Dinah

Dinah was taken to Windsor in 1783, identified only as a Negro woman slave about thirty years of age, valued at £40. An ensuing court case would later make her the best known of those to have been enslaved in Vermont despite its 1777 Constitution - the first to prohibit adult slavery. In defiance of the law, lawyer Stephen Jacob purchased Dinah, obtaining a bill-of-sale from a future Vermont legislator that was witnessed by a town leader. Dinah served the Jacob family in the adjacent 18th-century house. When no longer in his service, she fell into need and requested town support, which was denied by a vote of the Windsor residents who urged their selectmen to charge Jacob legally for her care instead.

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The lawsuit, Selectmen of Windsor v Stephen Jacob, was heard before the Vermont Supreme Court in 1802 when then-Justice Stephen Jacob recused himself. Remaining justices disavowed Dinah’s slave status, ruling no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave, thus absolving Jacob of her care while affirming Vermont’s prohibition of slavery. In total, Dinah lived in Windsor for nearly three decades, enslaved or free without manumission. Labeled as Jacob’s wench or African Dinah, she was summoned by selectmen to leave town, assaulted by a deacon’s son, and suffered repeated illnesses. Although Dinah died in poverty, she was identified in a published obituary as a woman of color. The location of her grave is unknown.