William and Celinda Harris Anderson and 45-51 Shapley Street
By Tom Schuch
Fayerweather Hall is dedicated to Sarah Harris Fayerweather on the campus of the University of Rhode Island, South Kingstown, RI.
The corner of Shapley and Huntington Street was a silent witness to nearly every phase of New London’s history, from the town’s founding, the prosperity of the West Indies Trade and the turmoil of revolution; through slavery, emancipation, civil war, and, finally, abolition; through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the devastating impact of urban renewal.
Much of that history is commonly known through accounts of the West Indies mariners, merchants, Revolutionary War heroes, and whalers who populate the familiar stories of our rich heritage.
But if we delve deeper, we start to discover the histories of the Indigenous and Black communities which have always been interwoven into the fabric of New London, but whose stories are only recently being rediscovered.
The history of the Anderson/Harris family, whose homestead stood on this corner for ninety-four years, is one such story. Although few people remember them today, the Andersons and the Harrises were both witnesses to, and participants in, events that profoundly impacted New London and its Black community for over 150 years.
Additionally, their story provides a window into an extensive local network that was engaged in the fight for educational equality, the abolition of slavery, Black suffrage, and civil rights. The homestead on Shapley Street helps us see how the seemingly disparate members of this network were inextricably connected to each other and to a common goal. The Andersons, the Harrises and their descendants were at the center of that network.
Shapley Street’s Early History
When Shapley Street was first opened in 1746 by Daniel Shapley through land that he inherited from his father, Captain Benjamin Shapley, it rose from Towne Street (later Main Street, and now Eugene O’Neill Drive) up Briggs Hill to Huntington Street. This hill has had a variety of names over the centuries, including Meetinghouse Hill, Poverty Hill, and, most recently, Post Hill. The top of Shapley Street was only a few steps from New London’s original meetinghouse green, designated by the city’s founder, John Winthrop, Jr., in 1646.[1]
This location commanded a stunning prospect or vista of the Thames River and New London Harbor, as can be seen in an engraving depicting New London in 1813.[2] The Town Square was the site of the first three meeting houses[3] and Ye Antientist Burial Place, where, among other notable New London personages, “Florio, wife of Hercules, Governor of the Negroes” is buried. It is said that the traitor Benedict Arnold watched the Battle of Groton Heights from near this point in 1781.[4]
Daniel’s father, Captain Benjamin Shapley, had made his fortune in the West Indies trade, which was the main source of New London’s early prosperity. Like many West Indies traders, it appears that he also engaged in the slave trade.[5]
Daniel’s son, Captain Adam Shapley, was in command at Fort Trumbull on September 6, 1781, when Benedict Arnold’s traitorous attack drove the Patriot soldiers across the river to Groton Heights, where Shapley was mortally wounded.
Just as the Shapley family played a prominent role in New London’s history through the colonial period and the American Revolution, two other families associated with Shapley Street–the Andersons and the Harrises–profoundly impacted New London in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Anderson Family
The Anderson family’s presence in New London began with Scipio Anderson. In the late 18th century, Scipio was enslaved to Guy Richards, a merchant and a member of a prominent New London family. Scipio married Juno[6], who was enslaved to Winthrop Saltonstall, the lineal descendant of three Governors of the Connecticut Colony.
By July 6, 1787, Scipio Anderson was a free man and an entrepreneur, advertising his chimney sweep business in the New London Gazette: “This is to give public notice that I shall continue to carry on the sweeping business in the cleanest and neatest manner, at a low price, mornings or afternoons, as the gentlemen and ladies will admit. In dry weather and high winds, foul chimes are very dangerous. N.B. Beware of straggling sweepers, for they are very careless.”[7]
Scipio and Juno had two children, but his first wife, Juno, remained enslaved until her death in 1797. In 1803, Scipio married Jane Palmes Smith, the widow of Benjamin Smith, and together they had three children: Benjamin (1804), William (1805) and Mary (1807).[8] Both sons became barbers.
William, like his father, had an entrepreneurial spirit: in addition to running his barber shop, he developed, manufactured and marketed his own hair restorative.[9] On May 21, 1834, he married Celinda Harris, whose family was deeply involved in the struggle for Black civil rights.[10] In the 1840 US Census, William and Celinda are listed as neighbors to Joseph Case. When Case, an elderly widower with no heirs, died in 1843, he bequeathed his property on the corner of Huntington and Shapley Streets to William and Celinda’s eight-year-old daughter, Sara Jane.[11] That property, which would become the Anderson family homestead for the next ninety-four years, consisted of two houses and an additional building, possibly a converted stable, that became known as Good Samaritan Hall.
The Harris Family
The known Harris family genealogy begins with William Monteflora Harris and his wife, Sallie Prentice Harris. Sallie, a native of Griswold, CT, was of Native American heritage.[12] William was a mariner who emigrated from Haiti to Norwich shortly after the Haitian Revolution.[13] He bought a home from Calvin Goddard, a prominent lawyer and mill owner,[14] and soon became active in the anti-slavery, education, and Black suffrage movements. In 1817, after the new Connecticut constitution codified the loss of Black Connecticut residents’ right to vote, he filed a petition with Norwich’s Governor of the Negroes Deptford Billings and others requesting the right to vote and objecting to taxation without representation.[15]
William was also an advocate for educational equality, and he and Sallie ensured that their children all received an education through the local Sabbath and District schools. After they purchased and relocated to a farm in Canterbury in 1832, at least two of their daughters, Sarah and Mary, attended Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury Female Boarding School. Sarah, the eldest, became the school’s first Black student in 1832, igniting a local controversy that would grow to national significance and lead to the school’s temporary closure.[16] When Prudence Crandall reopened the school in 1833, it became the first boarding school for Black girls in the United States until a violent attack the following year forced Crandall to permanently shutter the school.
The Harris Sisters and New London’s Network of Black Activists
Four of William and Sallie Harris’s daughters–Sarah, Celinda, Olive and Mary–followed their father’s example, becoming passionate activists for the abolition of slavery and educational equality. Three of these four Harris sisters were central to New London’s community of abolition and education activists.
In the 1830s, the dominant sentiment in New London was strongly anti-abolitionist. Abolitionists were viewed as incendiary threats to the local economy, which was heavily dependent on the cotton and textile industries. Local churches and families were often heatedly divided on the issue.[17]
Both Celinda Harris Anderson and her husband William Anderson were active members of the locally reviled abolition movement. In a list of subscription agents that appeared in William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator on January 18, 1834, we see the names of William Anderson of New London, along with William Harris of Canterbury and Olive Harris’s future husband, Frederick Olney of Norwich.[18] Ten days later, Frederick Olney put out an arson’s fire at Prudence Crandall’s school.
In 1844, Celinda became a Come-Outer from the 2nd Congregational Church: a congregant who publicly left the church, denouncing its failure to oppose slavery. In New London, the Come-Outers included five women abolitionists, both Black and white, who acted in concert.[19] The Come-Outers movement spread across the northern states and included the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
By this point, the abolitionist movement in New London was growing. It was comprised of an intersectional group of men and women, both white and Black. They held anti-slavery meetings and lectures, produced two anti-slavery newspapers,[20] and drew nationally known abolitionists to speak in New London.[21]
In October 1845, the Andersons hosted the famed, radical abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet at their Shapley Street home, where he gave a series of anti-slavery and temperance lectures at Good Samaritan Hall.[22] Following these lectures, Garnet reported in The Emancipator that during the week, the Hall was used as a school for thirty Black children operated by “Mrs. Olney.”[23] Mrs. Olney was Olive Harris Olney, the wife of Frederick Olney.[24]
Olive Olney’s school on Shapley Street was only two blocks from where Ichabod Pease had operated his school for Black children in 1837-38. Pease, at eighty-one years old, had been assisted by eighteen-year-old Miranda Glasko, another former student at Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury Female Boarding School.[25] She was the daughter of Isaac Glasko, the entrepreneurial blacksmith from Griswold, CT for whom the village of Glasgo, CT is named. It is the only town or village in Connecticut that is named for a Black man.[26] Once again we see the evidence of the network connecting Connecticut’s Black activists.
The third Harris sister living in New London–Sarah Harris, now Sarah Harris Fayerweather–lived with her husband George three blocks from the Andersons on Broad Street from 1841 through the early 1850s.[27] They, too, were active abolitionists.
By the late 1840s, the general sentiment in New London regarding slavery appears to have changed. After speaking in New London in May 1848, the great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass described New London as possibly ‘the best part in the state’ in terms of the abolition movement.[28] On June 12, 1848, three weeks after Douglass spoke in New London, Connecticut finally abolished slavery.
The transformation of New London from ‘the greatest slave-holding section of New England’ in 1774, according to Lorenzo J. Greene[29] to, in Frederick Douglass’ estimation, ‘the best part in the state’ by 1848, represents a remarkable transformation.
The presence, influence and advocacy of the Harris sisters, through the Anderson, Fayerweather and Olney families, together with their white abolitionist allies–the Hempstead sisters, the Bolles, the Princes, the Janes and the Haleys–undoubtedly played a significant role in that transformation.
But the Harris sisters and their descendants weren’t done yet.
Sarah and George Fayerweather moved to Rhode Island in 1855, where they continued their involvement in the anti-slavery movement and were conductors on the Underground Railroad.[30] They often hosted Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and other nationally known abolitionists in their South Kingstown, RI home.[31]
The fourth activist Harris sister, Mary Harris, became a strong advocate for educational equality. After attending Prudence Crandall’s school, she married Pelleman Williams, a teacher in Norwich who served as the Vice President of the 1849 Connecticut Colored Men’s Convention in New Haven, at which his brothers-in-law William Anderson and George Fayerweather were delegates.[32]
In 1863, Mary and Pelleman Williams moved to New Orleans, where they first became teachers of the freedmen, then faculty members at Straight College, an HBCU now known as Dillard University. The Harris family legacy continues in Louisiana, where there is a school named for one of their sons, as well as a school named for George Fayerweather IV, both of whom were renowned teachers.[33] Another of their descendants married famed band leader Cab Calloway.[34]
Here in New London, when Sara Jane Anderson died in 1897, the Shapley Street property passed to her sister, Celinda Dunham Anderson. The younger Celinda had served as a teacher (as had her cousin, Mary Elizabeth Fayerweather, daughter of Sarah and George) for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Delaware during the 1868-70 Reconstruction period following the end of the Civil War.[35] After her retirement, Celinda returned to live at 51 Shapley Street with her uncle, Lloyd Garrison Harris, a retired caterer and a brother of the Harris sisters. He remained at that address until his death in 1916. His full name, incidentally, was William Lloyd Garrison Harris.[36] He was named after the famous abolitionist.
As a result of Celinda selling a portion of the Anderson family homestead, the property continued to be a center of Black activism and community.
William and Estella Gambles
In 1926, Celinda subdivided the property, selling the house at 45 Shapley Street to William and Estella Gambles.[37] By 1929, the Gambles were using part of the duplex as a tourist home and tea room, providing accommodations for Black travelers who would have been denied service at the white-only Mohican Hotel and Crocker House. In 1930 and 1931, their home appeared in the Hackley & Harrison Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers, America’s first published guide for Black travelers. The national guide was written and published by Sadie Dillon Harrison and Edwin S. Hackley while Sadie was living at 73 Hempstead Street in New London.[38] The Gambles’ home appears in Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book from 1938-1940.[39]
The Gambles also ran a recreation center for the Black community at 45 Shapley Street, particularly catering to domestic workers, servicemen, and travelers. Additionally, drawing on William’s experience and expertise as a chief steward in the US Coast Guard, they operated a tea room on the site, through which they provided skills training in cooking and proper meal serving to recent migrants from the South.
William Gambles is a remarkable story in his own right. Born in Alabama on December 24, 1874, he left home at fifteen, obtained a job on a British ship, and traveled to Africa and other ports of call around the globe. He returned to the US at nineteen and joined the army, serving in the Cavalry in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. He then went back to England where he joined the Royal British Engineers and served in the Boer War. Gambles returned again to the US and joined the Coast Guard (then known as the Revenue Service) in 1907 as a steward. He retired from the Coast Guard after thirty years of service. After his retirement, he was employed by the New Haven Railroad for fifteen years.[40] Before his death at age ninety-six, he was the oldest living Coast Guardsman in New London, one of the oldest veterans in the state, and one of the oldest surviving Spanish-American War veterans.[41]
William was also active in Shiloh Baptist Church, where he served as a deacon. He held leadership positions in several fraternal organizations. He presented local programs in African culture and history which were based on his own experiences, augmented by artifacts he’d collected in Africa,[42] and information about his grandfather, a Zulu tribesman who had been kidnapped in Africa and enslaved in Alabama prior to the Civil War. Just before his death, Shiloh Baptist Church was planning to honor him by establishing the William Gambles Art Museum, which would have contained many of the articles that he had collected in his extensive travels. It is unclear if that plan was ever brought to fruition.
In 1936, William helped found and command a unit of the Colored Junior Marines (Headquarters Battalion No. 11, Junior Naval Militia), the first local chapter open to Black youth. He led the group in many activities, including local parades, for many years and was an immediately recognizable figure.[43] He eventually became state commander of the Black units of the organization.[44]
In January of 1940, the Gambles sold their Shapley Street residence and moved to 86 Smith Street in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood.[45] Estella died on January 31, 1964. William remarried in 1966 and died in July, 1969. Both William and Estella are interned at Arlington National Cemetery, where William received full military honors.[46]
More connections within New London’s Black community
A closer examination of the details of the various real estate transactions of the 19th and 20th centuries can give us valuable insight into the support and sense of community that existed in the Black community in New London. In 1851, John Parkis bought a house on Blinman Street from William Anderson’s brother Benjamin. Parkis was active in the anti-slavery and temperance movements of the 1840s, and in 1845 he was the first owner of 73 Hempstead Street, where, one hundred years later, Sadie Dillon Harrison would produce the Hackley & Harrison Guide. He was married to Lavinia Ruggles Parkis, the sister of famed abolitionist and freedom fighter David Ruggles.[47]
In 1932, there was a $203 lien against the 45 Shapley Street residence of William and Estella Gambles, placed by the New England People’s Finance Corporation (NEPFC). The NEPFC was a financial institution founded by Benjamin Tanner Johnson in New London in 1927, formed to provide loans and mortgage financing to the Black community which was often denied access to financing by traditional banks. Johnson, the third Black graduate of Harvard Business School, was the president of the NEPFC and the half-brother of Sadie Dillon Harrison, who served as Executive Secretary.[48] These are just a few of the many examples of the interconnections within New London’s Black community.
Mid-twentieth century and beyond
When Celinda Anderson died in 1933, the Shapley Street home passed to her niece, Elizabeth Montflora Mitchell Ryan, the granddaughter of George and Sarah Harris Fayerweather.[49] Elizabeth was residing in Birmingham, AL, where her husband, Rev. William Wade Ryan, served as president of the Tuggle Institute, an HBCU.[50] Ryan was a Presbyterian minister and the former President of Selma University, another HBCU.[51] The theme of education remained strong in this fourth generation of Harris descendants.
In 1937, the New London City Council voted to have 51 Shapley Street demolished due to its deterioration.[52] Shortly after the demolition, Elizabeth Ryan sold the property out of the family to Samuel and Isser Gruskin,[53] who built a gasoline filling station on the now-vacant lot.[54] The Gruskins were descendants of the Gruskin hardware merchant family, who were neighbors of the Andersons on Shapley Street.[55] (The Gruskins were part of the influx of Eastern European and Jewish immigrants who arrived in the latter part of the 19th century. New London’s first synagogue was built in 1902 on Shapley Street.)[56]
But the Harris family connections continue to reverberate in New London and throughout southeastern Connecticut. Charles Floreval Harris, the oldest of the Harris sons, married Ann Maria Davis, an employee at Prudence Crandall’s academy. He was present with his friend, Frederick Olney, on the day of the arson attack on the school in January 1834 and helped trace and extinguish the fire. He became a restauranteur in Norwich.[57]
His son, Gerry Beeman Harris, married Gertrude Fielding, a descendant of Uncas, noted Sachem of the Mohegans.[58] Their son Julian Lamont Harris became Sachem of the Mohegans in the 1930s.[59]
Another of their sons, Lloyd G. Harris, is the grandfather of Roland J. Harris, the former Mohegan Tribal Chairman.[60] Roland Harris led the Mohegan tribe in establishing their gaming enterprise in the Uncasville section of Montville in the 1990s.[61]
Roland’s daughter, Sarah E. Harris, a lawyer and Dartmouth College graduate, is presently serving her second term as a member of the Mohegan Tribal Council, holding the position of Vice-President.[62]
Sarah E. Harris is not only descended from the great Mohegan Sachem Uncas, but she is also the multi-generational niece of Samson Occum, the noted Mohegan missionary who raised the funds that enabled Rev. Eleazer Wheelock to found Dartmouth College, her Alma Mater, in the 18th Century. She is the 4th generation niece of Sarah Harris Fayerweather.
In 1951, Shapley Street was designated a blighted area by the New London Redevelopment Agency. During the urban renewal era of the 1960s, the entire neighborhood was demolished as part of the Winthrop Cove Redevelopment Project.[63] [64]
The Anderson homestead on Shapley Street is now the site of Huntington Towers, a Senior living facility at 149 Huntington Street. No traces remain of 45 or 51 Shapley Street, of Good Samaritan Hall, or even of Shapley Street itself.
With the inclusion of this site on the Black Heritage Trail, the City of New London commemorates some of the hidden history that this neighborhood represents. The stories of people like the Shapleys, the Andersons, the Harris sisters, the Gambles, and many others are an important part of the mosaic of diversity that forms the heart of today’s New London community.
[1] Frances Manwaring Caulkins. History of New London, Connecticut: from the First Survey of the Coast in 1612, to 1860 (New London: H. D. Utley, 1895) p. 108 and 190-91.
[2] New London [Conn.] in 1813, engraving, 1813. Local Identifer: 30-N-31-665, NAID: 513328 National Archives Catalog.
[3] Caulkins. History of New London, Connecticut: from the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860, p. 108 and 190-91.
[4] Ibid., p. 558.
[5] https://www.slavevoyages.org/american/database voyage #107483
[6] Barbara W. Brown, and James Rose. Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900 (Detroit, Michigan : Gale Research, c1980) p.8.
[7] James M. Rose, and Barbara W. Brown. Tapestry: A Living History of the Black Family in Southeastern Connecticut (New London: New London County Historical Society) p.28.
[8] Brown, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900, p.9.
[9] See image: New London City Directory, 1853-54, p.18.
[10] Brown, Black Roots In Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900, p.9.
[11] Joseph Case, Last Will and Testament, Probate Files Collection, Early to 1880; Author: Connecticut State Library (Hartford, Connecticut); Probate Place: New London, Connecticut.
[12] See attached photo of Sallie Prentice Harris. Carl Woodward (1973). “A profile in dedication: Sarah Harris and the Fayerweather Family.” The New England Galaxy, (1973) 15(1). Courtesy of the Fayerweather House.
[13] Brown, Black Roots In Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900, p.173.
[14] Norwich Land Records Deed of Calvin Goddard to William Harris, 17 January, 1816.
[15] Katherine J. Harris. “No Taxation Without Representation” in African American Connecticut Explored, ed. Elizabeth Normen. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013) p.166.
[16] Prudence Crandall Museum: https://portal.ct.gov/ECD-PrudenceCrandallMuseum
[17] Ultimatum, October 19, 1842, p. 4.
[18] See image: The Liberator, 18 January 1834.
[19] Manual of the Second Congregational Church in New London, CT, 1880, pp. 26-75.
[20] See attached image: New London Anti-Slavery Newspapers.
[21] See attached image: Henry Highland Garnet and Frederick Douglass
[22] Henry Highland Garnet.“Notes of a Travelor,” The Emancipator, November 19, 1845.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Not only was Frederick one of the heroes of the arson attack on Prudence Crandall’s school on January 28, 1834; he was also an officer on the New London whaling ship Merrimac ten years later. He wrote a recently discovered journal of the Merrimac that was gifted to the Custom House Maritime Museum in 2020. For an account of the incident see The Unionist, March 13, 1834.
[25] Rev. Jehiel Beman, “Communications,” The Emancipator, 16 November, 1837. Also see ‘Friend of Man’, November 29, 1837, quoted in “In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America”, Kabria Baumgartner, p. 42.
[26] Jason R. Mancini. “Glasgo: Isaac Glasko Forges A Life,” Connecticut Explored Magazine, Summer 2016.
[27] See image: 1850 Map of New London.
[28] Frederick Douglass. The North Star, May 26, 1848, p.2.
[29] Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro In Colonial America, 1620-1776 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942) p.91.
[30] Fayerweather Family Papers. https://www.riamco.org/render?eadid=US-RUn-msg121&view=biography
[31] “Students at Prudence Crandall’s School: 1833-1834” compiled by the Prudence Crandall Museum, Canterbury, CT. https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Prudence%20Crandall%20Students%20Text.pdf
[32]The Proceedings of the Connecticut State Convention of Coloured Men, Held at New Haven, On the September 12th and 13th, 1849, (New Haven: William H. Stanley, 1849).
https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/files/original/8de890299d73dddffba342da32c2fdb0.pdf
[33]Joanie DeMartino. “Historically Speaking: Harris sisters linked to Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury school,” Norwich Bulletin, March 14, 2021.
[34] Author conversation with Harris family descendant, Dawn Foster Langford, June, 2022.
[35] Freedmen’s Bureau Records, Delaware, 1865-1878, via Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/10967463?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a226a4173506b626853724e78746d303476756e77493768724f387377492f38566436442f657a444c573441733d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d
[36] Brown, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900, p. 174.
[37] New London Land Records. 1926 Deed of Celinda Anderson to William and Estella Gambles.
[38] Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. “Hackley & Harrison’s hotel and apartment guide for colored travelers” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 15, 2024. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/173daf10-fc1f-0136-584e-3b945bc8b699
[39]Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “The Negro Motorist Green Book: 1938” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 15, 2024. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/f56e0d60-847a-0132-8e19-58d385a7bbd0
[40]“William Gambles Dies; Was Spanish War Vet,” The Day, July 11, 1969, p.20.
[41]“Spring is Here for William Gambles,” The Day. March 21, 1966 p.2
[42]“Negro Council Hears Talk On African Tribes.,” The Day October 19, 1929, p.11.
[43] William Gambles. “Pastor Praises Fairness Shown to Local Negroes,” The Day, Nov. 14, 1940, p. 11.
[45] “Realty Transaction,” The Day, January 31,1940, p.7.
[46] “William Gambles Dies; Was Spanish War Vet.” The Day, July 11, 1969, p.20.
[47] Brown, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900, p. 288.
[48] https://visitnewlondon.org/black-heritage-trail/73-hempstead-street/
[49] New London Land Records, Vol. 191. p. 193.
[50] See attached images: Rev. William Wade Ryan, Tuggle Institute.
[51] “University Head Speaks: Selma Man Addresses Mount Pilgrim Baptist Association,” The Birmingham News, 09 October, 1931, p. 21.
[52] “Council, School Board Discuss Teachers’ Pay Cut Restoration: Take No Action at Secret Session,” The Day, January 12, 1937, p. 13.
[53] “Realty Transaction,” The Day, May 11, 1937, p.8.
56 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of New London,1954.
[55] See attached image: New London City Directory
[56] Jerome E. Fischer. “From Generation to Generation: A History of the Jews in New London” in New London, A History of Its People, ed. Carmelina Como Kanzler (1996) p. 77.
[57] Brown, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900, p. 172.
[58] Ibid., pp. 172-73.
[59] “Summary Under the criteria and Evidence for Final Determination for Federal Acknowledgment of the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of the state of Connecticut” (1994), p. 107. 038_fd.pdf (bia.gov)
[60]Brian Hallenbeck. “In taking oath, Mohegan tribe’s newest leader will fulfill a promise.” The Day, September 30, 2017. https://www.theday.com/local-news/201 70930/in-taking-oath-mohegan-tribes-newest-leader-will-fulfill-a-promise/
60 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122415208/william_walker-harris
[62] Brian Hallenbeck. “Chairman Brown retains chairmanship of Mohegan council” The Day, October 7, 2017. htpps://www.theday.com/local-news/20171002/kevin-brown-retains-chairmanship-of-mohegan-council/
[63]See comparison of the Harrison, Ballard & Allen survey areas and the Winthrop Urban Renewal Area perimeter from the website Mapping Urban Renewal in New London: 1941-1975, ed. Anna Vallye. https://conncoll.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=9ed5ba20384545e6bfd5d3aaff30ea97 Courtesy of Anna Vallye.
[64]Original Source: Existing Land Use Map, Maurice E. H. Rotival & Associates, Modified Urban Renewal Plan: Winthrop Urban Renewal Area, Conn. R-45, New London, Connecticut (1 February 1962). From the website Mapping Urban Renewal in New London: 1941-1975, ed. Anna Vallye.
https://conncoll.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=9ed5ba20384545e6bfd5d3aaff30ea97 Courtesy of Anna Vallye.
Additional note: Please include this link in the caption for the image “Depiction of an attack on a school for Black girls from The American Anti-Slavery Almanac, for 1839” Cornell University Library Digital Collections Bookreader