some of them owned black slaves.

It is in the written records of the lives of the grandsons of Micum McIntire—John McIntire Jr. and Alexander McIntire—that we first encounter traces of the life of an enslaved black woman, Dinah.

“Traces of Dinah”

John McIntire Jr. was Micum McIntire’s grandson by his son John. John Jr. was a successful merchant and shipbuilder, which may explain how he was able to afford to own a slave. When his will was written and witnessed in July 1776, John directed that upon his death, his “servant woman named Dinah, who hath been a faithful servant, shall be set at liberty and be free from any further servitude.” In 1776, a “servant” being “set at liberty and . . . free from further servitude,” together with subsequent evidence, confirms that Dinah was an enslaved black woman. John Jr. lived another nine years after he wrote his will, dying in 1785 at age 74. 

We know nothing about Dinah’s origins. By 1776, when Dinah is first mentioned in the will of John McIntire, Jr., black men and women had been slaves in the colonies for several generations. It is possible Dinah had been born in the colonies, or equally possible that she had been captured in Africa and was a first generation slave. It seems reasonable to assume that Dinah was mature in 1776—John McIntire Jr. refers to her as a “faithful servant” in his will, which seems to imply years of service. Setting Dinah “at liberty” may have been a well-meant gesture in 1776, perhaps inspired by other larger, attempts at liberty underway at the time. But by the time John died in 1785, freeing Dinah was a gesture of little real meaning, since she had already spent most of her life laboring in bondage. And the record on what actually happened to Dinah after John died is not clear. She turns up again, this time in reference to the will of John’s first cousin, Alexander McIntire.

Alexander McIntire, also Micum’s grandson, was the son of Micum’s son Micum Jr. Alexander was a surveyor. He was involved in some of the last public distributions of land grants in York. Like his cousin John McIntire Jr., Alexander was relatively well-to-do. Alexander outlived his cousin John by only three years, dying in 1788 at age 79. When Alexander’s will was being probated that same year, Alexander’s fifth child, another Micum, presented a claim against his father’s estate for “keeping and nursing Dinah, a negro servant of the deceased, for thirteen weeks.”

So Dinah apparently remained with John McIntire Jr. until his death in 1785, and then somehow became the 
“negro servant” of John’s cousin Alexander McIntire. If Dinah was an older woman when John McIntire Jr. died in 1785, then it is possible that John’s cousin Alexander felt responsible for her and took her in as a member of the household, particularly if she had no family living nearby (as slaves often did not, since their family members were often ‘sold away’). Or, as property, she could simply have moved from the household of John McIntire Jr. to that of his cousin Alexander McIntire with little other change in her life’s circumstances. This apparently included continuing to work as a servant/slave, regardless of the terms of the will of her original master which set her “at liberty.” For an older black woman in York, Maine, a former slave and likely indigent, continuing to work in the household of the family she knew—where shelter and food were certain—may have been much preferable to being “set at liberty” without support or resources.

Dinah’s exact status in 1788 is not clear. The reference to Dinah as “a negro servant of the deceased” could mean that she was a free woman in name, and working as servant (possibly paid only in room and board). But it is much more likely that she remained a slave. Or it could simply mean that to Alexander’s son Micum, and/or the official scribe registering Micum’s claim against his father’s estate, Dinah’s only recognizable identity was as an older black slave of the family, regardless of her actual legal status. We don’t know.

The claim for the cost of Dinah’s “keeping and nursing . . . for thirteen weeks” infers a past tense that is potentially final. If Dinah was a mature older woman in 1776 when John McIntire Jr.’s will was written, she could have been of advanced years nine (9) years later when John died in 1785 and she moved to the household of Alexander McIntire. She would have been another three (3) years older when Alexander died in 1788. Alexander’s son Micum’s claim against his father’s estate could mean more than the fact that he had cared for Dinah when she was ill for a period of three months. It could mean that Dinah had spent the last declining three months of her life as the ward of Alexander’s son Micum, still within the family she had served for so long. If so, then she died prior to and possibly around the same time as Alexander McIntire, before the probating of his will in 1788. Massachusetts (which included Maine until 1820) outlawed slavery the very next year, 1789—a cruel irony as far as Dinah was concerned, since she may have died just before slavery was (at least legally) abolished.

That Alexander’s son Micum would make a claim against his father’s estate for the cost of Dinah’s care may, from our comfortable distance of over 200 years, seem somewhat callous and “agricultural” in its viewpoint. But it is important to remember that, whatever her personal relationships with members of the McIntire family may have been, Dinah had spent most, if not all, of her life in York as legal chattel, no different from the livestock and household goods distributed in John’s and Alexander’s wills. No record has yet been found of her death or where she was buried.

“Traces of Prince & Sharper”

Prince – Alexander McIntire’s fifth child, his daughter Keziah, married Joseph Came of York. Keziah’s father-in-law, Samuel Came, was a well-to-do man a pillar of the community, and involved in slavery in York. Upon his death in 1768, Samuel Came’s goods were dispersed among his children, grandchildren, and in-laws, according to the terms of his will written in 1764. Samuel’s estate included at least two slaves, and perhaps more.

Keziah (McIntire) Came, daughter of Micum McIntire, Jr. married Joseph Came, Samuel Came’s only son. In the will of Keziah (McIntire) Came, dated 1773, Keziah left “her negro slave, Prince” jointly to her daughters Mary and Jane. It is not known whether or not she had received Prince from her father-in-law, her husband, or had acquired him herself.

Mary and Jane Came were Keziah’s sixth and eighth children, and may have been living together (possibly at the family homestead) at the time. In 1775, both Mary and Jane married. Mary wed William Ferguson of York. Jane married Edmund Neal of Kittery. There is no further mention of Prince, or his life or death. It is not known, for instance, with which sister (if either) Prince went following their marriages, or if he was sold off. Other than his existence, we know next to nothing about Prince’s life, other than to whom he belonged.

Sharper – Keziah (McIntire) and Joseph Came’s second child, Patience Came, directly inherited a slave from her grandfather Samuel Came. The slave was named in Samuel’s will as “my negro man Sharper.”

Sharper was a popular name for slaves in York County, Maine. It also the name of a slave owned by Joseph Wheelwright in Wells, Maine. Joseph Wheelwright bequeathed his “negro man named Sharper” to his wife Sarah in his 1743 will. Captain James Littlefield of Wells also owned a slave named Sharper (and a slave named Dinah). It is possible that either is the same man later acquired by Samuel Came, but no such connection has yet been made.

Robert Harry McIntire in his, “Descendants of Micum McIntire,” 1983, revised, asserts that Sharper was “said to have lived to be almost 100 years old, and to have been the last slave owned in New England.” Robert may have been repeating an example of the generous ‘embellishment’ of history typical of the Colonial Revival Movement (which was centered in York). According to “Saco Valley Settlements and Families,” 1895 (p. 551), it was Sharper’s wish to be buried in Samuel Came’s garden on Cider Hill in Scotland Parish, where his wish was met and his grave was marked with “suitable stones.” So at least we have an idea where Sharper was buried.

“Good & Faithful Servant” Tales

The 19th century reporting on Sharper’s desire to be buried in his old master’s garden may well be true, but it is also an example of a “good and faithful servant” tale. These tales, written in the last quarter of the 19th century and early 20th century, after the Civil War and passage of the 13th Amendment, are one of the ways that northern communities tried to come to terms with, and excuse, their own past involvement in slavery, after the fact. They are worth seeking out and reading as sources of information, as well as examples of people trying hard to admit past transgressions while strenuously forgiving themselves. They are a literary and historical genre all their own.

One such collection of tales in McIntire territory is “Black Sara, Citizen of Berwick,” by William F. Lord. Sara was purchased at age four by Captain Samuel Lord for the price of a pair of oxen. There are similar stories in “The history of Wells and Kennebunk,” 1875, about slaves named Zelph, Phillis, Titus, Tom, Scipio, Violet, Will, Fortune, Cato, Pomp (Pompey), Prime, and so forth. The history waxes especially florid and self-serving about a slave named Old Tom:

“Old Tom! We shall never see his like again. Many who have lived in the last half century, will remember him. Some are still living, who in olden time danced away a happy hour, enlivened by the same old tune, which for more than fifty years he was wont to grind out from the same old fiddle. They cannot forget his gentle, manly deportment, his meek and kind spirit. Who ever turned Old Tom away from his door without endeavoring to meet his needs?”

Conclusion

Slavery began to end in New England in 1789, but did not end in a real and practical sense until after the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the conclusion of the Civil War (May 13, 1865), and ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (December 6, 1865).

Among the records of the third, fourth, and fifth generations of McIntires in York, Maine we have found traces of the lives of three enslaved black people—a woman named Dinah, a man named Prince, and a man named Sharper. The enslavement of these three people—particularly that of “the last slave owned in New England”—is a something many McIntire descendants may understandably wish were not a part of our shared history. It is in particular a painful legacy for those of us descended from any of these McIntire slave owners (I am a descendant of John McIntire Jr.). But what we wish was true has little to do with the reality of history. We inherit it all–the bad along with the good.

Those of us who explore and retell Scottish ancestry are the “seannachies”—the story-tellers and historians of our clan. We have a responsibility to tell the stories truthfully, and to include the bad with the good. It is always tempting to interpret history through the lens of our own wishes and beliefs. But just as we need to resist the temptation to drape the past in attractive and concealing folds, we also need to resist the urge to heap hot coals on the souls of our forebears for every human sin and error identified in the centuries since. For McIntire descendants, that most Scottish of bedrock values—common sense—should prevail. We can only understand and judge people as products of their own times and not of our own.

Nonetheless, if we have not inherited guilt, we have inherited a real responsibility. As New England Scots, and proud descendants of Micum McIntire, we are obliged to ask, and then try to answer, the same questions about the lives of these three people that we pursue for all of our ancestors. By enslaving them, our McIntire ancestors made these men and women part of our family’s history.

So, who were Dinah and Prince and Sharper? When and where were they born? What were their lives like? Did they have families? Being owned by members of the same closely related family, they probably knew one another. Were they related to each other? Did they have children? Did they have McIntire children? Given the “faithful” service of Dinah, and the all-too-common relationship between white slave owners and enslaved black women, are there McIntire descendants of Dinah among us who share a proud blended legacy, both African and Scottish? When did Dinah, Prince and Sharper die, and how? Where are they buried? We have work to do.

By answering these questions, and then sharing those answers, we can ensure that the lives of Dinah, Prince, and Sharper are known, understood, and remembered, right alongside those of the pale McIntire ancestors who shared and shaped their lives. It is the least that we owe them, and ourselves.