Pamela’s new husband was a free Black man named David Sparhawk. His surname indicates that he or perhaps his parents or grandparents were likely enslaved by the Sparhawks, one of the founding families of Cambridge, but by 1780 he was a free man. The speed with which Pamela and David wed after the Rev. Meriam’s death suggests that they had courted for some time before their marriage.
There are plenty of ways Pamela and David could have met, even while enslaved: on trips to the market or on other errands, when accompanying their enslavers on visits to other households, or at church, sitting in the back with other enslaved and freed Black people. They would have carved out time for each other at times when the white people who held them in captivity were otherwise too busy to notice where they were or what they were doing.
Marriage in the Time of Slavery
The choice of whom to love and to forge a relationship with is an act of human agency. Marriages between two enslaved people were not uncommon in colonial New England. Thirty years prior to Pamela and David’s marriage, a marriage record appears in the Newton town register — “Ceasar Serv’t of Caleb Dana & Rose, Servant of Caleb Kenrick.” The word “Servant” here means they were enslaved. While Rose and Ceasar’s was the only such marriage recorded in Newton before 1846, it is not the only one in the area during this time period, and it was probably not the only one that occurred in the town.
The fact that people enslaved in different households were rarely allowed to live together, even when married, meant such marriages could be tricky. But this also makes it all the more remarkable — and all the more a clear act of human self-determination — when enslaved people chose to pursue such unions, despite their circumstances.
Left: A page from Newton's Marriage Records, 1635-1846. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 via Ancestry.com.
By 1790, David and Pamela were living in the section of Cambridge that would become Brighton, and they had become a family of four. They probably did not own their own land but rather rented from someone else. While there were other free Black people in Brighton — more than in Newton — few were comfortably established with land and resources. By 1800, the Sparhawks were probably lodging in someone else’s household, because though we know they stayed in the area, they do not appear in census records.
The Lenox Family
Cornelius Lenox was a Revolutionary War veteran. From the 1780s to the 1830s, he owned a one-acre farm straddling the Newton-Watertown line, where he lived with his wife Susannah and their eight children. Some Black men earned their freedom through Revolutionary War service, but free Black men served, too, in the hopes of establishing themselves financially and in the eyes of their community. It is not clear which was the case for Cornelius Lenox.
Newton’s free Black population at that time was small — about two dozen people — and about half of them lived in the households of white Newtonians. Owning their own farm provided the Lenoxes a measure of stability, and they attended Watertown’s First Parish Church. The Lenox family thrived. They opened their home to a local orphan in need of care, and Cornelius and Susannah’s children and grandchildren grew up to be figures of some note.
Right: The Lenox family plot in Watertown's Common Street Cemetery, where at least two generations of Lenoxes are buried.
We do not know the gender of the Sparhawk children, and they soon disappear from census records. By 1800, daughters could have joined their husbands’ households or — like their mother— entered domestic service. Sons might have entered trade or service that took them out of the area. Wherever they were, Pamela and David’s children undoubtedly worked hard for their life in freedom. Neither Massachusetts nor anywhere else made life easy for free Black people.