(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved. Contact us for information about using this image.
States which did not allow slavery were called free states. They had laws which stated if a master brought his slave into the state, the slave was automatically free because slavery was illegal in that state. This article reports on the case of a slave named Lucy Jackson who had been brought from Georgia into Connecticut during the 1830s. When she became concerned that she would be taken back to a southern state, she was encouraged to bring her case to court. The Connecticut court ruled that she was free, since the laws of the state prohibited slavery. The Gazette & Mercury was the newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts, from June 27, 1837 to July 13, 1841, when it changed its name to the Gazette & Courier.