You're listening to an AirWave Media Podcast.

In some of the podcast episodes, we have spent a substantial amount of time discussing stories around courageous Black people during the Civil War, like Mary Bowser and Robert Smalls.

We have talked about Black folk alive and fighting during Jim Crow in the early 20th century, like Henry Johnson and Josephine Baker.

And even folks who cemented their legacy during the Civil Rights movement, like the honorable chairman Fred Hampton.

But one time period that we haven't tackled is the 18th century, the 1700s.

Who was Elizabeth Freeman? Well, for starters, we don't really know.

Piecing together this particular episode was really difficult because there just isn't much source material on her.

And that has more to do with the fact that she was a Black enslaved woman in the 18th century than it being the actual 18th century.

Being that she was an enslaved woman, piecing together her life meant we had to piece together the lives of the white people around her.

Because these folks were 100% allowed to own land, be publicly married, vote among other things, and these are things that leave behind records.

Elizabeth's early life was a true mystery. Your guess is really as good as mine.

We can piece together a few things through historical accounts, documents, records, but there isn't much.

All we know is that she was born between 1742 and 1744 in Claverack, New York, which was a small township hamlet which ran from the Hudson River inland to the Massachusetts line.

We also know she was born into slavery. Before 1776, most enslaved people in the Hudson River Valley came from Africa via Caribbean islands such as Cuba or Barbados or from South Carolina.

It is speculated that she was born to parents who were born in Africa, which parts are unknown.

The slave master she was born into servitude under was a white man named Peter Hogboom.

At an early age, Elizabeth was purchased, along with her sister, to be under the servitude of Colonel John Ashley of Shefffield, Massachusetts.

We do know that throughout her life she was referred to as mum or mum bet, because of the maternal-like role she played to the children she helped raise.

The children that typically belonged to her masters, and bet was actually a common name given to enslaved black women who served in a house role.

One of the most enlightening things about this story is that it serves as a reminder and education, really, to what slavery in colonial northeastern America was like.

Typically, we think of the harshness of slavery, mostly residing in the south, but it is just because most of the slavery that we really talk about and study, at least in my circles in the education that I received, is centered around the Civil War.

And by that time, slavery and Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York had long been abolished.

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