Future poet Lucy Terry was born in West Africa. The exact date of her birth is unknown, though it is thought she might have been born as early as the 1720s. Historical records on Lucy’s life are extremely limited and thus details of her history have been taken away from scholarly research and conjecture. Lucy was captured when she was a very young girl by slave traders who brought her to Rhode Island. There she was believed to have been first bought by Samuel Terry, who lived in Enfield, Connecticut. When Samuel passed, Lucy was eventually sent to live with Ebenezer Wells of Deerfield, Massachusetts. With the Wells family, Lucy became a devout Christian. She was baptized and became a full-time church member by her teen years. Lucy also learned how to read during her time with the Wells. Lucy stayed with the household until 1756, when she married Abijah Prince, a free black man. She was quickly emancipated as well, though it’s not certain if her new husband bought her freedom from the Wells or if the family simply surrendered her from enslavement. In her new life, Lucy Terry Prince settled with her husband in Guilford, Vermont, in due course having six children. Two of the Prince children, Cesar and Festus, are believed to have fought in the Revolutionary War. Prince …show more content…
The case argued against the false land claims of Colonel Eli Bronson in Sunderland, Vermont. The Prince family was said to have emerged victorious, but hundreds of years later a judicial library representatives stated that there is no legal record of Prince ever arguing a case before the land’s highest bench. Instead, in the mid-1790s she might have been involved in a lower court ruling officiated by Samuel chase, a judge who reportedly stated that Princes eloquence surpassed that of