1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:07,000 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, 2 00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:11,039 Speaker 1: Lorn Boglebam here. There aren't a lot of written accounts 3 00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:13,120 Speaker 1: of the black people who lived in the early American 4 00:00:13,160 --> 00:00:16,480 Speaker 1: colonies up through the Revolutionary War. It's not that they 5 00:00:16,520 --> 00:00:19,320 Speaker 1: weren't here, but the paper trail for people of African 6 00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:22,560 Speaker 1: descent from this time largely consists of petitions for freedom 7 00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:25,959 Speaker 1: from slavery, accounts of escape or attention escape from enslavement, 8 00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:29,800 Speaker 1: and records of execution. But accounts of one enslaved man 9 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,320 Speaker 1: named Onesimus living in Boston in the early eighteenth century 10 00:00:33,680 --> 00:00:36,639 Speaker 1: tell the story of the person very likely responsible for 11 00:00:36,800 --> 00:00:39,839 Speaker 1: saving hundreds of lives in the Boston smallpox epidemic of 12 00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:43,080 Speaker 1: the early seventeen twenties, as well as accountants others affected 13 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:48,360 Speaker 1: by future outbreaks all over the colonies. Massachusetts was actually 14 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:51,640 Speaker 1: the first colony to give human slavery the moral and 15 00:00:51,800 --> 00:00:55,040 Speaker 1: legal thumbs up, codifying the right to own human chattel 16 00:00:55,160 --> 00:00:59,280 Speaker 1: in sixteen forty one. By the time Anesmus was purchased 17 00:00:59,280 --> 00:01:02,720 Speaker 1: for the famous Hrton minister Cotton Mather in seventeen o six, 18 00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:06,320 Speaker 1: there were about a thousand enslaved people living in Massachusetts 19 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:09,280 Speaker 1: and about a third of them living in Boston. Some 20 00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:11,880 Speaker 1: of these people were indentured servants, and not all were 21 00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:16,280 Speaker 1: of African descent. Some were European and some Native American. However, 22 00:01:16,520 --> 00:01:19,280 Speaker 1: the beginning of the seventeen hundreds saw the colonies putting 23 00:01:19,319 --> 00:01:23,200 Speaker 1: more restrictions on black people and disproportionately binding them to 24 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:28,400 Speaker 1: slavery for life. No one knows Niecemus's original name. Cotton 25 00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:31,040 Speaker 1: Mother named him for a biblical slave who escaped his 26 00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:35,720 Speaker 1: master and later converted to Christianity. Anismus was probably born 27 00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:37,959 Speaker 1: in West Africa and brought to the colonies on a ship. 28 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:42,440 Speaker 1: In his youth. Cotton Mother was an important Bostonian his 29 00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:45,959 Speaker 1: father increased. Mother was the president of Harvard, a job 30 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:48,559 Speaker 1: that Cotton later turned down because what he really wanted 31 00:01:48,600 --> 00:01:51,480 Speaker 1: to do with this time was read and write. Mother 32 00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:54,440 Speaker 1: was considered among the most educated people in the colonies, 33 00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:57,200 Speaker 1: and he published upwards of four hundred books in his lifetime, 34 00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:02,080 Speaker 1: on everything from piracy to planned hybridization. Mother was also 35 00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:05,800 Speaker 1: a religious zealot. In the sixteen nineties, he figured prominently 36 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:08,480 Speaker 1: in the Salem witch trials, earning himself the reputation of 37 00:02:08,520 --> 00:02:13,200 Speaker 1: being extremely anti witch. Mother lived in the city and 38 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:15,680 Speaker 1: did indeed spend most of his time reading and writing, 39 00:02:16,040 --> 00:02:19,360 Speaker 1: so Anisimus's main jobs in the mother household seemed to 40 00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:23,120 Speaker 1: have been clearing snow, stacking firewood, carrying water, and doing 41 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:27,360 Speaker 1: chores around the house. However, mother was extremely interested in 42 00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:30,560 Speaker 1: converting Anismus to Christianity, and he wrote in his diary 43 00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:32,440 Speaker 1: about teaching him to read and write so that he 44 00:02:32,480 --> 00:02:36,680 Speaker 1: could better understand the Christian Catechism. Perhaps because mother was 45 00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:40,120 Speaker 1: so adamant about converting Anisamis to Christianity, the two seem 46 00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:43,760 Speaker 1: to have talked a lot. We spoke with Stephen Niven, 47 00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:47,240 Speaker 1: executive editor of the African American National Biography at Harvard's 48 00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:51,120 Speaker 1: Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He said 49 00:02:51,560 --> 00:02:53,880 Speaker 1: it was a relationship between an owner and someone who 50 00:02:53,919 --> 00:02:56,520 Speaker 1: was owned. But we know a lot more about Anisamus 51 00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:58,800 Speaker 1: than we do about other African Americans of the time 52 00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:03,320 Speaker 1: because Cotton Mather's diary is very detailed. We know, for instance, 53 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:06,040 Speaker 1: that he had a son who died. We know too 54 00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:08,720 Speaker 1: that Anisimus wanted to buy his freedom from Mather, which 55 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:13,679 Speaker 1: we can assume he eventually did. Mother's diary also details 56 00:03:13,720 --> 00:03:16,320 Speaker 1: how some time in the early seventeen hundreds, he and 57 00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:20,120 Speaker 1: Anesimus had a conversation about the extremely deadly smallpox epidemics 58 00:03:20,160 --> 00:03:22,520 Speaker 1: that swept through New England in the forty years prior. 59 00:03:23,480 --> 00:03:25,840 Speaker 1: At the time, smallpox is one of the deadliest diseases 60 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:28,400 Speaker 1: in the North American colonies, and Boston had been hit 61 00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:32,040 Speaker 1: hard several times, according to Mather's diary. During one of 62 00:03:32,080 --> 00:03:35,400 Speaker 1: these conversations, Ansimus made a remark that he wouldn't be 63 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:37,880 Speaker 1: getting smallpox if it came through Boston because he had 64 00:03:37,880 --> 00:03:41,840 Speaker 1: been inoculated before he left Africa. The term inoculate didn't 65 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:44,600 Speaker 1: exist as such yet, but he explained to Mather that 66 00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:48,560 Speaker 1: he had, to quote Mather's diary, undergone an operation which 67 00:03:48,560 --> 00:03:51,280 Speaker 1: had given him something of ye smallpox and would forever 68 00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:53,800 Speaker 1: preserve him from it, adding that it was often used 69 00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:56,960 Speaker 1: among Africans, and whoever had ye courage to use it 70 00:03:57,000 --> 00:03:59,720 Speaker 1: was forever free from the fear of ye contagion. He 71 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:01,880 Speaker 1: just scribe the operation to me and showed me in 72 00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:06,920 Speaker 1: his arm the scar. The process of nisamis underwent back 73 00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:09,560 Speaker 1: in Africa is now known as vry relation, which was 74 00:04:09,600 --> 00:04:12,160 Speaker 1: the deliberate infection with the disease in order to create 75 00:04:12,160 --> 00:04:14,880 Speaker 1: immunity from it, and he explained to mother that you 76 00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:16,840 Speaker 1: could tell from the scar on someone's arm that they 77 00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:20,120 Speaker 1: had been treated. Even people who were selling were purchasing 78 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:22,640 Speaker 1: people for slavery. Knew to look for the scar because 79 00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:24,680 Speaker 1: that person was more likely to survive a small pox 80 00:04:24,680 --> 00:04:29,760 Speaker 1: epidemic and was therefore more valuable. Mother didn't act immediately 81 00:04:29,800 --> 00:04:33,680 Speaker 1: on this information, but in seventeen twenty, when Boston experienced 82 00:04:33,680 --> 00:04:36,800 Speaker 1: another smallpox outbreak, he remembered the conversation he had had 83 00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:40,240 Speaker 1: with Anismus. Mother teamed up with a physician and campaigned 84 00:04:40,279 --> 00:04:42,839 Speaker 1: to inoculate the people of Boston against the disease in 85 00:04:42,880 --> 00:04:46,560 Speaker 1: the same way Anissemus had been inoculated back in Africa. 86 00:04:47,279 --> 00:04:50,880 Speaker 1: Nivin said, although Cotton Mather was a very important figure 87 00:04:50,960 --> 00:04:53,839 Speaker 1: in Boston at the time and people listened to him, 88 00:04:53,960 --> 00:04:56,280 Speaker 1: most of the community was opposed to this idea for 89 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:59,120 Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One is because this was a 90 00:04:59,200 --> 00:05:02,120 Speaker 1: practice the Perkins used, it wasn't used in Western Europe 91 00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:05,839 Speaker 1: at the time, and people were very wary of that. Secondly, 92 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:08,800 Speaker 1: there was a newspaper in Boston called The New England Current, 93 00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:12,320 Speaker 1: run by Benjamin Franklin's older brother James It mounted a 94 00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:15,719 Speaker 1: slander campaign against Cotton Mather, saying it was ridiculous to 95 00:05:15,800 --> 00:05:18,279 Speaker 1: think you could protect somebody from a disease by giving 96 00:05:18,320 --> 00:05:22,200 Speaker 1: them the disease. In the end, two hundred and forty 97 00:05:22,200 --> 00:05:25,839 Speaker 1: two people volunteered from Mather's inoculation crusade, and only two 98 00:05:25,880 --> 00:05:29,120 Speaker 1: percent of those people died in that smallpox epidemic, compared 99 00:05:29,160 --> 00:05:32,160 Speaker 1: to fourteen percent of the uninoculated population who died a 100 00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:35,680 Speaker 1: smallpox in Boston between seventy one and seventeen twenty three, 101 00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:38,960 Speaker 1: when the words spread that those who were inoculated had 102 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:41,839 Speaker 1: a seven times greater chance of surviving, it became a 103 00:05:41,839 --> 00:05:44,520 Speaker 1: common practice in Boston and the rest of the America's 104 00:05:44,760 --> 00:05:47,799 Speaker 1: until seventeen ninety six, when Edward Jenner developed the first 105 00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:51,839 Speaker 1: smallpox vaccination. What a niece of his thought of the 106 00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:54,520 Speaker 1: part he played in saving the lives of countless colonists 107 00:05:54,560 --> 00:05:58,560 Speaker 1: is unknown, because, according to Mather's diary and other documentation, 108 00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:02,760 Speaker 1: he succeeded in conditionally buying his freedom. Around seventeen sixteen, 109 00:06:03,400 --> 00:06:05,839 Speaker 1: he bought mother a replacement slave and agreed to do 110 00:06:05,880 --> 00:06:09,320 Speaker 1: small jobs around the house when necessary, Though as far 111 00:06:09,360 --> 00:06:12,320 Speaker 1: as anyone knows, Mather never succeeded in converting an Easimist 112 00:06:12,360 --> 00:06:20,360 Speaker 1: to Christianity. Today's episode was written by Jesslin Shields and 113 00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:22,720 Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots 114 00:06:22,760 --> 00:06:25,800 Speaker 1: of other historical topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain 115 00:06:25,839 --> 00:06:28,400 Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts 116 00:06:28,400 --> 00:06:31,279 Speaker 1: in My heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 117 00:06:31,360 --> 00:06:33,000 Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.