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Worldly Possessions

By Erica Lome, Ph.D.

The Material World of a Black
The Material World of a Black

Farmer in New England
Farmer in New England

This historic photo shows the landscape known as the “Dugan desert” where Thomas Dugan and his family farmed. Concord Free Public Library.

n 1827, an obituary posted in the Concord, Massachusetts, newspaper words, farming was indeed Concord’s primary source of income and
Yeoman’s Gazette noted the passing of Thomas Dugan, a yeoman, or had been for generations. Concord’s fields have been farmed essentially
Iland-owning farmer. The obituary did not mention Dugan’s without interruption for three thousand years. The Native communities
accomplishments or family, nor did they describe his character – which of Musketaquid (“the place of grass or reeds”) shaped the landscape
a later source called “industrious and a peacemaker.” Instead, whoever through hunting, gathering, and farming practices for fifty generations.
published the notice included only the details of Dugan’s life before he Throughout the 1700s, Concord farms tended to be about sixty
came to Concord: “He was formerly a slave to a Mr. Solomon Ward in acres, which were divided into plowlands for crops, pasture for summer
Virginia, whence he absconded about 40 years since; grazing, meadow for hay for the winter, orchards
and has since resided in this town.” for fruit and cider apples, and woodlots for
This reminder of Dugan’s former enslavement fuel. In the later 1800s, the introduction of coal
was possibly the work of a jealous neighbor who for fuel allowed farmers to convert woodlots
named Dugan’s enslaver as a deliberate attempt to plowland and Concord was almost
to alert him to the location of Dugan, allowing entirely deforested.
a claim on the estate. Dugan owned his own Thomas Dugan arrived in Concord around
land, including cattle, and got his living through the 1790s, at a time when the population of free
farming and selling dairy products to the local and newly emancipated African Americans
market. Most importantly, he died without any hovered steadily around 30 in a town of 1500.
debts; fewer than half of his Concord contempo- Over the next thirty years, free people of color
raries—white or Black—could say the same. settled in the places they could afford and
Despite attempts to limit Dugan’s accomplish- established their own independent households.
ments, this free Black yeoman secured a legacy Three neighborhoods gradually took shape far
for himself and his family, many of whom from Concord’s prosperous center. The first was
continued to live in Concord and whose names at the edge of the Great Meadow, where over-
remain a visible part of Concord’s landscape. farming and overgrazing depleted the soil by
A probate inventory taken after his death 1830. Another was at Walden Woods, though
reveals much about Thomas Dugan’s life and the land surrounding Walden Pond was generally
labor in Concord. Probate inventories tallied the too dry to grow crops. Thomas Dugan and his
value of possessions belonging to a deceased wife Jenny settled half a mile from the Sudbury
person—land, buildings, ad furnishings—to meadows, south of the town center. Their seven-
settle debt and distribute property to heirs. For acre parcel of land was a sandy knoll covered
historians and curators, this information can be with scattered tufts of grass, which locals called
useful when researching people who are difficult the “Dugan Desert.” Each of these places lacked
to find in other sources of recorded history. the natural resources available to more prosperous,
However, because not all household items were white-owned farms, yet Dugan earned a
listed on inventories, the snapshot is almost comfortable living. More importantly, the title of
always incomplete, and there is no reliable yeoman (used to describe Dugan in his probate)
formula for determining what may be missing. Thomas Dugan’s Probate Inventory. conferred a level of distinction given to property-
Inventories nevertheless can give us a compelling Massachusetts Archives owning farmers which reflected their elevated
view of daily life in a place at a given time. Thomas Dugan’s inventory social status. This descriptor suited Dugan’s material accomplishments
is a particularly rare survival because it provides readers a glimpse into and reputation as “industrious and a peacemaker” within his community.
the household of a free Black farmer in early nineteenth-century
Massachusetts. Worldly Possessions
A survey of Thomas Dugan’s inventory details the material possessions
“The Greatest Source of Wealth” of a middling farmer in early 19th century Massachusetts and provides a
“Agriculture is the greatest source of wealth to the town,” wrote the closer look at the social and economic landscape Dugan navigated as a free
Concord historian Lemuel Shattuck in 1835. When he wrote those Black man in rural New England.

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