Elizabeth (Pitkin) Porter (1719-1798) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Whiting) Pitkin. She married Moses Porter (1721-1755) of Hadley, Massachusetts, when she was 24 years old. Both the bride and groom came from prominent families. They had one child, Elizabeth (1747-1817), in 1747. In 1752, the family moved outside the main settlement in Hadley and established an extensive farm that became known as Forty Acres. Only three years later, Elizabeth’s husband was killed at the Battle of Lake George, New York, in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Elizabeth never remarried, living at Forty Acres with her daughter and her son-in-law, Charles Phelps (1743-1814) until her death in 1798, aged 79. Forty Acres would be continuously occupied by her descendants until 1955, when it became the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum.
Elizabeth and Moses Porter enslaved at least two people. Porter purchased Zebulon Prutt of Hadley from Jerusha Chauncy, and purchased 12-year-old Peg (c1742-1792) in 1754. Zebulon escaped from bondage in 1768. Widow Porter placed an advertisement in the Connecticut Courant offering a reward for his recapture and return but sold him to Oliver Warner, who held Zebulon in bondage until he gained his freedom, likely in the 1780s; Zebulon died in 1802. ("Finally Freedom: Peg and Zebulon at Forty Acres")
Peg had two daughters: Rosanne (Rose) (1761-1781) and Phillis (1765-1775). When her enslavers refused their permission for Peg to marry a man named Pomp in 1772, Peg facilitated a sale in which they sold her and Pomp together to Captain Stephen Fay of Bennington, Vermont. Peg's daughters remained in bondage at Forty Acres. Rose subsequently had a daughter, also named Phillis (1775-1783) who inherited her mother's enslaved status. Rose's sister Phillis died of tuberculosis and Rose's daughter likely succumbed to the same disease at only eight years of age. Rose's mother Peg was sold back to the Phelpses in 1778. She was free by 1782 and remained in Hadley until her death in 1792. (Carlisle, Earthbound and Heavenbent, pp. 62-67; "Phillis, Rose, and Phillis: Enslavement and Illness at Forty Acres". )
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