Above portrait of Agrippa Hull hangs in the Stockbridge Library
According to the book, Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull, by Gary Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Aggripa (Grippy) Hull, a freeborn black New Englander and volunteer soldier in the American Revolution, worked with Mumbet at the Theodore Sedgwick home in Stockbridge. Mumbet purchased her own land (first five acres and later another 12.5 acres) with wages she had earned working for Sedgwick which land was located near Hull’s 15 acre Cherry Hill Farm. Hull had become the wealthiest black land owner in Stockbridge. Mumbet and Hull were neighbors when Mumbet moved into her own house she purchased with her own earnings. The authors of the book mentioned above state:
“To Grippy’s delight, Elizabeth Freeman, his coworker in the Sedgwick household became his immediate neighbor at his Cherry Hill farm. Her first land purchase was in 1803 for 5 acres, which she bought jointly with Jonah Humphrey, a member of the First Church of Stockbridge who hailed from one of the town’s black families that had contributed two members to the American Revolution. In 1807 she added a second property of 12.5 acres just down the county road from Hull’s homestead and then purchased Jonah Humphrey’s half of their Cherry Hill farm in 1811.”
Agrippa Hull was an extraordinary man with sharp wit. The same source above tells this anecdote:
“Stockbridge’s early historian, Electa Jones, recalled how Agrippa and the man he was serving—probably Sedgwick—were attending the same church when ‘a distinguished mulatto preacher’ gave the sermon. “On coming out of the house, the gentleman said to Agrippa, ‘Well, how do you like nigger preaching?’ ‘Sir,’ he promptly retorted, ‘he was half black and half white; I liked my half, how did you like yours?’ “”
Agrippa Hull Grave, Stockbridge Cemetery
Links
• Agrippa Hull, Alchetron
• Agrippa Hull, by HF Vines, Prezi
• Agrippa Hull, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
• Agrippa Hull, Rev War Talk
• Agrippa Hull (1759-1848), TW History
• Agrippa Hull, WPGH, PBS Hawaii
• AGRIPPA HULL: PATRIOT AND PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY, Black Then
• Agrippa Hull: Revolutionary Patriot, Black Past
• Agrippa Hull, PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALISM, BY DAVID BALLELA
• ‘An Uncommonly Fine Head’: The Life and Times of Agrippa Hull
By Joe Durwin, iBerkshires Columnist
• Connections: Agrippa Hull — soldier, farmer, philosopher, The Berkshire Eagle
• Kosciuszko and Agrippa Hull, Bronze, Tracy H Sugg Bronze Sculptures and Monuments | Historic,
• Kosciuszko’s servant – Agrippa Hull, The Military Engineer in the American Revolution, Chapter West Point: Key to the Continent, page 101, An excerpt from a book by Colonel F.C. Kajencki Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Puls Polonii
• Portrait of Agrippa Hull, WPGH, PBS Hawaii
• Sedgewick and Hull letter to Rush, WPGH, PBS Hawaii
• The Portrait of Agrippa Hull, The Sentimental Patriot Continued, LAURA RICHARDS, HONORS HISTORY 9, READING MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL, MAY 2014, Weebly
