Elihu Ashley (1750-1817) was a well-respected Deerfield, physician. The second surviving son of the Reverend Jonathan Ashley of Deerfield, Massachusetts, Elihu came of age on the eve of the American Revoution. An intimate journal he kept in the 1770s survives, sheding light on social and political life in Deerfield during this tumultuous period. However, Elihu rarely mentioned his siblings in his journal except for his older brother Jonathan Ashley, Jr., and never referred to Jin and her son Cato, the two enslaved members of the Ashley household.
Upon his father's death in 1780, Elihu received a share of the estate but the will bequeathed "My Negro Woman Servant Jenny" to Elihu's mother, Dorothy Ashley. Jenny Cole, also known as Jin, remained in the household of the minister's widow, predeceasing her by three weeks in 1808. Reverend Ashley's will made no mention of Jenny's son, Cato. According to George Sheldon, Deerfield's town historian and author of an 1895 essay on the enslaved residents of Deerfield, Jonathan Ashley freed Cato around the time of his death in 1780. A series of court cases in the early 1780s successfully challenged slavery in Massachusetts as unconstitional under the state constitition ratified in 1780. According to Sheldon, Cato, "although not legally held as a slave after the adoption of the [Massachusetts] constitution... remained a servant in the Ashley family until his death" on November 12, 1825. Elihu Ashley died in 1817; his widow, Mary "Polly" Williams died in 1831.
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