African American Connecticut Explored

31 Ebenezer Bassett’s Historic Journey

211 On June 5, 1869, on a hot day in New York City, thirty-six-year-old Connecticut native Ebenezer D. Bassett (1833–1908) and his family boarded the steamship The City of Port-au-Prince. Bassett was surrounded by a crowd of dignitaries and on-lookers who wished him well as he embarked on a historic journey to the world’s only independent black republic, Haiti (or, as it was spelled in the nineteenth century, Hayti). He had been appointed by the Grant administration as minister resident, our nation’s first black ambassador. The United States was in the midst of Reconstruction after a devastating Civil War. As Bassett boarded the ship, he was aware that he was breaking historic ground as the first black American appointed to a top diplomatic post. He acknowledged the risk of failure and the difficult diplomatic challenges that lay ahead. A few days earlier he had addressed a large audience in New York City, pledging to President Grant and the nation that he would bring to his work “An honest heart, a generous purpose, and unflagging industry, and an elevated patriotism.” Bassett’s great-grandfather Pero had endured the Middle Passage to the New World as an enslaved African. Pero had married Hagar, another enslaved African, who was owned by Reverend Richard Mansfield of Derby, Connecticut. One of Pero and Hagar’s sons, Tobiah (Bassett’s grandfather), was sold to John Wooster of Oxford, Connecticut; Tobiah won his freedom through his service in the American Revolution. Tobiah had a reputation for honor and intelligence in both the white and black communities and was elected a Black Governor by the black community of Derby in 1815. Tobiah’s son, Eben Tobias, was Bassett’s father. Eben Tobias was elected and served as a Black Governor from 1840 to 1845. He married Susan Gregory Bassett, and used the Bassett surname. Bassetts, white Carolyn B. Ivanoff, with Mary J. Mycek and Marian K. O’Keefe 31 Ebenezer Bassett’s Historic Journey 212 Post Civil War to WWI and black, populated the lower Naugatuck Valley, and the family may have chosen the Bassett name for reasons of kinship. Around 1830 or 1831 the couple moved to the Litchfield area, presumably for economic opportunity. They had three children: Charlotte in 1832, Ebenezer Don Carlos on October 16, 1833, and Napoleon in 1836. Sometime before the 1850s the family returned to the lower Naugatuck Valley and farmed land belonging to Dr. Martin Bull Bassett of Derby on Great Hill along the banks of the Housatonic River. In the late 1840s Ebenezer’s formal education began at the Birmingham Academy established in 1838 and located near the Derby green. Unlike other towns in the state, Derby did not exclude Bassett from an education because of his race. Reflecting on this period, Bassett later said, “My success in life I owe greatly to that American sense of fairness which was tendered me in old Derby, and which exfigure 31-1 Ebenezer D. Bassett, 1853. Special Collections Department, Elihu Burritt Library, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain Ebenezer Bassett’s Historic Journey / C. B. Ivanoff 213 acts that every man whether white or black, shall have a fair chance to run his race in life and make the most of himself.” While attending school at the Birmingham Academy, Bassett was working in the office and running errands for the most prominent citizen in town, Dr. Ambrose Beardsley, who recognized the young man’s academic talent. It may have been through Beardsley’s recommendation that Bassett attended the Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts (now Wilbraham & Monson Academy). Wesleyan Academy was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and undoubtedly it was here Bassett came into contact with the injustices of antebellum America. Bassett next attended the State Normal School in New Britain, now Central Connecticut State University. He graduated in 1853, the first and only black in his class. After graduation, Bassett began his career as a teacher at the Whiting School, (for children of color) in New Haven at a salary of $300 a year. After his first year the school board’s report noted that Bassett had “transformed 40 or 50 thoughtless, reckless, tardy and reluctant youngsters into intelligent ambitious, well-disciplined and well-behaved students.” Hungry to continue his education, he attended classes at Yale in mathematics and classics. In 1855 he married Eliza Park in New Haven. While...