When residents of Sheffield, Massachusetts celebrated the adoption of a declaration about the equality of all people in January 1773, a slave known as Mum Bett listened carefully. Eight years later, she stood before a court demanding freedom based on those very words. Her trial not only freed her and a fellow sufferer but initiated the actual abolition of slavery throughout the state.
Life in Bondage
Elizabeth Freeman was born around 1744 in Claverack in the Colony of New York, carrying the status of slave from birth. She worked on Pieter Hogeboom’s plantation during a time when the slavery system in northern colonies differed from southern plantations but remained equally brutal in its essence.
When Hogeboom’s daughter married John Ashley, Elizabeth and her sister became a wedding gift. The couple moved to Sheffield, Massachusetts, taking both women as property. In the Ashley household, Elizabeth, called Mum Bett, experienced abuse from the owners.
The crucial moment came when she tried to protect her sister from being struck with a heated metal spoon. She received a deep wound on her arm that left a permanent scar. Instead of hiding this mutilation, Mum Bett deliberately kept it exposed – living proof of the cruelty of the system in which she lived.
This scar later became one of the arguments in her fight for freedom, physical evidence of slavery’s injustice.
The Sheffield Declaration and a Seed of Hope
January 1773 brought an event that marked Mum Bett’s future. Sheffield residents adopted a declaration emphasizing the equality and freedom of all people – a document that was part of the broader pre-revolutionary movement in the colonies. The celebrations were public, words flowed freely.
Mum Bett listened. In an era when slaves were denied education and basic rights, the mere possibility of hearing such ideas was rare. However, Sheffield was a relatively small community where boundaries between the worlds of free and enslaved were more permeable than in the South.
The words about equality and freedom lodged deep in her memory. Over the following years, she carried them within her, wondering whether the declarations applied to her as well. In 1780, Massachusetts adopted a new state constitution containing similar language about the equality of all people.
This was the moment when Mum Bett made her decision. If the constitution proclaimed that all people are born free and equal, didn’t that apply to slaves as well?
The Trial That Changed the State
In 1780, Mum Bett approached Theodore Sedgwick, a respected local attorney, with an extraordinary request. She wanted to sue her owner for freedom, basing her case on Massachusetts’s new constitution. Sedgwick, known for his abolitionist sympathies, took the case.
Another slave belonging to Ashley, named Brom, joined the lawsuit. The case Brom and Bett v. Ashley came before the court in Great Barrington in August 1781. Sedgwick argued that the 1780 constitution, declaring that all people are born free and equal, made slavery illegal.
The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. It determined that Mum Bett and Brom were not the legal property of John Ashley and granted them freedom. Additionally, Ashley had to pay thirty shillings in damages plus court costs – a symbolic but significant sum.
Ashley attempted to appeal but withdrew the appeal after a month. The decision became final. More importantly, this verdict set a precedent for the Quock Walker case, which ultimately led to the actual abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.
Freedom and a New Life
After winning the case, the woman known as Mum Bett adopted the name Elizabeth Freeman – a symbolic gesture emphasizing her new status. John Ashley, her former owner, offered her a return to his household as a paid servant. She refused.
Instead, Elizabeth chose to work in the home of Theodore Sedgwick, the lawyer who had won her freedom. For nearly thirty years, she was an important figure in the Sedgwick family, not as a servant but as a respected member of the household.
She was known for her healing skills, working as a midwife and nurse in the local community. Her medical knowledge, transmitted orally in the African American tradition, was valued by area residents. Over time, she earned enough to buy her own house in Stockbridge.
Elizabeth Freeman died on December 28, 1829, at approximately eighty-five years old. She was buried in the Sedgwick family vault – the only person outside the family resting in the central location. This extraordinary honor showed how much she was respected by those with whom she spent her final decades.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-freeman
- https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/the-american-revolution/elizabeth-freeman/
- https://www.nyhistory.org/media/elizabeth-freeman-abolition-pioneer
- https://twojahistoria.pl/2021/10/04/elizabeth-freeman-wygrac-wolnosc/
- https://elizabethfreemancenter.org/who-we-are/elizabeth-freeman/
Margot Cleverly
Margot's journey into women's history began with a box of forgotten letters in a Cambridge archive – suffragettes whose voices had been silenced for over a century. Since then, she's been on a mission to uncover the stories history overlooked.
What she writes about: Queens who ruled from the shadows. Scientists whose male colleagues took credit. Revolutionaries who risked everything. But also ordinary women – those who survived wars, raised families through upheaval, and shaped their communities in ways no one bothered to record.
Margot turns historical figures into real people. She writes with warmth and detail, making centuries-old stories feel surprisingly relevant. Rigorous research meets accessible storytelling – no dusty academic jargon, just compelling narratives backed by solid facts.
When she's not writing, you'll find her in regional archives, collecting oral histories, or visiting sites connected to the women she writes about.