Only the record of Neptune’s baptism documents his life in Lyme. Except for the notation in a church list on May 17, 1741, the “negro boy” of John Griswold, a prosperous farmer and the town’s judge of probate, does not appear in the historical record. Others enslaved in Judge Griswold’s Black Hall household could well be Neptune’s family members. They include Phyllis and the child Cato (commemorated by a Witness Stone in 2021), whom Griswold likely gave to his daughter Phoebe after her marriage in 1731 to Jonathan Parsons (1707-1776), newly arrived from Springfield to serve as minister of Lyme’s first parish.
