This grantee profile is part of our EMS assessment report, “Our Stories, Our Commonwealth.” Read the executive summary or the full report for more information about Expand Massachusetts Stories. You can also visit our web page highlighting key information from our assessment.
At first glance, Wellspring House might seem like an unlikely candidate to undertake a major historical investigation into 18th- and 19th-century Gloucester. Founded in 1981, the nonprofit human services organization focuses on helping adults and families achieve financial stability. But Wellspring’s office headquarters are located in a West Gloucester property that includes a homestead dating to 1709. Shortly after moving in, the previous owners gave the Wellspring team a box of photos that hinted at the house’s history — and, specifically, that multiple generations of a prominent Black family had lived in it for a significant period of time. While Wellspring staff focused on building the core set of services they provide to North Shore residents, their curiosity about the house’s past residents simmered away.
In 2020, that curiosity transitioned to action. Motivated by the murder of George Floyd, the organization dedicated time and resources to scouring land and Census records to learn more about the history of the house’s previous occupants. Wellspring President and Executive Director Melissa A. Dimond says, “We made the decision that we were going to start with ourselves, the building we were in. And really do the work to learn about this family and see what we would uncover.” They were able to confirm their suspicions that the story of the house’s 19th-century Black owners was worth telling, but they also bumped into the limits of their own capabilities as a human services organization for historical research. So in 2022, they applied for an Expanding Massachusetts Stories grant.
With a critical introduction from Mass Humanities staff, Wellspring met and engaged Dr. Roopika Risam, a digital and public humanities scholar and faculty member in Dartmouth’s Film and Media Studies Department and Comparative Literature Program. With Dr. Risam’s partnership, Wellspring was able to learn more about Robert Freeman, who purchased the home in 1826, and the generations of Freemans that preceded and succeeded him in Gloucester. Melissa credits Dr. Risam and her team with being able to “break through some of the dead ends that we just couldn’t answer.”
“I don’t think we can solely rely on humanities organizations to tell it all”
There were rumors that Robert Freeman’s father, Robin, was a freed slave from South Carolina who somehow made his way to Gloucester. But Dr. Risam’s research confirmed that Robin Freeman purchased his freedom from a Gloucester-based enslaver in 1769. While this alone was a historically significant discovery, Melissa adds: “I think about this as a project about the wealth, the assets of a multi-generational Black family in New England at these very important points of history.” In the early 1800s, Robert Freeman became a major landholder on Cape Ann, purchasing the home in which Wellspring is now based in 1826. His descendants include a number of PhD-holders, the first Black member of the Salem police force, and the founder of the Black Studies Department at Boston College. Melissa sees this as a stunning example of the overlooked history of Black Massachusetts: “This is just one family. It you take the time to really learn, there’s just so much to be said about the contributions of Black Americans over time. If we don’t know it, then we don’t talk about it, and then that reality gets lost.”
Wellspring has memorialized the discoveries of this work in a permanent public exhibit in their space, called “History Lives Here.” The team has also been in touch with the present-day descendants of Robin and Robert Freeman, recognizing how rare it is for Black American families to be able to trace their genealogy back to the mid-1700s. They’re working with the City of Gloucester to rename a nearby intersection to “Freeman Corner.” And with the support of a second EMS grant, they’re re-interpreting the Freeman family story as an educational and experiential tour that can be integrated into the local social studies curriculum for third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders.
Melissa acknowledges that it initially required some case-making to persuade her board to invest the time and energy necessary to undertake this investigation. But she sees a strong connection between the story of the Freemans and Wellspring’s core work: “We’re very focused on folks who, for a lot of reasons, have not had the opportunities in their life to do well. And a lot of that has to do with racism. Given how multicultural and diverse the people in our programs are, it felt like we really needed to do something around truth-telling related to Black history on our own property.” And she hopes that Wellspring can serve as an example to other historical property holders of the important role that they can play in expanding public narratives about our past: “One route to tell more of what needs to be known is that landowners or property owners get interested in their own history. If we can be an example, there’s so much to be known. Without being a humanities organization, you can do a lot to at least get started. From my perspective, the more of this work that is happening, the better. And I don’t think we can solely rely on humanities organizations to tell it all.”
