Witness Stones Project, Inc.

Restoring History & Honoring Humanity

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Old Lyme Installs Witness Stones

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Courtesy of NBC Connecticut

From NBC News Connecticut on June 4, 2021

Stones honoring the lives of formerly enslaved people now line Lyme Street in Old Lyme. The fourteen plaques are called “witness stones” and are designed to help people learn about and honor the enslaved people who lived in town.

“To help people understand the true history of their town because you lose things when you forget,” said Pat Wilson Pheanious.

Wilson Pheanious is the co-chair of the board of directors for the Witness Stones Project. The project has helped communities across Connecticut, including Guilford and New Haven, remember those who have gone unrecognized for so long. Continue reading.

Student Poetry from Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School Students

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Seventh-grade students from the Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School wrote poems to tell the life stories of Jenny Freeman and Lewis Lewia. 

Jenny Freeman
By Ilona Binch

Sun shining through the windows.
Children running through the halls.
There were joyful voices in the air
Even though nothing was right at all.

I was knitting socks and gloves
For children that weren’t mine.
My children worked for families that weren’t ours.
Their children got toys – my children got scars.

My body was their property.
To the Noyes my enslavers.
I took care of their children,
But my thoughts were of mine.

When I was “Old Jenny,”
I worked and worked not even getting a penny.
I would care, and I would clean.
I was nothing, not even a thing

When I was a “Freeman,”
I was something
I helped others be free like me.
No one should have to suffer the indignities of slavery.

[Read more…] about Student Poetry from Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School Students

New Generation of Historians Reveals Untold Stories in Old Lyme

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Marilyn Nelson prompts the audience to repeat each of 14 names after she reads each one during the installation ceremony for the Witness Stones placed along Lyme Street at the Old Lyme-Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library. (Dana Jensen/The Day)

By Elizabeth Regan in The Day on June 4, 2021

Old Lyme — Though they are the town’s youngest historians, they are among the first to reveal centuries-old stories of the people enslaved on Lyme Street.

Seventh graders at Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School this year pieced together the stories of Jenny Freeman and Lewis Lewia, two of the people held in bondage on the street once inhabited by wealthy sea captains, shipbuilders and merchants.

It’s all part of the Witness Stones Old Lyme community partnership to install small plaques commemorating individuals once enslaved. A ceremony was held Friday after the first 14 stones were placed earlier this week. Continue reading.

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