In honor of Black History Month, you are invited to an event on Sunday, February 4 from 1:00-3:00pm entitled “Remembering Connecticut’s Colored Regiments: Film Screenings and Discussion.” Feel free to share this invitation to anyone you feel would be interested in attending. It is open to the public, free of charge, with plenty of parking and seating at the Avon Senior Center. Snow date is Sunday, Feb. 11, same time. This event will feature the screening of one film, and parts of another, that focus on the service of the 29th, 30th and 31st regiments from Connecticut in the Civil War.
There will be a moderated discussion following the screenings led by John Mills, president of Alex Breanne Corporation, Middletown, CT. a non-profit that researches lesser-known stories of the American enslaved. To show the type of research they do, John provided this narrative which is directly related to one of these films. He will explain it in more detail:
On February 14, 1837, in New Bern, NC, a free black woman named Mary Heritage married an enslaved man named Thaddeus Newton, enslaved in North Carolina by Peter and Catherine Custis, relatives of Robert E. Lee. The couple would have children. But because Thaddeus was enslaved, Mary would have to make her own way. Around 1859 Mary moved her family to New York, leaving behind her husband Thaddeus and son Alexander. Mary found her way to abolitionists, most notably Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who helped her raise money towards freeing her husband. She worked as a peddler, washed clothes and sold fruit to soldiers at the start of the Civil War. Mary continued working with other abolitionists, including Henry Highland Garnet and Arthur Tappan, engaged in freeing the enslaved. Mary’s son, Alexander Newton, would marry Olivia Hamilton, daughter of Robert Hamilton, founder of the abolitionist newspaper “The Anglo-African.” Alexander would join the 29th Connecticut Colored Regiment, later writing his biography published in 1910. Another son, Steven Newton, joined the Massachusetts 54th Colored Regiment, dying at the assault on Fort Wagner in July 1863. Mary moved to New Haven, CT in 1860. She and Thaddeus eventually bought a home at 18 Winter Street, New Haven. Her formerly enslaved husband, Thaddeus Newton, died in 1868 while she died in 1904. They are both buried together in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, CT.
John is working on having their gravesites added to the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom and the Connecticut Freedom Trail. Their gravestones will be repaired and an honorary sign will be placed at the corner of Goffe and Winter Streets near where their home once stood. The corner is one block from the First AME Bethel Church which is where both Mary and Thaddeus served as officials. One of the films that will be screened is excerpts of their son Alexander Newton’s book Out of the Briars.
A reception will follow the presentation and discussion. All are welcome.
Did you miss this wonderful event? It can be seen on YouTube Via This Link!
