Calab Sharp

Bio

Calab Sharp (c1729-1799), 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” on the Deerfield common as well as working as “a carpenter and millwright.” Entries in Sharp's own account book reveal that he was a skilled maker and user of artisan's tools. In addition to being a skilled millwright, he also worked as a cooper, carpenter, 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. Calab appeared numerous times in a daybook ledger of Colonel William Williams who kept a store and commissary in Deerfield 1750-1753. On February 16, 1750/1, Williams credited Oliver Partridge £500 “By his Negro Sharp.”  In November 1751, Williams purchased “a Pair of Pumps [shoes] for Sharp Caleb” from Ebenezer Arms of Deerfield. Arm later 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 Deerfield 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” and "Calab Sharp."

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 saw and grist mills. His surviving account book confirms that he was a skilled millwright who could build, maintain, and fabricate parts as well as operate both mills. 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. Calab appears in the 1790 federal census for Conway with eight in the "All Other Free Persons" column. He was about 44 years old when he married Elisabeth Abel of Ashfield in 1773, and  they raised several children in Conway: Caleb, Jr born in 1776, Sarai born 1778, William born 1780, Dorcas born 1782, Solomon born 1784, and Joshua, born in 1786. (Vital Records of Conway Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1943) p. 92.)

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

Sources Consulted 
Account book of Calab Sharp, Jones Library Special Collections, Amherst, Massachusetts

Daybook of Williams Williams, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts

Church Records, First Congregational Church of Deerfield, 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)