Context and clarity for piece at Acton Museum
Although the days of enslaved Black people serving white Acton elites were over by the early 19th century, they were likely not forgotten by older locals.
I write as the author of “Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Acton, Massachusetts” to provide context for the c. 1806 painting of white picnickers being served by a liveried Black man, which you included in the November 6, 2025, article about the pieces comprising the Acton Museum’s exhibit, Transformed by Revolution.
Acton’s Lydia Hosmer was not attempting to depict a contemporary local scene. Like other girls attending Bradford Academy in Haverhill, she was copying a popular print of a 1789 painting by the English artist George Moreland.
Although the days of enslaved Black people serving food to white Acton elites were over by the early 19th century, they were likely not forgotten by older locals. As recently as 1776, when the Rev. William Emerson left Acton to serve as chaplain to the Continental Army at Fort Ticonderoga, he wrote a letter to his wife explaining with satisfaction that Frank, one of several people he enslaved, was serving there as his “waiter,” a term that appears to capture the role on display in Hosmer’s painting.
However, when Emerson died that same year, Frank disappeared. Quite possibly, he took his freedom, as did so many other people enslaved in Acton during the Revolution.
By the time Hosmer’s painting won a prize at the 1812 Middlesex Agricultural Society Cattle Show, there were three areas in Acton settled by free Black people: the edge of the Great Meadow, Walden Woods, and the parcel of land owned by the Dugan family.
That such a seemingly nostalgic work was so admired speaks to the many difficulties we know Brister Freeman, Caesar Robbins, and so many other Black Concordians encountered when they staked a claim to the rights spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.
Hosmer’s picture is a reminder that they persevered.
Elise Lemire
Professor of English and global literatures
Purchase College, the State University of New York
