WIREFRAME ONLY - NOT YET DESIGNED
1690 - 1768
Heber was born in about 1690, and was enslaved by the Reverend William Pratt of Easton, Massachusetts. When Pratt died in 1714 his inventory listed Heber and Hagar (his sister or first wife) as “two young negroes” valued at £52. In 1722, Pratt’s widow freed the couple and provided them with 10 acres of land in Easton. In some records Heber’s surname appears as “Pratt,” but he probably changed it to “Honestman” (also seen as “Honesty”) sometime after he became free. In April 1732, Heber and Hagar sold their 10-acre parcel to Nathan Hodges. Hagar may have died soon after; there are no further references to her in the town records. [i]
On June 26, 1735, Heber married Susanna Cordner of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The couple had at least one child, Adam, born in Easton on September 23, 1738. Two years later, Heber purchased from Josiah Pratt “one sixty-third part of one right” to land in newly established Huntstown (now Ashfield), a tiny community in the then-unsettled hill region of the Connecticut Valley in western Massachusetts. Heber and Susanna were able to buy inexpensive land in a promising new start. Heber and the other Huntstown proprietors began to draw 50-acre house lots on July 24, 1739. Heber drew Lot #1 having purchased the right to participate from “Josiah Prat in his Father’s Right viz Samll”.
By 1743, the Honestmans were living in Huntstown. They were apparently the only family among the original purchasers of lots, known as proprietors, who actually settled there. That summer Heber purchased for £12 another 50 acres adjacent to his first lot and built his home there. Other proprietors chose instead to sell their lots to others. rather than risk living on the “frontier” in contested territory during a time of almost-constant conflict between English settlers, Native peoples, and the French in Canada. [ii]
Like many other Massachusetts men, Heber served in the Provincial forces during the French and Indian wars. He enlisted in King George’s War (1744-1748) and Father Le Loutre’s War (1749-1755) from March 17, 1748, through September 9, 1749. By 1756, during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the fighting had come closer to home and Huntstown was at risk of attack. Townsmen including Heber, volunteered to scout the area and guard their town, but this caused hardship. On July 3, 1756, Heber was among those who signed a petition to Massachusetts Governor Shirley. They stated: “we are grately impovereshed many of us that ware inhabitance are already broken up and in want of soport by which we are weakened and the Town in utmost danger it being given up to the will of our enemies...” The petitioners requested to have those residents voluntarily serving as guards be placed “under the common Pay of the garoson service of this Provence from last March and forwards until our services shall end.” Finally, by April of 1757, the Massachusetts General Court voted to send 10 soldiers to the settlement.[iii]
Little is known of Heber’s wife Susanna, his son Adam, or their life in Huntstown, but oral tradition includes a story about Heber that probably took place after his war service. He had been checking his traps for bears when he became caught in one himself. In recounting what must have been a painful and frightening ordeal, Heber only said he wondered what a bear would think to find him caught in one of his own traps. Unfortunately, Heber’s foot was badly injured, and it never healed completely. [iv]
Heber was able to read; he owned a book which is now part of the Vintage Book Collection at the Field Memorial Library in Conway, Massachusetts. A devout Protestant he was one of the first 15 members to form the First Congregational Church in 1763. Huntstown was officially incorporated as the town of Ashfield in 1765. Heber Honestman died five years later March 6, 1768 and was buried in an unmarked grave, possibly in Ashfield's Baptist Corner cemetery. [v]
[i] Land Conveyance by Heber and Hagar Honestman, 17 April 1732, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2019.28.4; “Huntstown Beginnings, Town of Ashfield, MA. https://ashfield.org/2202/History.
[ii] Jay Mack Holbrook, Massachusetts Vital Records, Ashfield (Oxford, Mass.: Holbrook Research Institute, 1987); Frederick G. Howes, History of the Town of Ashfield Franklin County, Massachusetts from its settlement in 1742-1910, Also a Historical Sketch of the Town Written by Rev. Dr. Thomas Shepard in 1834 (Ashfield, [1910], 55-56.
[iii] Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Sven Tears War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 58-60; Howe, History of the Town of Ashfield, 67.
[iv] Howe, History of the Town of Ashfield, 305.
[v] Ibid, 61, 157.