Fortune & Dinah

Research Subjects
Written By John Mills

Fortune, his wife Dinah and their 3 children were slaves of Preserved Porter, a Connecticut bone doctor.

In 1798, Fortune slipped from a rock on the west bank of the Naugatuck river, broke his neck and drowned. At the time, dissecting cadavers was illegal; but not applying to slaves, Dr. Porter cut him into pieces at the riverbank. At his office, he boiled the bones so that all flesh fell off, etched labels into them and used them as a medical training tool. Dr. Porter died 6 years later, listing the bones as worth $15 ($330 today).

Prior to his death, Dr. Porter used the bones to teach anatomy to his son; who used them to teach anatomy to his grandson; who used them to teach his daughter…135 years of generational doctors and wealth.

In 1933, his name long forgotten, the family donated the bones to the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT where they were displayed next to slave tools as “Larry the Slave”; a popular exhibit shown on their postcard; not taken down until 1970 when the Museum realized this was demeaning. They stored them in the basement. The bones would remain in the basement for nearly 30 years.

In 1999, made aware of these bones in the basement, the NAACP and museum staff enlisted anthropologists and archeologists to examine them, ultimately determining this was Fortune. Based on bone density, he was a strong man who lived and worked with a broken back, hand and died of a broken neck.

On Sept. 13th, 2013, after being enslaved, a medical specimen, a museum exhibit and archeological artifact spanning 275 years, Fortune was finally freed…laid to rest at Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury, CT…next to White society of his time, something that wouldn’t have been allowed when he died.

This is not an isolated story. Medical usage of Black and Indigenous people in ways prohibited of Whites was not uncommon. Since I still can't find my GG Grandfather (Ned Mills), Erica and I make a regular pilgrimage to Riverside Cemetery to leave flowers at Fortune’s Gravesite.

Black History is American History and Black Lives Matter. If not to you, I got this. My actions will show they always have and still do…no statute of limitations.

Now rest, Fortune.

You can read my original Facebook posts about Fortune from February 1st of 2021 HERE.

You can also read my original Facebook posts about Fortune’s wife Dinah from February 22nd of 2021 HERE.

John Mills

Originally from San Diego, John Mills is a technologist by trade, but an equity advocate and independent scholar by passion. The descendant of both southern and northern enslaved, John focuses on unearthing little known people and stories of this country’s history in slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. John presents research through the lens and perspective of a descendant, with intent to inspire understanding and empathy, a means to inspire good, God fearing people, now armed with information, to look into whether they may be unwittingly aligning to biases resulting from the reverberating effects of a past time. John is a member of the Connecticut Freedom Trail and a member of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum Council. John is also working with an international team funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in an effort to deliver transformational impact on digital methods in cultural institutions...a means to decolonize museums. Finally, John is working with the state of Connecticut, business leaders and scholars in Middletown, CT to honor and memorialize a former enslaved individual by the name of Prince Mortimer.

https://alexbreanne.org
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Connecticut 29th, 30th & 31st Colored Regiments