Revisiting Jethro Luke and Race and Slavery in 18th Century New Haven and Yale with Michael Morand

Beinecke Library’s Michael Morand revisits his talk from February 2021 talk on reckoning with the past (see: • Reckoning with History... ) that followed threads of local history from marks on Wadsworth’s 1748 map of New Haven to rediscover “Jethro a blackman farmer,” his family, and the work of free and enslaved people in the construction of Connecticut Hall at Yale, the first brick building in Connecticut and the oldest surviving building in the compact part of New Haven.
In this 2022 talk, Morand brings in further research to that shared in the 2021 presentation to build a fuller story of Jethro Luke, his family, other enslaved and free Black people, and the land of town and campus on which they lived and worked. He discusses the Luke family and their connections to the Pierpont family, among other ties, as well as the scope of slavery in New Haven and around Yale in the 18th century.