Calab Sharp

Bio

Calab Sharp, or Sharp Calab as he was also known for much of his life, was born in about 1729. According to Deerfield, Massachusetts historian George Sheldon, Calab was “part or wholly of Indian blood,” the son of “Deborah Calup an Indian Woman” who was baptized by the Reverend Jonathan Ashley of Deerfield in 1741. Sheldon noted that Calab was “a successful hunter, judging from the amount of game and fur he exchanged for sundries at the store of Elijah Williams” as well as “a carpenter and millwright.” Entries in Sharp's account book show that before he turned to milling grain and lumber full-time, he worked as a cooper, housewright, blacksmith, gunsmith, and butcher.

Enslaved by Colonel Oliver Partridge of Hatfield, Massachusetts, Calab served in King George's War (1744-1748) in Captain Elijah Williams' Company, and was posted at Fort Massachusetts in present-day North Adams, Massachusetts. According to an account book entry by Colonel William Williams of Deerfield, "Negro Sharp" purchased land in northern Berkshire County on behalf of his enslaver: “Colo Oliver Partridge Cr By his Negro Sharp £500 [to buy land in New Framingham, today Lanesborough, Massachusetts].” By November 1751, Calab was enslaved by Colonel Williams, who purchased from Ebenezer Arms “a Pair of Pumps [shoes] for Sharp Caleb”. Arms charged Colonel Williams in 1752 for mending "yr negroes" shoes and purchases of "yr negros pumps." Calab may have performed carpentry work for Samuel Dickinson of Deerfield (1687-1781) during this time, as Colonel Williams charged Dickinson for nails and sundries for "Sharp."

In December 1756, Elijah Williams still referred in his store accounts to Calab Sharp as "Sharp Wms Negro." Subsequent entries suggest he was a free man by January 1757, when he began making purchases and payments on his own account as “Sharp Calab”.

Sharp reenlisted during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), serving as a private in Captain Samuel Well's Company at Crown Point, New York, in 1755, and again with Captain Elijah Williams in 1756. It is possible Caleb's emancipation in the later 1750s may have been connected with his militia service in this final colonial conflict. By the 1760s, Sharp was among the earliest settlers of the part of Deerfield that became Conway where, according to a town history, he established the community's first grist mill. In his oration of 1867, celebrating the centennial of Conway's founding, the Reverend Charles Rice referred to Calab Sharp as “half negro and half ‘Indian, or something else', it is said… a vigorous man, a builder of saw mills and grist mills; and has already before or by the incorporation of the town, a grain mill running where the mill now [1867] stands.” Calab appeared in the Massachusetts tax valuation of 1771 as half owner in a Conway mill. 

Little information about the Sharp family survives. He appears in the 1790 federal census for Conway with eight in the "All Other Free Persons" column. There is also evidence that he had a son, Caleb Sharp, Jr. who married in 1753, and raised several children in Conway. Like his father, Caleb Jr. was a carpenter; he was among the builders who constructed Deerfield's Greek Revival style brick meetinghouse in 1824.

In 1799, Conway vital records noted the death of “Caleb Sharp a black man” aged 70, of “consumption” (likely tuberculosis.) 

Sources Consulted 
Calab Sharp's account book, Jones Library Special Collections, Amherst, Massachusetts

History of Conway, Massachusetts, 1767-1917, Rev. Charles Stanley Pease, 1917. pp. 11, 36, 63, 112

A History of Deerfield, Massachusetts, Vol. II, George Sheldon, 1895-96, p. 99 ("Caleb, Sharp" in genealogy section)