New England Bound

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to enslavement.

Author Wendy Anne Warren is an American historian and assistant professor at Princeton University. Her specializations include “colonial and revolutionary North America, the Atlantic world, comparative slavery, carceral studies, and gender and sexuality studies” (“Wendy Warren.” Princeton University). Warren completed her PhD in history at Yale University in 2008; her thesis was entitled Enslaved Africans in New England, 1638-1700. While completing this research, Warren had what she described as a “fluke encounter” with Englishman John Josselyn’s travelogue from 1638, in which he discusses his trip to New England where he stayed with colonist Samuel Maverick (“Forgotten History: How the New England Colonists Embraced the Slave Trade.” Fresh Air hosted by Terry Gross. NPR, 21 June 2016). In it he describes how an enslaved woman came to him to complain of her rape by another enslaved person, which had been urged by their enslaver, Maverick, who was attempting to breed them. Warren was intrigued by this disturbing early instance of chattel slavery in the fledgling colony of Boston. Warren had not strongly associated slavery with early New England, as it did not have a cash crop, and decided to research the topic further.