Joseph Dickinson was born in Hatfield, Massachusetts, and moved to Sunderland, Massachusetts in 1720. He had no wife or children. He enslaved Napthalo (Naptha, Napthali). John Smith's History of Sunderland published in 1899 excerpted Phineas Field's 1879 essay, "Slavery in Massachusetts" to share information relating to Napthalo. According to Field, Naphthalo was listed as a member of the Sunderland church in 1744. In 1783, 28 years after Joseph Dickinson's death, the town of Sunderland denied responsibility for supporting the elderly Naptho's care, arguing that the financial burden of his care should fall to his enslaver's heirs, who resided in Northfield, Massachusetts. In 1793, Sunderland residents voted to pay two residents to transport Napthalo to Northfield.
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