By the late 17th century and early 18th century, New England was growing in population and wealth. Merchant colonists had built a long wharf in Boston, which was a busy port with ships arriving and departing from England and the West Indies. The slave trade was a powerful connector that linked these places together. Unlike the West Indies and the fledgling English colonies around the Chesapeake, New England did not produce a cash crop, and so enslaved people performed the same types of tasks as colonists in farming, fishing, forestry, and household chores. As such, New England’s model of slavery differed from the cash crop colonies; this region did not immediately develop the “racialized labor system” in which enslaved people lived and worked separately from their enslavers and other white colonists (144). By the late 17th century, enslaved people constituted about 5-10% of the urban population of New England, and much less of the rural population.

Warren cites court records, wills, and probates that reveal the types of labor enslaved people performed in New England. These included farming, livestock management, planting crops, tilling fields, and more. Enslaved people would have learned some of these skills upon arriving in New England.