Heber was enslaved by the Reverend William Pratt of Easton, Massachusetts, who might have purchased him in Charleston, South Carolina. Pratt died in 1714, and his inventory lists Heber and Hagar (his sister or first wife) as “two young negroes” valued at £52. In 1722, Pratt's widow freed the pair and provided them with 10 acres of land. On some records Heber's surname appears as “Pratt,” but he probably changed it to “Honestman” (also seen as “Honesty”) sometime after he became free. On June 26, 1733, or 1735, Heber married Susanna Cordner of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The couple had at least one child, Adam, born on September 23,1738, in Easton. In 1737, Heber purchased from a Josiah Pratt “one sixty-third part of one right” to land in newly established Huntstown (now Ashfield), a tiny community in what was then the wilds of Western Massachusetts. He did not move there immediately. Huntstown proprietors began to draw 50-acre house lots on July 24, 1739, and Heber drew Lot #1 for “Josiah Prat in his Father's Right viz Samll”. Heber sold his Easton land to Josiah Pratt in 1740, and by 1743, the family was living in Huntstown. In June of 1743, he purchased for £12 another 50 acres adjacent to his first lot and built his home there. The Honestmans may have been the only purchasers of lots to live in Huntstown. Unlike Heber and Susanna, who saw this as a good area for a promising new start, other lot owners might have decided the area was too unsettled for them and probably sold their rights to those who didn't mind living on the “frontier.”
Heber served in King George's War (1744-1748) and Father Le Loutre's War (1749-1755). From March 17, 1748, through September 9, 1749, he served for 77 weeks and 3 days in Capt. Thomas Henderson's Company in Pleasant Point, Maine. By 1756, during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the fighting had come closer to home and Huntstown was at risk of attack. Townsmen including Heber, volunteered to scout the area and guard their town, but this caused hardship. On July 3, 1756, Heber was among those who signed a petition to Massachusetts Governor Shirley. They stated: “we are grately impovereshed many of us that ware inhabitance are alredy broken up and in want of soport by which we are weakened and the Town in utmost danger it being given up to the will of our enemies...” The petitioners requested to have those residents voluntarily serving as guards be placed “under the common Pay of the garoson service of this Provence from last March and forwards until our services shall end.” Finally, by April of 1757, the Massachusetts General Court voted to send 10 soldiers to the settlement.
Between 1751 and 1757, Heber came often to Deerfield to purchase supplies, which included salt, shoes, leather for a bridle, rye, corn, wheat, buttons, scissors, flints, and thread.
Huntstown oral tradition includes a story about Heber that probably took place after he served in the wars. He had been checking his traps for bears when he became caught in one himself. When fellow townsmen found him, he seemed amused and when asked why, he said he wondered what a bear would think to find him caught in one of his own traps. Unfortunately, Heber's foot was badly injured, and it never healed completely.
Heber could read- he owned a book which is now part of the Vintage Book Collection at the Field Memorial Library in Conway, Massachusetts. In 1763, he was one of the first 15 members to join the First Congregational Church in Huntstown.
Heber Honestman died on March 6, 1768, and is buried in an unmarked grave in the Baptist Corner cemetery in Ashfield (or perhaps the Beldingville cemetery.)
Sources Consulted
History of the Town of Easton, Massachusetts, William L. Chaffin, 1837, pp. 432-434
History of the Town of Ashfield, Frederick G. Howes and Rev. Dr. Thomas Shepard, 1834, pp. 55, 67, 305