What kind of history does Stratham have with slavery? For what reasons were slaves used in the area?
Slavery here would have been different than in the south. Nobody owned many slavesthere may have been one, two or three (slaves) in a family that farmed a plot of land. And there are cases were the slaves lived in a house. But only during a census, taken every 10 years, would slaves have been notedand only as male or female. So we cant really get an insight into how they lived their lives. In Portsmouth a community of freed blacks developed, but in Stratham even when blacks were freed they didnt choose to live here. The slaves here typically lived in poverty and died in poverty and werent that involved with the community. What about the Underground Railroad, the abolitionist network that illegally helped slaves achieve freedom? Yes, there certainly are rumors that there was a house here or there that was involved with the Underground Railroad, but again there is not documentation. In Stratham there is at least one instance, through oral history, which says that (the Moses Clark house)
