How many streets in Northampton are named after enslavers?
I recently posed that question to Elizabeth Sacktor, the educational program manager for Historic Northampton as we stood next to a placard that lists 33 Northampton households that owned slaves. That panel is part of Historic Northampton’s profound and intense exhibit, “Slavery and Freedom in Northampton 1654 (when Northampton was founded) – 1783 (when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared slavery illegal).”
Sacktor responded, “I get that question all the time.”
For good reason. The enslavers’ names. Many enslavers’ last names and Northampton’s street names are the same: Clark, Edwards, Hawley, Lyman, Marshall, Parsons, Pomeroy, Stoddard and Strong.
Something else striking about names: As you stand amidst the life-like silhouettes of enslaved persons in Northampton — a central part of the exhibit, you are struck by the similarity of their names and ours, including Jack, Robin, Hannah, and Sue.
Edwards Square, located between King and Market streets, it seems clear, was named for Rev. Jonathan Edwards, famous for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” After Calvin Coolidge, he probably ranks as the city’s most famous resident. Edwards, while living here, enslaved Leah, Venus and Rose, and he purchased more human beings after decamping Northampton for Stockbridge.
Beyond Edwards, more research is needed to try to determine if streets were named for enslavers.
As the May 17, 1826 Daily Hampshire Gazette reported, some streets were named for directions (South, North, West) and location or use (Main, Bridge, Market) or the trees that lined them (Elm, Chestnut).
Some streets were identified by prominent property owners who lived there. A street ultimately could be named for a property owner who might have been an enslaver (or not) or perhaps a distant branch of an enslaver’s family or for another family with the same last name or after a family, not an individual.
Consider the venerable Strong family and downtown’s Strong Avenue. We know from Historic Northampton’s exhibit that Ebenezer Strong (1671-1729) enslaved a man named Boston and a male child whose name has been lost to history. And Caleb Strong (1710-1806) enslaved a man named Moidore.
But Gov. Caleb Strong (1745-1814) was a lifelong Northampton resident who practiced law here and also served as a U.S. senator and is buried in the Bridge Street Cemetery who wasn’t an enslaver. Many believe that Strong Avenue is named after him.
The Parsons family and Parsons Street, where the Bridge Street Elementary School is located, has a similar story. Samuel and Joseph Parsons, Jr. in the 1600s and 1700s were enslavers while Lyman Parsons, 150 years later, was an abolitionist.
Although Jackson Street is not named for the president, two streets apparently are named after presidents who were enslavers — (George) Washington and (James) Madison, who like six other U.S. presidents, owned slaves while in office.
There are related considerations regarding industrialists here. Consider John Maynard for whom Maynard Road (off Elm Street, near Cooley Dickinson Hospital) probably was named. Maynard’s company (it had various names) manufactured the Plantation Hoe, specifically designed for Southern cotton plantations. The North played an essential role in the slave economy, and Maynard’s Hoe Shop helps prove the point.
And philanthropists. The Watson family, whose fortune stems from their plantation in Alabama, moved here during the Civil War. They contributed large sums to Forbes Library, the Academy of Music and Cooley Dickinson Hospital, contributed the land for Child’s Park and donated over 100 valuable collection items to the Northampton Historical Society, now Historic Northampton.
History has its claims. And Donald Trump’s endeavors to rewrite and whitewash history intensifies the need for us to take responsibility for our own.
A step towards taking that responsibility: Both the Dec. 5, 2024 and the June 16, 2025 reports of the Northampton Commission for the Study of Reparations (disclosure: I serve on that commission) makes recommendations for the naming, renaming, and/or co-naming of roads.
The implementation process, with local historians’ help can try to clarify the historical uncertainties and seek residents’ input or reparative actions. Street names could honor persons who were enslaved here. The available open spaces of the Picture Main Street project could be devoted to sculptures or monuments for enslaved persons who helped build Northampton for abolitionists. Historical markers could set the recorder straight.
The commission recommended naming the area around the Sojourner Truth statue in Florence “David Ruggles Place.” It also recommended co-naming (renaming being burdensome and unnecessary) Rt. 9 from downtown Northampton to Florence (indeed, from Amherst to Florence) “Sojourner Truth Way.” The commissions December 2024 report emphasized, “Not a road, street or avenue, but a way.”
Christopher Clark’s The Communitarian Moment: the Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association describes the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (where Sojourner Truth lived) as both a refuge and a base for action. Nell Irvin Painter in Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol wrote, “Over time (Sojourner Truth) became so attached to the community and its way that the community… became her professed home. No other place, she concluded, offered the same ‘equality of feeling,’ ‘liberty of thought and speech’ and ‘largeness of soul.’”
There are many concepts of reparations. As an aspirational statement, I believe that Sojourner Truth Way, running through the heart of the Valley, is right. Now, more than ever, we need Sojourner Truth’s way.
Bill Newman is a Northampton resident, lawyer and radio show host. He gives special thanks to Simbrit Paskins whose gallery talk, like Elizabeth Sacktor’s, is beyond brilliant and to Elizabeth Sharpe and Laurie Sanders, co-presidents of Historic Northampton for envisioning “Slavery and Freedom in Northampton…” and realizing that vision. The views expressed here are his alone.