Future Directions
Finding out more about Phillis Wheatley Peters and John Peters
The recent discovery of information about John Peters and Phillis Wheatley Peters’ contacts and time spent in Middleton, MA, generates many research questions worth pursuing. For example:
- How did John Peters “obtain his freedom”? We know nothing of his life between when Lt. John Wilkins sold him and when Peters began living in Boston circa 1776 as a free man.
- Documenting the lives of Peters’ brothers, Frank Francis, Charles Francis, and Snow Francis will tell us more about John Peters’ networks and Black families and community-building in the region. (This will supplement the family tree provided on this site.)
- Why did John Peters choose that name for himself instead of others he at time used as a young man (Peter Francis, Peter Frizer)?
- Given that one or more of the books that Phillis Wheatley brought back from her 1773 London trip were eventually purchased by Salem merchant Dudley L. Pickman, did John Peters sell directly to Pickman or sell her valuable books through an auctioneer--and when?
- Has Phillis Peters’ correspondence survived—both letters penned during her years in Middleton and the letters written prior to then that were described in the 1779 and 1784 previews for the hoped-for publication of a second volume of her writings?
- How many times was John Peters a plaintiff or defendant in other civil litigation in Massachusetts after 1784?
Adding to the growing documentation and understanding of Black lives in the New England region
- How often did Black landowners experience resistance and harassment from White neighbors in the rural northeast in the 1780s and 1790s? The harassment of the Peterses in Middleton and of Abijah and Lucy Prince in Guilford, VT, suggests that some Whites staged a grassroots backlash against individual Black families when they saw slavery withering.
Next steps by one scholar
- Cornelia Dayton is undertaking to write a (short) book-length biography of John Peters. She will be working intensively on this project during the 2022-2023 academic year. She welcomes interested people to contact her with questions, suggestions, and leads.