Col. John Ashley, Sr.

DAR#A003465

Colonel John and Hannah Ashley had four children. Son John (later referred to as General John Ashley) was born in 1736; a daughter, Jane, in 1738. Two more daughters followed in 1740 (Mary) and 1744 (Hannah). John Ashley was a leader in the local militia, ending his active career with the rank of Colonel. Col. Ashley played an important role in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary history of the region. In January, 1773, Ashley was one of the authors of the Sheffield Resolves, a series of resolutions proclaiming the rights of Englishmen in relation to the English Crown. The Resolves were a statement of the rights Americans had and grievances under which they labored, including the familiar revolutionary-era cry: “No taxation without representation!” The Ashleys were among the main participants in a drama that contributed to the end of slavery in Massachusetts. Col. Ashley owned African men, women, and children as slaves, who labored in his household as servants and on his farms and in his mills. The 1771 Massachusetts Tax Valuation listed five slaves in the Ashley household. At that time fourteen households in Sheffield owned slaves. In 1781, one of the slaves, a woman known as Mumbet who had been purchased from Mrs. Ashley’s family in Claverack, New York, was upset with what she felt was unnecessary violence and the unfairness of human bondage. She, together with another slave named Brom, brought suit against Col. Ashley in the County Court of Common Pleas. Represented by Col. Ashley’s friend and colleague, Theodore Sedgwick, Mumbet and Brom won their freedom when the jury found that they were freemen illegally detained in servitude by the Ashleys. This case was one of several in Massachusetts during the early 1780s brought by slaves and challenging the institution of slavery in the Commonwealth. Eventually the cumulative effect of these cases was the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

Source: http://www.thetrustees.org/assets/documents/places-to-visit/Col__Jo...