Eliphalet was the son of Peter and Azubah Newport of Hatfield, Massachusetts. He lost his mother in 1775, giving birth to a sister who died as well. The family was enslaved by Joseph Billings, who stipulated in his 1781 will that "the children of the said Peter, to wit Jonah, Peter, Eliphalet and Amos, shall be manumitted and set free as soon as they shall arrive, respectively, at the age of twenty-one years; in the mean time they shall be subjected to, under the control of, and in the immediate service of, my aforesaid loving cousins David Billing and Silas Billing." Joseph Billings died in 1783, when Eliphalet would have been about 13.
In 1779, while still enslaved, Eliphalet's father remarried and purchased land from David Billings in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. He moved his family there to farm. Eliphalet had land in Williamsburg, which he sold. The 1800 federal census shows that he, his wife Sarah, and son Ralph were living in New York City. In 1820, when Eliphalet was 49, Sarah was 40, and Ralph was 17, the family emigrated to Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone, via the American Colonization Society. Eliphalet and Sarah, along with other emigrants, died several weeks later of disease, and in 1833, Ralph drowned.
Sources Consulted
"'His Own Proper Negro Slave': Amos Newport & his Descendants in Hatfield, Williamsburg & Amherst", Eric W. Weber, 2014