The Memoir Of A Slave Who Freed Himself

An African American slave who became known as Venture Smith related the memory of his years in the United States, providing rare insight into the hard life and incredible resourcefulness of such a man in 18th century America.

He called his memoir “A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa, but Resident Above 60 Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself.”

I read his story some years ago and wondered whether it could be taken literally, or whether it was cooked up in Smith’s imagination.

My doubts abated when I came across a 2019 article from the Middletown (Connecticut) Press, reporting on a project headed by historian Chandler B. Saint, assisted by Robert Forbes of Yale University.

The two devoted years to researching Smith, tracking his saga from childhood as a West African prince, to capture and enslavement at age 6, surviving a voyage through the infamous Middle Passage, suffering terrible hardship in America, and, many years later, buying his freedom and achieving prosperity.

He lived most of his life in Connecticut and on the East End of Long Island. According to historian Chandler Saint, Venture Smith’s account is the only one written by an African American before 1800.

Venture Smith was born in Guinea, West Africa, around 1729; his father was a prince of the Dukandarra tribe. When he was 6 years old, a rival tribe overpowered the Dukandarra and marched women and children to the west coast. There, he and 260 other captives were sold and forced aboard a vessel from Rhode Island.

Robinson Mumford, the steward of the ship, purchased him for four gallons of rum and a piece of calico, and called him “Venture.”

The ship sailed to Barbados in the southern Caribbean, losing some 60 of its human cargo to disease and maltreatment. When the ship reached Narragansett, Mumford brought him to his home on Fishers Island.

Venture lived with this master for 13 years; among his duties were carding wool and pounding four bushels of corn every night to feed poultry. At 22 years old, Venture married Meg, also a slave in the Mumford household.

With several other slaves, Venture joined in an escape plot hatched by an Irishman named Heddy. The plotters stole the master’s boat and sailed to Montauk Point, where Heddy absconded with the boat and all their provisions.

Venture and the other escapees overtook him in Southampton and decided to return him to their master and seek his favor, claiming Heddy had masterminded the plot. They succeeded and were put back to work.

Later that year, Mumford sold Venture to Robert Stanton, separating him from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. A year and a half later, he was hired out to Stanton’s brother Robert, who also purchased Venture’s wife and child.

One time, Robert sent him two miles for a barrel of molasses and ordered him to carry it back on his shoulders. Venture was a big, powerful man and able to handle the job.

When Meg was abused by Robert’s wife, Venture intervened. The two Stantons punished him for such insolence, but he resisted and “laid one of them across the other and stamped both …” As a result, they took him to a blacksmith, who handcuffed him and locked an ox chain on his legs.

A few days later, Hempstead Miner of Stonington purchased Venture, took off the chains, and sold him again to Daniel Edwards of Hartford. Edwards, in turn, sold him to Colonel O. Smith, the third time he was exchanged, now at age 31.

Venture asked the colonel if he could purchase his freedom by allowing him to hire out and paying the colonel two pounds per month. Venture had already buried away some money selling fish and doing extra labor, and four years later he was able to pay the colonel 71 pounds and two shillings, an enormous sum at the time. He also took the colonel’s name.

Now a free man, Venture sailed to Shelter Island, where he worked on Ram Island, then several Long Island communities, mainly cutting thousands of cords of wood, and earning 207 pounds and 10 shillings. Living modestly, he was able to purchase Solomon and Cuff, two of his sons. He also used his savings to purchase land and a farm.

He hired out 17-year-old Solomon to Charles Church of Rhode Island. Church owned a whale ship and, against Venture’s wishes, convinced the lad to join the ship’s crew. Venture never saw him again: Solomon died of scurvy at sea.

Venture chartered a vessel to carry wood to Rhode Island and, in a year, accumulated $100, part of which he used to purchase his wife and children, who were still owned by Thomas Stanton.

While on Long Island, the entrepreneurial Venture harvested 10 cartloads of watermelons in one year while also selling fish, eels and lobsters. At age 46, he had freed himself from slavery, as well as his wife and three children. His prosperity enabled him to avoid being removed from one East End town whose selectmen passed a law that Negroes should be expelled from the village.

At 47 years old, Venture sold his properties on Long Island, perhaps because of the British occupation, and moved to East Haddam, Connecticut, where he bought 10 acres of farmland on Haddam Neck. A year later, he bought 70 acres more with money earned from the farm.

But Venture’s life had its setbacks. He writes that he took in his ailing daughter Hannah, who died despite his care. And even with his successes, he still felt the curse of prejudice. He was blamed by the captain of a boat he was on for the loss of a hogshead of molasses that accidentally went overboard. It was not Venture’s fault, but the captain “was a white gentleman, and I a poor African,” and Venture had to pay for the loss.

Venture Smith, at age 69, ended his saga, saying, “But amidst all the griefs and pains, I have many consolations; Meg, the wife of my youth, whom I married for love, and bought with my money, is still alive. My freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal. Notwithstanding all the losses I have suffered by fire, by the injustice of knaves, by the cruelty and oppression of false-hearted friends, and the perfidy of my own countrymen whom I have assisted and redeemed from bondage, I am possessed of more than two-hundred acres of land, and three habitable dwelling houses. It gives me joy to think that I have and that I deserve so good a character, especially for truth and integrity.”