The New Goree Mapping Project
By taking the 1850 Census and overlaying the information on an 1851 map of Bristol, can we see a pattern, or clues, of where people of color lived?
The town of Bristol was settled in 1680. Wood Street at that time was a narrow path far outside the ‘downtown’ area. Starting in the 1790s, the area was settled by formerly enslaved Africans. It was called New Goree, after the island off Senegal, as a way to designate where people of color lived. The focus of our research is to uncover the story of the creation of a neighborhood and a community and to provide primary source documentation of the people who lived here.
By taking a map from 1851 which has houses labelled with names, and overlaying that information with data from the 1850 census, our goal is to find a pattern to indicate where people of color may have lived in the town of Bristol that year. Street names are labelled on that map; however numbers for each dwelling were not added to maps or to the census until the late 1800s. Mr. B.J. Munro, Assistant Marshall, was the census taker in Bristol. His work spanned from the 24th of July to the 30th of August, 1850. His list includes visits to 666 dwellings and 892 families.
Federal census data up until the year 1850 counted people of color in a household, but did not provide detailed information. The 1850 census, however, contains Dwelling Number, Household Number, names, ages, sex, color, occupation and value of asset listings for all those being counted.
Oral history of the Town recounts an area called “Goree” or “New Goree” where most of the black residents resided. The assumption is that this name was given by white residents and used in the way we might use Chinatown or Little Italy as a descriptor. The location of Goree has been described as along Wood Street, from Bay View Avenue in the north to Union Street to the south.
Local architectural historian Dr. Kevin Jordan has identified about 9 or 10 houses in the neighborhood as a “Goree Style” House. Many of these Bristol houses are built based on a traditional African 12 foot span, rather than the 16 foot span used by Anglo Americans.
What’s happening in New Goree is similar to what James Deetz discovered in the Parting Ways settlement. Deetz’s excavations were done back in the 1970s in Plymouth. The actual buildings were no longer present when James Deetz began archaeological investigations on the property in 1975.
By 1901 there were 37 buildings filling a 19 acre site. 1500 workers now made belts, packing, hose, covered wire, and footwear. WWI saw a huge increase in product demand, and by then 4000 people worked here. It was Bristol’s largest employer.
But when there was no demand, there was no work. There was a major strike at this factory in 1920. Workers were laid off with no means of support. Foreign competition didn’t help. WWII provide a brief respite. 6000 people worked here and made wire. But after the war, production was cut once again. In 1957 the plant was sold to the Kaiser Corporation, which operated it until 1977, when it moved to a factory in Portsmouth. When the plant closed in 1977, 46 buildings covered the site.
Deetz’s comparison of the Turner-Burr house with a Yoruba House from West Africa, then a shotgun house in Haiti, and finally with the Anglo-American hall and parlor outline show how African cultural memory appears in these houses. While we have no such excavations in Bristol, we do have similar 12’ measurements. There seems to be a cultural memory here in Bristol as well.
Important to the history of this neighborhood is the establishment of the rubber factory. In 1864 a 10 acre tract of land was purchased by a Providence manufacturing company. On June 24, 1865 the Bristol Phoenix reported on the opening celebration of the National Rubber Company plant – built at a cost of $110,000. Stock of the company was owned in New York, Philadelphia and Providence. The new President was Henry G. Norton of New York. Augustus Bourn of Providence was the Treasurer. A fine collation was enjoyed by all, and the Bristol Cornet Band serenaded the attendees.
By 1870 700 workers were employed here. The Bristol company made rubberized clothing, boots, and shoes. By the 1880s a major expansion of the plant – eight large mills – was completed. In 1888 Samuel Pomeroy Colt “purchased” the company, changed the name to the National India Rubber Company, and then merged it into a large rubber cartel called The United States Rubber Company.
Here is a section of the 1851 map. Note that it follows Wood Street just north of Franklin south to Congregational Lane. From the census, homes marked with a black dot have been identified as places where a person of color lived in 1850. The white numbers are the Dwelling Numbers as taken from that census. Note the red dot indicating the location of the “African Church.” Research is continuing, block by block, to map the population of the town.
Notes on some of the residents of this area:
Dwelling #367 (see image to the left, blue and white house) is Daniel Slade, 1801-1872, with a listing that he has $500 value of real estate; age 50, black, laborer, wife Amoretti; also in the household Stephen Grago age 23, Carrington Slade age 4. The Greago-Slade-Tanner families are all related by marriage.
Dwelling #370 is Richard R Clarke, age 27, male, a seaman, living with Primus age 74; Althea Burrows age 33, and Joseph Burrows age 13. Research tells us that Primus’ mother was likely enslaved to Simeon Potter, a wealthy merchant of Bristol, whose sister Abigail married Mark Anthony D’Wolf in 1847 and so began the D’Wolf dynasty.
Dwelling #373 is Gideon Sherman, a laborer, listed as mulatto, with his wife and children and Elizabeth Hazard, age 57, and Charlotte Tanner, age 4.
Dwelling #376 is J. Hazard. He is listed as age 52, with $500 in real estate assets, black, a boatman. He is living with Maria, age 34, and six children. Note the location of this house - in the exact block where the rubber company would purchase their 10 acre lot to build their factory. History tells us that Maria Hazard negotiated the sale of a house to the factory with the proviso that they pay for the house to be moved, and provide an adjacent lot where her brother could build his house.
Dwelling #364 is William Spooner - a white man, politician and prominent business owner. An article in the Bristol Phoenix reported that the community approached Mr. Spooner to help them raise the money to build their new African Church in 1850.
Volunteer Researcher Lynn Smith began her investigation into the neighborhood in the area of Wood Street in 2020 because of the connection of the rubber factory to Samuel Pomeroy Colt and Linden Place, where Lynn is a docent. Amplifying the work done by architectural historian Kevin Jordan on specific building types in the area, in 2022 her work became centered on the Black community and the homes and businesses built in the early 1800s by those descended from Bristol’s enslaved residents. Lynn uses the 1850 census and an 1851 annotated map to identify where People of Color in Bristol lived and worked.