Elizabeth Freeman, known in bondage as Bett or Mum Bett, spent nearly thirty years enslaved in the household of one of western Massachusetts’s most powerful men. In 1781, reasoning that the new state constitution’s declaration that all men are born free and equal applied to her, she engaged a lawyer and sued for her liberty. The jury’s verdict in Brom and Bett v. Ashley freed her and, together with the Quock Walker cases decided soon after, undermined the legal basis of slavery in Massachusetts.
At a Glance
- Born
- c. 1744, Claverack, New York
- Died
- 28 December 1829, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
- Birth name
- Bett (called Mum Bett)
- Known for
- Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781); invoking the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 against slavery
- Fields
- Law · Abolition
- Era
- Revolution & Early Republic
Early Life
Freeman was born around 1744 in Claverack, New York, enslaved by Pieter Hogeboom, a Dutch farmer in the Hudson Valley. Nothing certain is known of her parents. As a young girl she and her sister, Lizzy, were given to Hannah Hogeboom and her husband, Colonel John Ashley, and taken to Sheffield, Massachusetts, in the Housatonic River valley. Ashley was a wealthy landowner, merchant, militia officer, and judge of the county court, and his house was among the most prominent in Berkshire County. Slavery had been legal in Massachusetts since the seventeenth century; enslaved people were far fewer there than in the southern colonies, but they were often held in the households of merchants, ministers, and officials like Ashley.
Bett, as she was called, remained enslaved to the Ashleys for about three decades. The most famous episode of those years comes from accounts later recorded by the Sedgwick family: Hannah Ashley swung a heated kitchen shovel at Lizzy, and Bett stepped in to take the blow, receiving a deep wound on her arm that left a scar for life. By these accounts she refused to cover the wound, so that those who saw it would know how she had been treated. She could not read or write, but she was known in the household as capable, forceful, and outspoken.
Life and Work
The Ashley house was a gathering place for the region’s political leaders during the Revolution. In 1780 Massachusetts ratified a new constitution whose first article declared that all men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights. According to Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who knew Freeman from childhood, Bett heard the constitution discussed and resolved that its words must apply to her as well.
In 1781 she went to Theodore Sedgwick, a lawyer in nearby Stockbridge who opposed slavery, and asked him to take her case. Sedgwick agreed, and brought in Tapping Reeve of Litchfield, Connecticut, who would later found the Litchfield Law School. The two filed a writ of replevin, an action to recover property unlawfully held, on behalf of Bett and a man enslaved by the Ashleys named Brom. The legal strategy was to force the court to decide whether a person could be property at all under the new constitution.
The case, Brom and Bett v. Ashley, was tried before a jury in the Berkshire County Court of Common Pleas at Great Barrington in August 1781. Sedgwick and Reeve argued that the constitution had effectively abolished slavery in the commonwealth. On 22 August 1781 the jury found that Brom and Bett were not the property of John Ashley, freed them, and awarded each thirty shillings in damages plus costs. Ashley first appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court but dropped the appeal in October 1781 and accepted the verdict.
The ruling did not by itself end slavery in Massachusetts. It was a county court decision, and slavery ended through a combination of such suits and changing public opinion. Alongside the related cases of Quock Walker, an enslaved man from Worcester County, in which Chief Justice William Cushing instructed a jury in April 1783 that slavery was “inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution,” Brom and Bett established that enslaved people could use the new constitution to claim their freedom in court. By the federal census of 1790, Massachusetts reported no enslaved residents.
Legacy
After the verdict she took the name Elizabeth Freeman. Despite Ashley’s requests that she return, she joined the household of Theodore Sedgwick as a paid domestic worker, helping to raise his children, among them the future novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick. She also became known in the region as a nurse, healer, and midwife. With her earnings she bought land, and in 1808 she purchased a house in Stockbridge, where she lived with her daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick painted her portrait, a watercolor miniature on ivory, in 1811.
Freeman died on 28 December 1829 and was buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge. Her gravestone, erected by the Sedgwicks, records that she was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years, and adds: “She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal.” The inscription reflects both the family’s genuine regard for her and the limits of how its members could describe a Black woman’s standing. Freeman herself left no written words; everything attributed to her passed through the memories of the white family she served. Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s 1853 essay “Slavery in New England” preserved many of the stories about her.
On 21 August 2022 an eight-foot bronze statue of Freeman by the sculptor Brian Hanlon was unveiled on the Sheffield town green, facing the site of Sedgwick’s former office. Her case is now taught as an example of an enslaved person using the Revolution’s own language of natural rights to secure her liberty through the courts, decades before national emancipation.
Elizabeth Freeman showed that the Revolution’s language of natural rights could be turned into a legal claim to freedom by the people slavery excluded. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- c. 1744 Born enslaved in Claverack, New York.
- Mid-1700s Given, with her sister Lizzy, to Hannah and John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts.
- 1780 Massachusetts ratifies a constitution declaring all men born free and equal.
- 1781 Asks Theodore Sedgwick to bring suit for her freedom.
- 22 August 1781 Jury in Great Barrington frees Brom and Bett in Brom and Bett v. Ashley.
- October 1781 John Ashley drops his appeal and accepts the verdict.
- 1783 Quock Walker case: Chief Justice William Cushing declares slavery incompatible with the state constitution.
- 1808 Buys a house in Stockbridge.
- 28 December 1829 Dies in Stockbridge; buried in the Sedgwick family plot.
- 21 August 2022 Statue of Freeman unveiled in Sheffield, Massachusetts.
Sources and Further Reading
- Mass Moments, “Jury Decides in Favor of Elizabeth ‘Mum Bett’ Freeman,” Mass Humanities. Link
- Massachusetts Women’s History, “Elizabeth Freeman (‘Mum Bett’).” Link
- National Constitution Center, “Elizabeth Freeman, Her Case for Freedom, and the Massachusetts Constitution.” Link
- Catharine Maria Sedgwick, “Slavery in New England,” Bentley’s Miscellany 34 (1853).
- WBUR, “Statue Honors Once-Enslaved Woman Who Won Freedom in Court,” 22 August 2022. Link
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