Reading Public Library (1D) - Cato Eaton

The last document we will look at here is a probate record. Probate records are legal documents that contain a tally of owned property. Many probate records from colonial Reading have been digitized and can be found online and at the Reading Public Library. The 1772 probate record for Joshua Eaton Sr. shows the appraisal of his estate following his death at age 38. 

Take a look at the probate record. What do you see?

   (See transcript below. Note - monetary values are listed as pounds: schillings: pence)

As we have noticed, a “negro man named Cato,” is listed slightly more than halfway down the single-page record of Eaton’s property. Cato is entered as having a value of 60 pounds.  

Cato is itemized directly under Eaton’s “horses, oxen, cows, & swine,” and his name appears just above the “husbandry [utensils], cart and wheels, plows, [chains], and horse furniture.”  In 18th century Reading, Cato was comparable to non-human property. 

At 60 pounds, Cato equaled the value of approximately one-third of Eaton’s 70 acres of land.  Worth 9 pounds less than the farm animals, Cato was valued higher than the clothes, featherbeds, tables and chests, pewter and brass, and cooper’s tools combined.  

In spite of his status as property, Cato would have worked closely with Eaton at his Summer Avenue homestead on any number of labors including “farming, carpentry, and other tasks in the field, home, and barn.” It’s very likely that Cato lived and slept inside the Eaton home and was closely intertwined with the family, including Joshua Jr. 

Joshua Eaton Sr. did not leave a will and it is not entirely clear which Eaton family member owned Cato after his death. Cato appears to have remained in the family, whether immediate or extended, as he retained the surname Eaton in a military record of 1782.  

It is likely that Cato stayed on the family farm with Eaton’s widow Mary and her four children. Joshua Eaton Jr., after whom the elementary school is named, was fifteen at the time of his father’s death.  At that early age Joshua Jr. would have become the oldest free man in the house and probably still used the labors of Cato, with whom he would have been quite familiar.

As you will learn or have learned at the Town Common tour, Cato later played a key role in helping to meet Reading’s quota for military service in the American Revolutionary War. 

Local marriage records show that in 1783, the year the peace treaty was signed to end the American Revolutionary War, a Black man named Cato from Reading married Lucy Hay of Stoneham. Their son, Cato Jr., surname Freeman, was born on March 13, 1790.

As recently as a few years ago, historians of northern slavery note that enslaved people had largely disappeared from histories of the colonial era, but in recent years more of their stories are being researched and told. There are many more stories, like Cato’s to be uncovered and shared, and libraries like the Reading Public Library, archives, and digitized records available online, provide access to the documents that can help us uncover more about the Black and enslaved persons who made Reading home and contributed so much of their lives to the benefit of the town and its residents.

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To the Honorable Samuel Danforth, Esquire: Judge of Probates for the County of Middle, etc.

An Inventory of the Real and Personal Estate of Joshua Eaton

[sic] Late of Reading Deceased: taken by us the Subscribers the 

Fifth day of June: 1772

To the wairing apparil and the wach   14:8:4

To milliteary armes     1:4:0

To four feather beds there unto belonging bedsleds and cords and other furniture     22:0:0

To the Case of Draws chores and Looking glass available     3:12:7

To a desk and trunk     2:16:0

To Pewter and Brass     2:15:4

To the iorn ware framels [sic] pots knives and forks, etc.     2:11:8

To wooden ware and earthen ware and a lining wheal and a wooden wheel and a small looking glass     1:6:0

to tables and chests     0:10:0

to sheets table linen Napkins and Pillow boars     4:11:4

to flax: meal chests and baskets and meal bags     1:19:0

To Provisions in the house and food and cider and cider barrels and brine tubs washing tubs and fry cask to bake     9:4:0

To the quick slack horses oxen cows & swine etc.     69:15:8

To a Negro man named Cato     60:0:0

To the husbandry utensils cart and wheels plows chanes, etc. and horse furniture     11:7:4

To Coopers tools drilling lorry and belts and half an iron harrow     0:18:0

To English hay and meadow hay     5:18:8

To the Real Estate (viz): about 70 acres of land part moing land and part pasturing land lying in Reading being part of the Estate that was formerly Captain John Sawains and part of a barn apprised by deed at      186:13:4

To four acres of salt marsh lying in Medford appraised by deed at     32:0:0

June 9, 1772

                             Brown Emerson

                             John Goodwin           } Committee

                             Jonas Parker

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