While we’re taking to the Letters to the Editor page to clarify the record about William Brattle (after whom Brattleboro was named), I find it necessary to correct a correction from Robert Wickberg. He writes, “Wikipedia says he was from Massachusetts, and served in that state’s militia during pre-revolutionary conflicts. … There is, however, no connection between William Brattle and slavery. Unlike many of the country’s founding fathers, as he was Massachusetts-born and raised, he would not have owned any.”
Apparently Mr. Wickberg read a different Wikipedia article than I did: one that twice states that he owned slaves, first citing contemporary church records of his congregation, followed by present-day reckonings at Harvard University of the slaveholding history of some of its most prominent affiliates, among them Brattle and his father.
The factual oversight could perhaps be forgiven, but the implication that slavery never existed in Massachusetts in general is more worrisome. Slavery was formally abolished there after the Revolution, but it certainly existed there beforehand (and continued extra-legally for some time after), as it did in Vermont.
This whitewashing of New England’s racist history leaves us ill-prepared to reckon with its legacy of institutional and systemic racism today.
Mr. Wickberg doesn’t indicate what position he holds at Brattleboro Union High School, but I sure hope it doesn’t involve the teaching of history.
Fhar Miess
Brattleboro