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THis is my Story

     Being thirty-six years old, I left Col. Smith once for all. I had already been sold three different times, made considerable money with seemingly nothing to derive it from, been cheated out of a large sum of money, lost much by misfortunes, and paid an enormous sum for my freedom.
    About the forty-seventh year of my life, I disposed of all my property at Long-Island, and came from thence into East-Haddam: I hired myself out at first to Timothy Chapman, for five weeks, the earnings of which time I put up carefully by me. After this I wrought for Abel Bingham about six weeks. I then put my money together and purchased of said Bingham ten acres of land, lying at Haddam neck, where I now reside.--On this land I labored with great diligence for two years, and shortly after purchased six acres more of land contiguous to my other. One year from that time I purchased seventy acres more of the same man, and paid for it mostly with the produce of my other land. Soon after I bought this last lot of land, I set up a comfortable dwelling house on my farm, and built it from the produce thereof.
      Since my residence at Haddam neck, I have owned of boats, canoes and sail vessels, not less than twenty. These I mostly employed in the fishing and trafficking business, and in these occupations I have been cheated out of considerable money by people whom I traded with taking advantage of my ignorance of numbers.
Venture Smith, born free in Africa but captured and enslaved at the age of eight, became a figure of mythical proportions in New England, where he was known for his great size and strength

Death did not end the story of Venture Smith.

The people of East Haddam and East Hampton who met him remembered the old African vividly. They traded tales and passed down stories to their children of the time he walked on his knees when his feet were frostbitten, how he freed a beached scow even though old and blind and how he weighed more than 300 pounds and measured 6 feet around the waist.
To Pfeiffer, the archaeologist, these stories are the end product of an insidious societal process designed to strip Smith of his humanity.
“Here’s a prince out of Africa and yet, they’re dealing with him as if he were a draft animal,” Pfeiffer said. “He is equated by white society with the work he can do, or his size. It doesn’t tell you much. It tells you what our values were about, but not his values as a human being.”
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