Harold Forsythe wrote:
> Save for
> the fact I would have probably been a slave, I think I would have
> preferred
> 17th century VA over MA.  (smile)
>
>
Harold:

As it happens, there was at least one free black in early Boston
(1640s-50s) who decided, for reasons we'll never know (unless more
records turn up), to move down to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He
lived there for the rest of his life (he died in 1670). In Boston, he'd
been a sailor, and we do have one record of a voyage he made to Virginia
years before he moved. His name in Boston was Bastian Ken (with many
variations). His life there is described in the old Robert Twombly and
Robert Moore piece on the Black Puritan." On the Shore, he was known as
Sebastian Kane. I have written a few pages about him in my /Race and
Class in Colonial Virginia. /

Doug Deal

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