The Reverend Roger Newton (1737-1816) was born in Durham, Connecticut, the youngest of five children born to Abner and Mary (Burwell) Newton. Roger graduated from Yale College in 1758 and received a Doctor of Divinity from Dartmouth College in 1805. He was ordained in 1761 as the first minister in the recently incorporated town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, originally part of Deerfield. He married Abigail Hall of Middletown, Connecticut, in 1762 and they had eight children. Newton served the Greenfield congregation for 56 years that included the tumultuous years of the American Revolution. He died in 1816, aged 79.
The Reverend Newton enslaved a woman named Tenor, sometimes referred to as "Old Tenor" and her daughters Phillis and Tinner. The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library in Deerfield, Massachusetts, has early records of the First Congregational Church of Greenfield that include Newton's diary in which he occasionally wrote about various people he knew, including people of color.
A series of court rulings in the early 1780s by the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that slavery was unconstitutional in the Commonwealth under the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. It is not known when or under what circumstances Newton may have emancipated Tenor or her children. Tenor's husband, Mingo, is listed as the head of a household in the 1790 census for Colrain, Massachusetts, with three people listed in the "All other free Persons" column. This might have included either Tinner or Phillis. In August 1790, Newton wrote, "Thursday 2d call to see Tinner [in Colrain, Massachusetts] who was probably more glad to see me than any Person I had met with in the journey may Heaven take Care of that poor african Superior in her Moral Disposition, to many of other Notions-".
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