“Here Lyes the Body of Cicely Negro”: Enslaved Women in Colonial Cambridge and the Making of New England History

Abstract

Abstract Gravestones for early eighteenth-century enslaved Cambridge women, Cicely and Jane, have sat for centuries largely unexplored by scholars despite the markers' close proximity to Harvard University. This essay re-centers the lives and stories of such women, using their gravestones as a fulcrum to explore gender, race, memory, and the construction of early New England history.