BRISTOL HISTORICAL & PRESERVATION SOCIETY
LECTURE SEPTEMBER 24, 2025
Discovering Thomas White: One Man’s Flight from Slavery to Freedom on the Sea
September 24, 6:00 p.m.
Rogers Free Library, Herreshoff Room
Free and open to the public. Participants must register to attend either in person or virtually (Zoom) on the Rogers Free library website – as both seating and Zoom spaces are limited.
rogersfreelibrary.libcal.com/event/15093304.
Discovering Thomas White:
One Man’s Flight from Slavery to Freedom on the Sea
Speakers: Cindy Elder, Charlotte Carrington-Farmer, and Rachel Cabral,
Hidden away for more than 150 years, a 40-page hand-stitched document was discovered on the back porch of a Barrington home two years ago.
The words, written in fading ink from the 1800s, reveal the story of a 15-year-old boy named Thomas White who succeeded, against all odds, in emancipating himself from enslavement.
Supported by a network of abolitionists between Maryland and Boston, he went on to become a ship’s cook and travel the world.
This document has been the focus of a continuing research effort to place Thomas White’s story in context with the historical record and to seek out his living relatives, if they exist. This presentation will lift the curtain on Thomas’ remarkable life and delve into the central research questions.
The speakers include:
Novelist and nonprofit leader Cindy Elder, whose family found the document in her in-laws’ home. She is the author of the newly published two-book series, Tales of the Sea, including The Journey Begins and The Drumbeats of War. Both books are based upon letters written in the mid 1800s by her husband’s second great-grandparents – which were also found on that porch in Barrington, RI.
Roger Williams University history professor Dr. Charlotte Carrington-Farmer embraced Elder’s request for research support on Thomas White.
Also an author, her book Roger Williams and His World sets Roger Williams in his wider Atlantic world context as her research centers on dissent in seventeenth-century New England. Her second book: Equine Empire: Horses and the Making of the Atlantic World will be published next year.
Rachel Cabral is a rising RWU senior who has been the lead researcher on the Thomas White project for a year. As a history student, her research interests focus on exploring untold stories of marginalized communities, with particular emphasis on culture and the human side of historical narratives.
The story of the finding of the Thomas White document was written up this past June in the Smithsonian Magazine:
Sponsored by the Bristol Historical & Preservation Society and the Rogers Free Library. For more information, please send an email to info@BHPSri.org or call 401-253-7223.