Witness Stones

By Margaret Weaver in the Putnam Villager on June 9th, 2023

I had the privilege and pleasure of attending a Witness Stone dedication by several Killingly High School classes at the Unitarian Universalist Meetinghouse in Brooklyn on May 31st. The enslaved individual whom they researched was Dick Putnam. Student Julia Jarvis gave an excellent summary of his life.

Dick Putnam was a slave under Israel Putnam. Since he was a slave, we don’t know many solid facts about him, but we can make educated guesses.

According to an anecdote from Israel Putnam, Dick was already a Spanish slave when he (Putnam) arrived in Havana in 1762. At that time he was on a trip to conquer the Spanish port for England. He found a slave being beaten by a Spaniard. Israel Putnam then saved the lad from this awful dehumanizing and terrible treatment, and exercised paternalism by bringing the young boy back to his farm in (present-day) Brooklyn, Connecticut.” When the Revolution began, Dick also enlisted as his master Israel Putnam had.

In 1777, an interesting act was passed by the Connecticut Assembly. This would be able to give slaves an opportunity for freedom. According to= the act if a slave served= in the Connecticut militia for three years, they could be emancipated. This act may have given Dick his freedom. In 1782, Israel Putnam wrote a will without including Dick. Dick’s absence from the will may indicate that he was freed even though it wasn’t explicitly said.

After the war, Israel Putnam suffered from a severe stroke. Putnam stated that someone had to assist him daily even with mundane tasks. It is easy to assume this someone was Dick. At this time, Dick Putnam would have been around twenty-two to twenty-six years old. In the census of 1800, Dick is listed as free and has his household under his own name.

This was the third Witness Stone that Killingly High School has dedicated. Two others are in front of Westfield Congregational Church. The Witness Stone project is the brainchild of Dennis Culliton. The website provides a brief summary. “The Witness Stones Project seeks to restore the history, and honor the humanity and contributions of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities. Inspired by the Stolpersteine project in Germany (and with their blessing), we bear witness by installing a marker which recalls an enslaved individual at a site of significance, such as where they lived, worked, or prayed. We cannot change the past, but we can, through this project, give a voice to the voiceless by uncovering their stories. We partner with local schools and historical societies to assist students in researching the history of an enslaved individual from their community and reconstructing the memory of that person through the written record.