The Witness Stone Project
by Julie Hodgson and Melissa Szych, 8th Grade Social Studies, Mansfield Middle School
Written for the Yankee Post
The Witness Stones Project identifies an important purpose: “to restore the history and honor the humanity of the enslaved who helped build our communities.” This project, inspired by the Stolpersteine Project in Berlin, Germany, which seeks to honor Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, asks students to engage in similar work here in the northeast so that they can honor enslaved people who lived in their own communities. Once students research, question, and explore slavery in their own community, they culminate their investigation by placing a Witness Stone in front of the place where an enslaved person lived, worked, or worshiped in their own town.
In Mansfield Middle School 8th grade Social Studies classes, students examine the years between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. In the past few years, we teachers realized that much of the curriculum still emphasized the traditional “white settlers” story. As part of our efforts to help students learn a more complete history of the US, we realized we need to double down on our efforts to represent all perspectives, or at least as many as possible, and not just the story of the landowners and lawmakers. Additionally, we realized that in order for students to understand the bigger pictures behind the Civil War, we needed to explore the issue of slavery in more depth. We now begin with a brief review of European exploration and then bring more focus to the interaction among Europeans and Natives and the enslavement of Africans in the Americas.
In order for students to be ready for the Witness Stones unit, we first ensured that the students had a better sense of what it meant to be an enslaved person. Therefore, we asked the students to examine narratives of enslaved people and to learn about the myriad dynamics that allowed this institution to exist in the first place. This required students to explore the complicity of Connecticut’s citizens, especially as we discovered that our students thought slavery and the institutions that promoted it existed only in the south. Furthermore, we discovered that students needed more practice in learning how to learn history and to interpret how biases, errors in reporting, and other factors interfere with our learning a more complete picture. Part of this process included learning about the Five Themes of Slavery: Dehumanization, The Treatment of the Enslaved, The Economics of Slavery, Agency and Resistance, and Paternalism.
By the time students examined local primary sources about Titus, a person who was enslaved in Mansfield, we felt better about having provided the correct foundation for approaching the information with respectful curiosity. Unfortunately, there weren’t many sources that gave us information about Titus, so students were left to act as forensic detectives in putting the puzzle pieces of his life together. They had to infer, question, and sometimes make assumptions. This was, in itself, a valuable part of the learning process: Students learned that history is often written by the victors, and that it’s hard to know the underrepresented voices of our past. They also learned that historians sometimes do the best job they can to tell history, even when the evidence is not unimpeachable. The dearth of information about Titus is actually part of his story. He was not a victor --- he didn’t even get a last name! --- and so we haven’t had a chance to learn about him until now, simply because his story wasn’t told. Students were shocked that enslaved people were often categorized as “items” a person could own and leave to their families as part of an estate. There’s an entire section of our town named after his enslaver and even a book written about him. His enslaver’s tombstone identifies him as an “honorable judge,” yet Titus barely gets identified.
In 2022, students worked with members of the community to narrow down a few possible sights to place Titus’ Witness Stone. Everyone wanted it to be in a prominent place where as many community members as possible would see and reflect on Titus and his life as an enslaved man in Mansfield. Learning about our community’s past, the good and the bad, plays an important role in unifying and healing a community. The 8th grade class determined that the Mansfield Public Library would be the best place for the stone since it is located close to the home where Titus may have lived and the church where he may have worshiped. Students also thought that the library would get the necessary foot traffic to inform others of Titus’ life. Additionally, they felt that since a library is a home of learning and growing, it would be a fitting place for them to teach others about their discoveries.
Students in 2023 and 2024 continued this study of Titus, but they broadened their investigation to learn about Titus’ entire family. The students discovered that Tobijah and Pegg, Titus’ parents, were the ones initially enslaved by Shubael Conant and that they, too, deserved to have their lives recognized. Therefore, on April 12, 2024, the 8th grade class installed two more Witness Stones, one for Tobijah and another for Pegg.
Learning about these enslaved people would have been impossible had it not been for the tireless efforts of Dennis Culliton, M.A.T., C.A.G.S., the Founder and Executive Director of the Witness Stones Project. Dennis, a retired social studies teacher in Guilford, CT, had started a Witness Stones Project in his third decade of teaching. He’s been so committed to the importance of teaching social studies that instead of retiring, he’s invested himself in bringing this important work to other communities such as ours. Dennis investigated local sources for us, culling the local church, town, and Revolutionary War records, as well as inquiring with the Mansfield Historical Society. Once he shared all the information he could find about slavery in Mansfield, we teachers set to work in creating inquiry lessons through which the students could begin to construct their own learning about Mansfield’s own history with slavery.