Elizabeth Freeman — Storied No. 051

In 1780 Massachusetts ratified a new constitution. Its first article declared that “all men are born free and equal.” Among those who heard it was a woman called Bett, enslaved since birth in the household of John Ashley of Sheffield. She could not read. She did not need to. The next day, by her own account, she went to a young lawyer named Theodore Sedgwick and put the question plainly: “I’m not a dumb critter; won’t the law give me my freedom?”

In August 1781 a jury in Great Barrington said that it would. Bett walked out of the courtroom with thirty shillings in damages and a name she chose for herself — Elizabeth Freeman. Her suit was one of the first freedom suits won under the new constitution, and within two years the courts had carried its logic to the end: slavery could not stand in Massachusetts.

From Bett to Freeman

The lifeline

c. 1744

Born enslaved on Pieter Hogeboom’s farm in Claverack, New York

1773

The Sheffield Resolves, declaring mankind “equal, free and independent,” are drafted in her enslaver’s house

1780

Hears the new state constitution read, and seeks out a lawyer the next day

1781

A Great Barrington jury declares her free in Brom and Bett v. Ashley

c. 1811

Sits, around 70, for the ivory miniature that is her only known likeness

1829

Dies on December 28 in Stockbridge, free for her last 48 years

By the numbers

The measure of her

30s

Thirty shillings: the damages the jury awarded against the man who had owned her

Years she lived free, from the 1781 verdict to her death in 1829

~20

Acres, with a house and working farm, that she left to her descendants in her will

Enslaved people recorded in Massachusetts by the first US census, in 1790

What she did

The deeds

c. 1780

The uncovered wound. When her mistress swung a heated kitchen shovel at a young servant girl, Bett took the blow on her arm — then left the wound bare all winter. Asked about it, she answered only: “Ask missis!” (as she told it)

1780

The question. She carried the constitution’s promise to Theodore Sedgwick, who took her case with Tapping Reeve, founder of the Litchfield Law School. A second man enslaved by Ashley, Brom, joined the suit.

Aug 1781

Brom and Bett v. Ashley. The County Court of Common Pleas jury found that neither was “the legal Negro of the said John Ashley,” and awarded damages and costs. Ashley appealed — then dropped it.

1783

The door stays open. In the Quock Walker case, Chief Justice William Cushing told a jury that slavery was incompatible with the constitution — the ruling her suit had pointed toward, and which ended slavery in the state in practice.

1781–1829

A free life, built by hand. Paid work raising the Sedgwick children; renown across Berkshire County as a midwife, nurse and healer; years of savings; and at last land and a house of her own in Stockbridge.

Unlettered, then remembered

Recognition

In her lifetime

She could neither read nor write, and left no record in her own hand
Her words survive only as others set them down — chiefly Catharine Sedgwick, in 1853
Known by a nickname, “Mumbet,” given her by her employer’s children
Legal histories long credited the end of slavery in the state to Quock Walker’s case alone

Today

The only person buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge who is not a Sedgwick
A statue of her unveiled in Sheffield in August 2022
A Berkshire County centre against domestic and sexual violence bears her name
Her miniature is kept by the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston

The place that held her

Sheffield, Massachusetts

A river town in the Housatonic valley, at the southern edge of the Berkshires. Its leading men gathered in John Ashley’s house to put their grievances against Britain on paper — while Bett worked in the same rooms. It was a few miles up the valley, in the Great Barrington courthouse, that her freedom was won.

1733

Sheffield incorporated — the oldest town in Berkshire County

1735

The Ashley House built; it still stands, kept by the Trustees of Reservations