When Phillis Wheatley was 25 years old and living in Boston, she married a free Black shopkeeper named John Peters. Five years earlier, in 1773, she had been celebrated as the first African to publish a book of poetry in English. She had also prevailed upon her enslavers to free her.
The backstory of her husband, John Peters, has been a mystery. We also have not known where the couple went when they left Boston from 1780 to 1783. Those three years represent one-tenth of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ short life; she died in Boston in December 1784.
We present here twenty key documents, a timeline, and family trees that illuminate the Peterses’ three-year sojourn in Middleton, an interior town north of Boston. Their time there began with great promise but soon was marred by conflict, frustration, grief, and loss. For more details on the project and the underlying scholarship, see the About page.