Guest Post: Slave Horse: The Narragansett Pacer

August 5, 2015 By Sara Georgini in From the Archives, Guest Posts Tags: 18th Century, 19th, Atlantic World, brown, Caribbean, environmental history, horse, livestock, Massachusetts, Narrangansett, Paul Revere, Plantation, Plymouth, Providence, Rhode Island, Rhode Island Historical Society, Rum, Slavery, South America, sugar, Suriname 3 Comments

Today, The Junto welcomes guest poster Charlotte Carrington-Farmer, Assistant Professor of History at Roger Williams University. Her current research focuses on framing dissent, deviance, and crime in early America in a wider Atlantic World context.

Image via Ann Holst and Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, Kingston, Rhode Island

Once considered a breed of “no beauty,” the Narragansett Pacer moved fast enough for an 18^th-century rider to cover 50-60 miles a day of rocky New England ground. As a natural pacer, its backbone moved through the air in a straight line without inclining the rider from side to side. Bred in and named for a southern community of coastal Rhode Island, the story of Narragansett Pacer horse is tightly entwined with the history of the early slave trade. Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries, these horses were traded for rum, sugar and slaves. Often, the horses were raised by slaves on the plantations of Narragansett, then shipped around the Atlantic World to work on sugar plantations alongside other slaves. Continue reading →

The Week in Early American History

February 23, 2014 By Sara Georgini in The Week in Early American History Tags: 19th Century, Abraham Lincoln, academia, George Washington Book Prize, Library of Congress, maps, Music, Plantation, public intellectuals 1 Comment

Welcome to your weekly roundup of early American history headlines. Now that you’ve aced your presidential history knowledge, and reviewed this reading list of their lives, it’s on to the links! Continue reading →

Teaching Through Primary Sources: Henry Drax’s Plantation Instructions

January 14, 2014 By Ken Owen in From the Archives, Pedagogy Tags: Barbados, Henry Drax, pedagogy, Plantation, Slavery, teaching 3 Comments

Primary sources form an important part of the assignments for any of my undergraduate classes. As with any set readings, some of these sources work more successfully than others. One source that has proven reliably successful is Henry Drax’s instructions on running a sugar plantation in seventeenth-century Barbados. Back in my graduate student days, I prepared an initial transcription of the instructions as a research assistant. Thankfully, my students don’t have to grapple with some of the more eccentric approaches to handwriting in the original copy, and can instead read the 2009 William and Mary Quarterly “Sources and Interpretations” piece written by Peter Thompson. [1]