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Cate and Prince Chester

Prince Chester was born around 1738, and was enslaved by Capt. Samuel Stone of Lexington.

On April 23, 1772, Prince married Cate at the church in Lexington. Cate had been purchased by Phineas Taylor of Boxborough in 1745. Both Cate and Prince had been emancipated before their marriage.  

Cate and Prince’s two oldest children were born in Lexington. Ruth was baptized on April 11, 1773, and Lucy was baptized on October 2, 1774.

Reverend Jonas Clarke, the town’s minister, who had married them, hired them to make linen.  Linen, like wool, was the fabric of independence. Many colonial families were growing flax for linen, which was easily grown as an annual crop during the short New England growing season.

Flax was spun into thread, which was later made into cloth in Lexington.

Prince was paid to complete the multi-step work of separating the fibrous center in the stalk of the flax plant so that it could be spun into thread, which Cate would have spun the flax fiber into yarn. She may also have woven the fiber into cloth.

By 1777, the Chesters were in Boxborough, living on the farm that Phineas Taylor had given to Cate. Molley, their third child, was born in Boxborough in 1777.

Cate was born in 1741 in Boston. Phineas Taylor of Boxborough bought her as a toddler for a box of butter. She gained her freedom in 1772 and married Prince Chessor of Lexington. Their two children who were born in Lexington, Ruth and Lucy, were both baptized by Reverend Jonas Clarke. Reverend Clarke occasionally hired Prince to do the skilled and difficult work of preparing flax for spinning, and Cate, the equally skilled work of spinning the flax into linen thread. By 1777, Cate, Prince, and family were living in Boxborough in a house that Phineas Taylor had given to them. They had 5 more children – Molley, Eunice, Prince James, and twins Paul and Silas – all of whom were baptized. Cate died in 1790 of spotted fever, having caught it while nursing Phineas Taylor. Her descendants lived in Boxborough, where they owned land and prospered. 

Read about more Black residents of Lexington here.

Boxborough census data with Prince Chester’s record in 1777.

Information provided by Sean Osborne

  1. Bedford Census, 1850. “Massachusetts, Births and Christenings, 1639-1915.” Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 3 December 2024. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.