This site includes several buildings owned by Peter Rich, Sr. patriarch of the first family of color to live on Summer Street. Rich had been born a slave in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and likely came to Worcester with his mother as the property of Judge Timothy Paine and wife, Madam Paine, the former Sarah Chandler. After the ending of slavery in Massachusetts, Peter Rich would ultimately through his industry acquire one, then multiple properties on what was then Back Street. He and his family, for several generations, became one of Worcester’s more prosperous families of color.
Francis A. Clough, a Boston native, relocated to Worcester in the late 1840s and married Harriet B. Rich, daughter of Peter Rich Sr. In 1854, Peter Rich Sr. died in Worcester, ninety-three years old, as the respected head of a large and extended family, successful and prosperous African Americans by local standards. He and his family was actively involved in community efforts to establish a “colored” church at Worcester.
Peter Rich’s parents may have both been slaves in Lancaster, owned by town resident David Osgood. Rich was probably a child of Phyllis and Pompey baptized in 1773, when he was twelve years old, in the southwestern district of Lancaster. [In 1781, this district was separated from Lancaster to create Sterling, a new township.] Although his childhood cannot be documented, Rich may have been raised in Lancaster with his mother. She may have preceded him to Worcester or brought young Peter with her when she became the property of the prominent Paine family at Worcester.
A young adult at Worcester, Peter Rich married and started his family. Through hard work as a day laborer, he began acquiring property; by the time of his death, Rich and his children and grandchildren owned real estate at the heart of the city’s African American community. Many other people of color at Worcester were their tenants. His daughters and numerous granddaughters married new arrivals at Worcester; as underwritten and assisted by Rich, these relatives were the majority of Worcester’s barbers through 1840s and 1850s. In many ways, Rich and his family exemplify the experiences of other Worcester County people of color liberated from bondage, who became active participants in building regional communities in the antebellum period.
Sylvia Powers Rich, Peter’s wife from Gloucester may or may not have been connected to Essex County slave families. At Worcester between 1792 and 1818, Rich and his wife Sylvia, however, had eleven children, Rich spent much of his adult life in Worcester working at odd jobs or as a “mechanic,” employed by prominent Worcester individuals like Levi Lincoln and William Waldo. Isaiah Thomas also frequently employed Rich or members of his family in the period 1816 through 1828.
On Nov. 2, 1816, the diary Thomas maintained read paid, “Peter Rich, cutting canal 18.50.” Other entries include: on June 3, 1817, paid “Peter Rich 2 dollars, Fish 37½. 2.37½;” on June 6, 1817, paid “Peter Rich balance of work in Garden 9.23;” on Nov. 18, 1827, “Rich for leveling gravel at Tomb 3.00;” on May 3, 1819, “Hired a man to finish digging the garden —Peter Rich’s son;” on May 25, of the same year, “Paid Rich for work in garden 1.00;” on April 13, 1827, “Peter Rich & Andrew [Green] began working in the garden;” on April 16, 1828, “Peter Rich began working in the Garden;” and, lastly, on April 16, 1828, paid “Peter Rich, work in the garden 4.00.”
These details, in many ways characteristic of the mundane precision of the Thomas diary, provide insight into the labor of a jobber at this time in Worcester history. To contextualize these wages in terms of Worcester’s community of people of color, George Lynde, for example, could acquire a parcel of land for $75 in 1799. In the following year, for $40 he could buy additional land. Along with Bristol Green [who also worked for Isaiah Thomas] and Peter Rich, Lynde became one of the town’s three colored property owners.
He may or may not have had musicianship among his ‘odd jobs’ since Christopher Baldwin, the librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, reports attending an ‘evening’ in 1831, where Nero Powers, the son-in-law of Peter Rich, on the fiddle, and “old Peter Rich,” on tambourine, were “the Musick.”
During the last year of his life, his son-in-law, Francis A. Clough, who was active in Zion affairs, along with William H. Brown, from Worcester, participated as delegates to the State Convention of Colored People of Massachusetts, held Jan 2, 1854, in Boston. And, in 1858, in New Bedford, Ebenezer Hemenway from Worcester, whose family was also actively involved as Zion parishioners, was elected one of the vice presidents and steering committee members, along with such nationally known activists as W. C. Nell and Lewis Hayden, of the Convention of Colored Citizens of Massachusetts.
Christopher Baldwin, for example, jotted in his diary in 1832, “the black population of Worcester (there are fifty) is temperate and industrious and they are as much attached to the soil of New England as any descendant of puritans.”
Against this backdrop of paternalism, Rich and his family bought real estate, sold properties and also provided housing to other members of the community of people of color, all of their properties in a once more isolated section of the Worcester village known as Back Street, later to become Summer Street. Their real estate holdings abutting other family properties, they lived in a series of buildings near where the contemporary Summer Street runs into a rotary at Washington Square, along the route of Interstate 290. Here, during Peter Rich’s lifetime, three generations of his family, in-laws and “boarders” or other families or individuals in Worcester’s small colored community lived their lives. Around Rich and his family, either in their properties on Summer Street or Pine Street [the contemporary Shrewsbury St., in the period discussed site of one of Worcester cemeteries], which met Summer Street in Washington Square, Worcester’s first area of neighborhood of people of color would assemble
For example, in the year 1828, the first published Worcester village directory Rich is listed owning four dwelling occupied by his large family and tenants.
Location Owner Occupants
17 Summer St. Peter Rich Jonas Brooks
18 Summer St. Peter Rich Nancy Rich Powers
19 Summer St. Peter Rich Peter Rich
20 Summer St. Peter Rich Peter Rich Jr.
Mechanics St. Heywood Heirs H. Heminway
By the 1840s, however, this small clustering of families had become a significant neighborhood or district, concentrating Worcester’s people of color, sometimes, many members of the community living in the houses of Peter Rich. As other people of color began moving Pine Meadow [later Pine Street] near the Rich properties a neighborhood was in formation. By 1844, for example, of some thirty-two people of color listed in the town directory, ten of these individuals lived in Rich properties [almost a third of the entire town’s people of color] on Summer Street and an additional nine individuals were on Pine Street, together totaling some 59% of all of the people of color listed for the year 1844. An outline of Worcester’s colored residence patterns for the 1840s can perhaps be easily illustrated in the accompanying table. In this graphic are represented, year by year, the number of individuals living in Rich houses on Summer, the number living on Pine Street, the total “colored” population of Worcester and what percentage of the population was represented by combined Pine and Summer Street residents. The importance of the Rich family in the creation of this neighborhood, is illustrated in the accompanying table.
| Year | Sum | Pine | # | Tot | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1844 | 10 | 9 | 19 | 32 | 59 |
| 1845 | 10 | 9 | 19 | 29 | 66 |
| 1846 | 16 | 12 | 28 | 40 | 70 |
| 1847 | 15 | 8 | 23 | 31 | 74 |
| 1848 | 12 | 15 | 27 | 32 | 84 |
| 1849 | 8 | 17 | 23 | 36 | 64 |
| 1850 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 33 | 45 |
In addition to tenants, the large family of Peter Rich occupied the Rich properties. While Peter Rich saw his two of his sons marry and start families in Worcester, Peter Rich Jr., marrying three times, it is through marriages of his daughters Nancy, Rebecca, Ann, Harriet, and Mary that the Rich family became connected to a large portion of Worcester’s community.
Additionally, in 1850, at a time when barbering offered consistent and higher status employment for men of color in Northern communities, some twenty-two “colored” males are listed in the town directory, nine of these individuals barbers or hairdressers. Among the barbers are Bazzil Barker, Francis Clough, William Perkins and Austin White, who all married female members of the Rich family. Further, Alfred Toney and William Jankins had lived in Rich properties in the 1840s, while the remaining three individuals listed as barbers or hairdressers were employed at the barbershop owned jointly by Francis Clough, a son-in-law of Peter Rich, and William Jankins.
In the period from 1790 to 1800, however, there were ten births and two marriages of people of color in Worcester, three of these births were in the Rich family. In the period from 1800 to 1810, there are five marriages and fifteen births in the community, five of these records for members of the Rich family. In the period from 1810 to 1820, there are a total of seventeen records for people of color, six of these for the Rich family. From 1820 to 1830, only two of some thirteen records are for the Rich family. In the period from 1830 to 1840, however, nine of fifty-three records are for the Rich family and the period from 1840 to 1850, some ten of sixty-five records involve the Rich family. And, finally, in the period from 1850 to 1860, some fifteen of seventy-eight records or some 16 percent of births, deaths and marriages in Worcester’s colored community involve the members of the family of Peter Rich.
Or, viewed from another perspective, in 1850, when there were 144 people of color in Worcester, in twenty-seven households, some four of these households, part of the Rich family, contained twenty-three persons or 15.99 percent of Worcester’s “colored” people. In 1855, households part of the Rich family constituted eleven percent of the Worcester’s “colored” community. In 1860, individuals connected to the Rich family were ten percent of all people of color at Worcester.
Through all these connections, Francis Clough was a prosperous barber. Probate and real estate records confirm that he and his family lived at a higher standard of living than did a majority of African Americans at Worcester. The Cloughs, however, were not able to escape pulmonary infections that decimated the community:
Charles W. Clough, m[ulatto], 20-11-1, single; barber; Summer St.; (Worcester; Francis A. Clough (Boston) & Harriet R. [Rich] Clough (Worcester); consumption: Dec. 24, 1860, MS Worcester Deaths, vol. 1, 135
Harriet B. Clough, b[lack], 51-10-13; married: wife Francis Clough; 109 Summer St.; (Worcester); Peter Rich (Lancaster) & Sylvia Rich (Dorchester); consumption: Jan. 3, 1870, MS Worcester Deaths, vol. 2, 109
Harriet Rich and Francis Clough had a large family. Their son Benjamin Clough was one of the first men of color to carry the mail in Worcester. Their daughter Jennie Cora Clough was the first African American to graduate from a Worcester high school. She went on to graduate from the Worcester Normal School, became a schoolteacher and married George Busby who when elected to the City Board of Aldermen, became the first person of color part of Worcester government.
Francis Clough remained involved with the church until his death. His children and grandchildren continued the family association with A.M.E. Zion