Mary Frances

Birth & Death Dates Unknown — Appears in an 1897 Book

When Isaac and Abigail Richmond brought their family back to Little Compton in the 1830s to escape the South’s unhealthy climate, they brought two freed slaves as family servants, a woman named Mary Frances who served as a “mammy” to the Richmond children and a young man named Frederick Burley.^[1]Janet Lisle, The History of Little Compton: A Home by the Sea, 1820-1950, (Little Compton: Little Compton Historical Society), p. 73.

The compiler of this genealogy has grateful remembrances of his old negro ‘Mammy’ Mary Frances; of his first gold ring, which she gave him, and of a sailor suit which she made, when she taught him to dance the ‘hornpipe,’ which accomplishment, much to her glee, was exhibited on state occasions.

Joshua Richmond, 1897^[2]Joshua Bailey Richmond, The Richmond Book.

Marjory Gomez O’Toole, Executive Director, LCHS

First published in “If Jane Should Want to Be Sold: Stories of Enslavement, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island,” by the Little Compton Historical Society, 2016.

Back to Table of Contents