Thursday Research Update

Newtown: 55 households (117 total individuals), 23 nonwhite households.

The marshal for Newtown never failed to note the “negro” status of these families (omitted below), and rarely reported surnames, as shown in this list of heads of families (followed by size of household):

Henry        2
Agrippa        4
Levi     Hall    2
Primas        4
Levi        2
Ozias        3
Linda        3
Edward        5
Thomas        6
Dinah        5
Harry        4
Primus        3
Benjamin    2
Phillip        2
William Peck    2
Simon        5
William        5
Roderic        4
Edward     Hawly    2
Dimon        6
Timothy        3
Henry        4
Thomas Brisco    5

The total number of 117 is surprising for such a relatively small town; so far, only Fairfield and Greenwich had more (even Bridgeport had fewer at 106). That’s geographically interesting.

Now up to 406 households with nonwhite members, 139 of them headed by nonwhites. No idea how many households total in each town … maybe I should be tracking that.

Next up is Norwalk, then 8 other municipalities in Fairfield County.

2 thoughts on “Thursday Research Update

  1. Funny. When I read one of Turtledove’s novels and found that one of the freed Black characters had taken a Greco-Roman name for himself, I thought that was an odd thing. So it seems looking at your list, it was a real trend

    • It was sort of a general 19th-century thing – you’re not seeing all the white guys named Horace, Titus, and Philander. Names like Primus, Prime, and Prince seem to be pretty much exclusively African-American, though.

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