Jeffrey Brace

Boyrereau Brinch, later renamed Jeffrey Brace, was born in West Africa around 1742. White slave traders stole him from his home in Africa when he was a teenager. First, they sold him to an English ship captain. He was then sold in Connecticut. He was enslaved there for fifteen years.

Jeffrey Brace joined the Revolutionary War so that he could gain his freedom. He served as a soldier from 1775 until 1783. He left the military after injuring his leg in battle. He returned to Connecticut to live with Benjamin Stiles, the man who enslaved him at the time. Stiles agreed to manumit(release from slavery or set free) Jeffrey Brace. Stiles gave him some money to start a new life. 

In 1784, Jeffrey Brace moved to Vermont because it was the first to outlaw(make something illegal) slavery. There he met and married his wife, Susannah Dublin, a free Black woman. They bought land in Poultney, Vermont and farmed together. Sadly, they were forced to leave their farm in Poultney because of greedy neighbors who wanted to take their land and force their children to become servants.

The Brace family moved to northern Vermont, where Brace lived the rest of his life. As an old man, Brace wanted to share his story with the world. Since he became blind in his old age, he decided to tell his life story out loud. A lawyer named Benjamin Prentiss wrote down Jeffrey Brace’s important words. The book is called The Blind African Slave or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nick-Named Jeffrey Brace. It is a rare and important account of what life was like for Black people living in New England during this time.