The morning of June 17, 1750, dawned cold and wet in Berwick, Maine, as was characteristic of that summer.¹ Sarah John dressed silently and instead of starting the fire or performing her usual morning chores, slipped into the fog and ran, escaping her enslaver’s estate and not looking back.

Sarah John was a twenty-year-old Indigenous woman who had been enslaved in the house of a colonist named Ichabod Goodwin. At that time, what we call Maine was still part of Massachusetts Bay colony, although the region attracted a wide variety of religious dissidents and independent-minded colonists who perhaps wanted more direct access to trade with the large and powerful regional Abenaki nation. Goodwin and his wife, Elizabeth, had built a large house on the property referred to then and now as Old Fields. There are no details about how Goodwin secured the land for his estate, although the region had been a long side of contestation between colonists and the Abenakis, in part due to ongoing war between England and France from the 1690s through the 1740s. Within a few years of Sarah John’s escape, war would break out again, and Goodwin would serve as a captain in what was later called the French and Indian War (1754-1760). The Goodwins became well-entrenched in the region; his grandson would later become the governor of New Hampshire during the Civil War.²

Much less is known about Sarah John. As is often the case with records of enslavement, we don’t know when she was enslaved, or how, or from what Native nation she was taken. Nearly a month after her escape, Goodwin paid for an advertisement in the Boston Post, offering five pounds in exchange for her return. This advertisement contains the only available details about Sarah, and they are scant. As was often the case, the language of the advertisement was written by her enslaver, with the intent to have her returned. Sarah’s self-description, if we had it, would be much different and richer. In the advertisement, Goodwin described Sarah as twenty years old and as a “fat thick short woman.”

Sarah is also said to have carried a silk crepe gown away from Goodwin’s home, which is unlikely to have belonged to her.⁴ Many enslaved people dressed in cheaper fabrics like cotton, wool, or hemp.⁵ It is possible that she took this gown either as a change of clothes to disguise her appearance, or to sell secondhand to make money for her journey.⁶

Unlike people enslaved in the American South, enslaved individuals in Maine were not part of large plantation labor as we usually understand it, but instead did the manual labor previously done by their enslavers, making those enslavers better able to engage in the burgeoning market economy.⁷ Sarah’s role in the home likely included domestic tasks like sewing, cooking, and cleaning.⁸ Goodwin calls Sarah a “servant” in the ad, but the language surrounding slavery in New England especially was not always clear, and even enslaved Africans were at times called servants.⁹ Sarah was most likely enslaved.

Also unlike enslaved people in the South, the number of enslaved people in colonies like Maine was so small that they were unlikely to be able to form robust side communities, but Sarah likely surely tried.¹⁰ Being enslaved in remote areas was a different experience, as enslaved individuals were isolated from their peers and forced to live in close quarters with their enslavers.¹¹ This dynamic might have made escape harder, as there was no known network of previously enslaved Indigenous or African individuals to support people running away from enslavement.

Despite her relatively young age and the myriad challenges of being on the run, Sarah moved hastily after her escape, heading south. On June 22nd, Sarah John was spotted passing through the town of Hampton, New Hampshire, twenty-seven miles due south of Berwick. Nothing is known about Sarah John’s life after this advertisement was placed. The Berwick region where the Goodwins lived had a long history of animosity between settlers and Indigenous people, with significant fighting in the English colonial period.¹² It is not impossible that her early life was connected to the aftermath of these skirmishes, or connected to the known Indigenous slave traders in the area. Perhaps she was captured and returned to Goodwin’s home, or perhaps she escaped south or east, and rejoined loved ones or her original tribe. As is often the case with enslaved Indigenous people, we only have small windows into their lives through fragmentary records.

For further reading:

Graham, Gilliam. 2021. “‘A missing piece:’ Maine’s connections to slavery are hidden in plain sight.” Portland Press Herald, February 14, 2021. https://www.pressherald.com/2021/02/14/a-missing-piece-maines-connections-to-slavery-are-hidden-in-plain-sight/?uuid=4cde3f48-6945-455a-be5a-cfeea5b43b69&lid=10044.

Lazaro, Ned, and Barbara Mathews. 2020. “Picturing Slavery: Clothing, Appearance, and New England Advertisements for Run-Away Enslaved Men During the 18th Century.” Historic Deerfield. https://www.historic-deerfield.org/2020-8-14-picturing-slavery-clothing-appearance-and-new-england-advertisements-for-run-away-enslaved-men-during-the-18th-century/.

Wall, Patricia Q. 2017. Lives of Consequence: Blacks in Early Kittery & Berwick in the Massachusetts Province of Maine. N.p.: Portsmouth Marine Society for the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire and the Portsmouth Historical Society.

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1. “Ran away on the 17th of June, 1750, from Ichabod Goodwin of Berwick,” Boston Post Boy (Boston, Massachusetts), July 9, 1750. For the weather that summer, see Barron, William R. 1982. “Eighteenth-Century New England Climate Variation and its Suggested Impact on Society.” Maine History 21, no. 4 (April): 205. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1594&context=mainehistoryjournal.[↩]
2. Robinson, J. Dennis. 2-16. “Living with the Ghost of Ichabod Goodwin.” SeacoastNH.com. https://www.seacoastnh.com/living-with-the-ghost-of-ichabod-goodwin/.[↩]
3. “History Accuracy Reincarnated: Hoop Skirts and Corsets.” n.d. tumblr. Accessed March 15, 2024. https://hoop-skirts-and-corsets.tumblr.com/post/67850119571/tiny-librarian-this-sack-back-gown-or-robe-%C3%A0-la.[↩]
4. Goodwin, Ichabod. 1750. Boston Post, 9 July, 1750. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPhP9qFcKChc0swYW1CNnVDQ1k/view?resourcekey=0-kvs9juR-BzqV9FwA0KWIrw.[↩]
5. Lazaro, Ned, and Barbara Mathews. 2020. “Picturing Slavery: Clothing, Appearance, and New England Advertisements for Run-Away Enslaved Men During the 18th Century.” Historic Deerfield. https://www.historic-deerfield.org/2020-8-14-picturing-slavery-clothing-appearance-and-new-england-advertisements-for-run-away-enslaved-men-during-the-18th-century/.[↩]
6. Lazaro and Mathews.[↩]
7. Graham, Gilliam. 2021. “‘A missing piece:’ Maine’s connections to slavery are hidden in plain sight.” Portland Press Herald, February 14, 2021. https://www.pressherald.com/2021/02/14/a-missing-piece-maines-connections-to-slavery-are-hidden-in-plain-sight/?uuid=4cde3f48-6945-455a-be5a-cfeea5b43b69&lid=10044.[↩]
8. “Slavery in Colonial New England.” n.d. Arlington Historical Society. Accessed March 14, 2024. https://arlingtonhistorical.org/slavery-in-colonial-new-england/.[↩]
9. Arlington Historical Society.[↩]
10. Arlington Historical Society.[↩]
11. Little, Becky. 2020. “Slavery Persisted in New England Until the 19th Century.” History.com. https://www.history.com/news/slavery-new-england-rhode-island.[↩]
12. Becky.[↩]