Keeping the Primus Legacy Alive: A Conversation with Jesse Harris

[Music] Welcome to the Primus Project Podcast. The mission of the Primus Project is to explore the relationship between Trinity College, White supremacy and slavery. The purpose of this podcast is to empower the Trinity community to think through the college's challenging histories and begin efforts of repair. The Primus Project Podcast is recorded in Trinity's Rayther Library Studios in Hard for Connecticut. Hi, this is Scott. Nicole and I want to wish everyone a wonderful winter holiday season and a happy new year. Back in September, the Primus Project hosted a commemorative event celebrating the installation of a headstone for our namesake Rebecca Primus. Then in October, we sat down with Jesse Harris, a Primus family descendant, to hear about his family and his work keeping the Primus family history alive. Let's take a listen. On the afternoon of September 5th, more than 50 people gathered in Zion Hill cemetery on a sweltering hot day. I mean, I was sweating. I don't know. It was, it was really hot. But it was all worth it to celebrate the Primus family and its descendants. We all sat closely and neatly ordered rows, knees practically touching under a tent, listening intently to the words of our many speakers. Nicole was totally right. It was so hot that they, we ran out of water quick. There were people under the tent. There were people outside of the tent. We had about 50 altogether who showed up. And we listened to a variety of different speakers. Dr. Elizabeth Wei, from New York City, Dr. Reverend John Sellders, from Trinity College, Dan Lugo, the president of Trinity College, Susan Bysowitz, the Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut. With a real special part of the event was to hear from the descendants of the Primus family, the Harrises. What do we hear from Nicole? We heard from a variety of Primus family descendants, including the Reverend Dr. Gloria Harris-Kater, who opened the ceremony with a prayer, Jesse Harris, Jacqueline Harris, and Chaya Harris. Here's a clip from the Reverend Dr. Harris-Kater. Oh God, our Creator, the author and finisher of our lives, our protector and our provider. We come to you this afternoon, standing on the sacred ground. In Hartford, Connecticut, thanking you for the life and legacy of Miss Rebecca Primus. We know that Miss Primus or Aunt Becky, as my grandfather, Jesse called her, was a woman of faith. And she knew that God was her present help, a shelter from the storms of life and her hopeful future. During this ceremony, the descendant Jacqueline Harris imagined writing a letter in the voice of Rebecca Primus. Here's what she shared. It warms my heart to no end to see all of you gathered here and to know that my life and all of my efforts to fulfill my purpose mattered to you. The true teacher and student that I am, I understood the assignment. I did what I had to do. I always tried to be the best that I could be. It was very hard for a black, intelligent woman to take the space that she needed to live. But I survived and I thrived. I would do it all again if I could. It is up to you now. In this clip, Chaya Harris offers a personal window into the experience and the responsibility of being an educator in the Primus family. I'm also feeling really privileged and honored to be here today and it's kind of just hitting me. So good afternoon, my name's Chaya, I'm Jessie's daughter and growing up, learning from his examples of humility and compassion alongside my dedicated and steadfast aunts, becoming an educator myself, it's no surprise that the legacy of service that Rebecca left carried on through our ancestors. I will read a letter that Rebecca wrote in 1867 as published in Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends. In the final clip that we're going to share from the ceremony, Jessie Harris reads from the plaque installed by the Connecticut Freedom Trail at the Primus family resting ground. This sacred ground honors the Primus family whose lives stretched from the age of enslavement to the dawn of the civil rights era. Rebecca Primus, a courageous educator, taught newly freed people in the South after the Civil War. Her letters with Adi Brown remain one of the most intimate records of Black women's lives in 19th century America. Very beside her are her parents, Holdridge and Mahedible, who were pillars of Hopper's early Black community, along with nieces, Bessie and Edna, whose names had long gone unmarked. Her brother Nelson and artist, Rest in California, their ancestor, Gad Asher, an enslaved man, earned his freedom fighting in the Revolutionary War. Together, this story speaks of faith, education, family, and freedom. In 2025, the Harris family, descendants of this remarkable lineage and in partnership with Trinity College, restored these graves and reclaimed the chapter of the Connecticut's past. This place is not just a burial site. It is a living testament to Black resilience, memory, and hope. We were on the southwestern hill of Zion Hill Cemetery. It's a place that has the resting ground of the Primus family, which is one of Connecticut's most distinguished African American families, right? Their roots in the state reach way back, right, all the way to the mid-18th century. It's a really kind of peaceful site and if you haven't been there, the cemetery sits right next to Trinity College. It's beautiful. It's peaceful, serene. The City of Hartford takes great care of this site. And this particular site, the Primus family, resting ground holds generations of stories of people who shaped Black life in Hartford and New England through education and faith and public service and artistry. At this site, rests Holdred Primus, who was alive from 1815 to 1884, and his wife, Mahedabell Primus, 1817 to 1899. Their daughters, Rebecca Primus, Thomas 1837 to 1932, the namesake of the Primus project here at Trinity College. Her sister, Henrietta Primus Mitchell, 1839 to 1920, and Isabelle Primus Edwards, 1845 to 1920. There are also the granddaughters of Holdreds and Mahedabell, Bessie Edwards, 1850 to 1914, Edna Edwards, 1882 to 1955, and Lucille Edwards, 1877 to 1897, and Nelly Edwards Singleton, 1875 to 1932. These lives of the Primus family are people who bore witness to a powerful legacy of Black resilience of leadership of civic engagement in Connecticut, New England, and in the North. The event was called Markton Memory, attributed to the Primus family, however, Rebecca, who was a particularly esteemed and iconic member of the Primus family received special attention at the event. Due to her achievement as a premier educator throughout the 19th century, within the Black Public School System that existed in churches. She also went to Maryland during the Civil War. It's each recently freed men and women. I think the coolest part about history is that it finds meaning and purpose in everyday life. In this context, that's finding meaning and purpose in everyday Black life, which matters because we aren't often told the truth or facts are omitted about the inner lives of Black people. I think the memory of Rebecca Primus illustrates where a big heart and a dream can take you. The letters and writings that Rebecca Primus leaves behind gives us amazing insight into not just her everyday life, but also her emotional world, which I believe can be a rarity. In this way, studying and learning about Rebecca Primus sometimes feels like, you know, her personally, just because of how closely one gets to bond with her as we read her letters or learn about her passion, love, and dedication for teaching. At least that's what it's been like for me. In October, Nicole and I sat down in the studio with Jesse Harris, the Primus family descendant who's been leading the effort to keep the Primus family story alive. Over the last few months, we've gotten to know Jesse well, and this conversation reflects that. It's curious, it's wide-ranging, deeply personal. We talk about what drives his work and about the people he's determined to remember. Rebecca, of course, but also her parents, Haldridge and Mahedible, and one figure who too often gets left out of the conversation, Rebecca's brother Nelson Primus. Nelson lived from 1843 to 1916. He isn't buried at Zion Hill Cementary. He's buried in Coleman, California, and he was a noted portrait artist in his time. As you'll hear, Jesse is also working to track down Nelson's surviving artwork. Here's our conversation. So Jesse, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you grew up, what you do, and just anything you want our listeners to know about you and your family? Yeah, sure. I was born in Boston, 1956. How am I giving away my age? 1956 in Boston to Fletcher and Annabelle Harris. I am the youngest, the baby, of three children. Gloria and Jackie, my sister's, I had another sister in Merner. I'm sorry, another Cindy Trey, named Merner, and I still live in Boston in Dorchester with my wife Donna. We have three children, two boys and a girl, three adult children I should say. I gotta get this right sometimes. Three adult children and five grandchildren. I am semi-retired. I work at the Boston Globe part time where I've worked for 35 plus years on the copy desk. And prior to that, one of my Hartford connections is I went to, oh, I went to Northeastern University in Boston, attended Emerson College for about a semester. And I met my wife Donna at Northeastern and she went to We Law College. One of the things is in my newspaper career, my first co-operative education job at Northeastern was at the Hartford Current. When they still had the physical building, I think they still, do they still have the physical building? It was my first co-op job. I worked on it for three months and I work with another student and we worked on the obituary desk and it was a great, great job, a great learning experience. I learned how to type fast. I learned how to talk with people on the phone. It was a great training ground because that's where you need to get your facts right of names, dates, that kind of thing. So it's no surprise that you spend a good deal of your time walking around cemeteries in 25. Yeah, well, somebody's going to do it. You never know what you're going to find. So you were walking around the primus grounds. Yeah, I stopped early. As a matter of fact, I stopped up there before I came over here just to check to make sure everything's okay. It looks good up there too. Doing the event was a highlight and we all still talk about it. It was a great day and a great thing that we did to do that, get the recognition up there and that was, it was sorely needed, getting a stone there for Rebecca and for her two nieces and just recognizing the whole family and getting that whole area, like I say, recognized and cleaned up. Yeah. So people know it was there. It looks great. I'm the feedback from the event has been great and I keep on telling people you have to scan the QR code in the cemetery because then we get notified and it's one of the small joys in our digital lives. Yeah, I didn't work great too. And I have a message in my email that says you got to scan. Yeah, no, sorry. It's certainly wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. Scott, I'm doing great. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here with you and Nicole and like I've told you guys probably about 10 times before I love this campus. So this is great. So this is a, I'm hoping it's going to be inspiring also for me to talk and be able to discuss my family journey and discoveries and things I've sort of run into during this journey. Excellent. So I'm going to start us off today because it's something I've always been interested in because Jesse, you and I met through a mutual connection through a genealogist down by the shoreline and Connecticut who you were working with on another project. And so I've always known you as the Primus family descendant. But I'm wondering actually how, how you usually introduce that part of your self, your identity to people like do you just walk around the streets introducing yourself as a primus family descendant or you know, how does that work? Well, that's an interesting question. I, uh, some I have in the past. And I've also introduced myself as an ancestor of the primus family. I've introduced myself as part of the primus family. But I always make sure I try to explain it. So it makes sense to people, as opposed to saying, well, I'm like the grandson of Rebecca Perkins was my grand aunt. I always say, well, my grandmother, who was adopted pretty likely officially adopted into the Primus family around 1875, 1876. She's my grandmother, definitely. Now one of the reasons I've started, I've been working on my ancestry and going back, you know, and you know, putting together my family roots is that I do not know where my grandmother came from in terms of her parents. If she was adopted into the Primus family who were her biological parents, mother and father, where did they come from, where did she come from? So I use that as my starting point to both go forward with putting together my family with aunts and uncles and my grandfather and also going backwards in terms of trying to find out my grandmother's origins. So it can vary, it can vary, but I always say I am related to the primuses. Yeah, Nicole, what does this make you think about? I was just wondering when you first learned that you were related to Rebecca Primus? I first learned from the late great barber Beeching, was a historian at Trinity College and she did a lot of the, I'm going to say, grunt work and research, early research into the Primus family of hardware as part of her dissertation. Did she contact you? Yes, she did as a matter of fact and we happened to have a chance meeting at the Connecticut Historical Museum and we were both there on the same day and we got the chatting and she was telling me about her research and at the time I was telling her about my little scant research because I hadn't really done much at all because I didn't know where to start and we talked about it and she mentioned that she was working on the book and that she would send me a proof when she was, you know, ready to have it published and I said great, I'd appreciate that and she sent it to me I think was maybe a year, a year later and it was great and that's where our relationship showed a picked up and I was able to start to do more on my family history because barber had laid the groundwork and I was able to come down, visit the state archives, do some research on my own, there were more than once that I've spent several days in Hartford and I spent my days up at the state library just going through files and you know making my eyes heard and this and that but it was a good experience as a great experience for me because it helped me sort of learn to look into these things and the research and of course you know there are a lot of helpful people up there to get me through it and it kind of went from there and as I talked to my family more I was tough because both my mother and father had passed by then I really got into the research and it was hard to get information on the family and a lot of my aunts and uncles had already passed also before this sort of static clicking in my head the importance of collecting this information and sort of getting it in space but another thing that kind of got me going is my uncle Nat who had lived in New York City he had started a hundred years of the Harris family a little genealogy book of my grandfather my grandmother the all the kids pictures documents from my grandfather growing up and it was great it was a gold mine of information of my family of my aunts of my uncles where they lived where they were born which was critical information that got me going to and I was able to sort of build upon that so the work that my uncle and that had done and that people like Barbara Meaching had done gave me a springboard to do what I needed to do to sort of keep it going a little bit and it was great and I'll admit I had periods where I really couldn't do much because life you know life happened yeah I was married my wife is married we were both working raising kids and so you know sometimes some things have to take a little bit of a pause but I've never stopped looking or at least having things rolling around my head that I want to do at some point because I always want to get back into this because I knew things like the internet and I knew research had taken leaps and bounds to look up information so I know I would always get back to it I just didn't know quite when and that's that so Jesse I just want to take a moment to clarify a few things that you just said so so one especially for our listeners so Barbara Beechings masters thesis at Trinity College was in the history department graduate program that's the 1990s is that correct so right so you're dating we're going back to to the 1990s yes yes when you right start to come to that where were you at that time were you living in in Hartford like I because I know at one point you you did live in Hartford for a brief time right were you in Boston we're in Hartford where were you at that time when I met Barbara I was living in Boston okay and like I said we're raising a family raising kids but I had my my job my wife had her job so we were just kind of going going going and Barbara is also another person who really kept to it Barbara for for our listeners Barbara Beeching came to Trinity for her master's degree kind of later in life and she finished her her master's degree at Trinity then she went to Yukon and received her doctorate and then after that she publishes her first book on black history in Hartford in the 19th century in 2012 2013 when she's 86 years old at the time right she was actually quite a quite a figure groundbreaking like kind of energetic relentless in many ways and it's both amazing and not surprising given her thoroughness that she found you yeah so that's really interesting and the other thing I wanted to just talk about really quickly is that you mentioned you mentioned how Throneef who's your primus ancestor right was adopted into the family we're still and I'm I'm using this moment to give you a research update I've reached out to an expert indigenous genealogy in Connecticut just to try and get some help because one of the things that's really maybe a little extra fascinating about your lineage is that there's a long family history of of identifying Throneef as having some indigenous connections yes yes yeah is that correct that is true yes that is true and on a recent DNA test I had through ancestry.com there is a certain percentage of indigenous DNA in my system whatever you want to call it and so that that gives a little more ump to that theory and funny story is that one of my sisters used to mention that whenever my father would have have a couple of a couple of drinks that he would talk about my grandmother being an Indian princess and I was too young to sort of remember the stories but my sisters remember the stories and I'm sure you know it generate a little bit of a chuckle in the family but there's a better chance that that may have had some truth to it also and through some my own research you know in trying to track down my grandfather which is a my grandfather's a whole seems to be a whole nother story in himself from what I've been able to find about him what are you talking about Jesse he was a character so in tracking down you know more information about him I think there are a lot of possibilities out there but this whole tracking down my ancestors and genealogy and putting the family together it's a ever evolving kind of thing too and I'm always finding out new things it may take a few days or a couple months before I find out something but I find out things and I'm just sometimes I shake my head in wonder and sometimes I'll shake my head in a little but it's always it's always interesting to find out because it's it's part of your family and it's it's all part of you so it's important to know whether it's you know the good the bad or the ugly what did you find most fascinating I guess in your research most fascinating there have been a few fascinating things but I will I will tell you a great story oh who would be my great uncle Nelson primus Rebecca primus's brother who I believe has a at least as compelling or possibly more compelling story than Rebecca if you look at his whole his whole life he was a painter in Hartford and he moved to Boston lived in Boston for about 30 years before he moved out to to California Seattle he did one painting of I can't recall the gentleman's first name but his last thing was TAY TAY and he lived in Boston and as it turned out the portrait that Nelson did back in 1883 I believe was of his granddaughter TAY's granddaughter got in touch with Barbara because she's found a painting up in there this is the classic fine of painting up in the attic kind of story and who did the painting and we call her our sister she is our sister Janet and I don't think she'll get mad for me mentioning her name she had questioned her parents her father her mother what is painting come from and who did the painting and she's always been curious about the painting of her grandfather that they had and she did some research she got the name from her father of the artist who did it and it was like in a primus the person who did the portrait back in 1883 and she did some research she found out that Nelson primus was buried at Cyprus Lawn Cemetery in Colma, California and she also got in touch with Barbara Beeching through Barbara's book and she got the book read the book and she got back in touch with Barbara asking her were there any descendants around and wow Barbara passed on my name to Janet and Janet got in touch with me and we went back and forth with a couple of emails and we had a eventually we talked had a very very nice conversation and Janet is very very bubbly and very excited and I got a little excited too to be honest with you and we met eventually her and her husband they lived living in Florida at the time her husband Bill they came up the Boston for some other things and we met and we had a great lunch in Boston from then we've just been sort of the best of friends we call it a family ship and you know Janet is a sister to both myself and my wife Donna and it's been a great you know since then the portrait brought us together that's beautiful yeah yeah so it's a it's a great story it's a great story and we've been down the Florida to see both Janet and Bill Bill unfortunately passed away a couple years ago so we miss him but it's been a great story of us kind of coming together finding each other and like who knows a portrait done in 1883 or so would you know have the effect it does has had today where's the portrait now Janet still has the portrait her grandfather well you have this really cool painting from Nelson primus do you have any other like physical items from any primus family members or Rebecca primus herself I wish I did Nicole Rebecca primus address of hers that she had is currently at the Wadsworth Museum I'm not sure if it's on display it was on display last year so that's there it's a beautiful dress you know really so nicely preserved as you know for being close to 150 years old there are letters that Rebecca had written with her friend Addy Brown you know back between late 1850s up till like 1868 I believe part of those are at the Connecticut Historical Museum most of them are there are a few of them at Harvard University in Boston and I don't have any I wish I did but I don't have any but at least they do exist so it's nice to have you do have some images oh yeah I have images yeah yeah I have plenty of images yes I have which tons of images you know but actual images like from the 19th century right those cards those cards are from that moment right so you do have pieces you know I would presume at some point right those were in family hands like yes so yes so yeah I mean it's pretty amazing that you have that it's pretty amazing that we still have the dress for instance is really phenomenal I would love to know if you know please let us know right now like how that dress was preserved like who took the steps to bring that into an archive how did it wind up in the ones worth yeah that's a really good question I know one of Rebecca's son in laws no I'm sorry the husband of one of her nieces Edward Singleton I believe he was living with Rebecca at Adelaide Street when Rebecca passed in 1932 so I'm not sure what prompted him to do that I don't know if it was a matter of he did it I don't know maybe have some finances because they are they're all really poor then I don't know how I was supposed to describe it so I don't know if he did it out of a need for some money or if he thought it would be great if we could preserve this and the same with the letters I'm not sure how that happened but I read in Barbara's book that the letters initially had ended up in a hobby shop in Hartford I can't recall the name of it but was some sort of a hobby shop and they kind of went from there but how the progression from the family to where they ended up I don't know I don't have a clean yeah no I mean it's always it's always very interesting to try to understand the how items end up in an archive and in this particular instance right how how these really central and important parts of black history and as you said when right by the time by the time you hit the 1930s Rebecca no longer has that economic status that she enjoyed during the 19th century or from parts of it right and so even if the wads worth or some in between between the wads worth and the family you know thought they were economically valuable like would pay for for these artifacts even that's fascinating too like well how they gained in value over time even in 1930 or you know 1940 or how these how these letters wind up in a hobby shop and at the very least somebody's recognizing some value in them and then thankfully thankfully thankfully they wind up actually in an institution that can at least care for them and sustain them over time and have digitized them as well right we should point that out both the Harvard letter and the Connecticut former Connecticut historical now Connecticut museum both have have digitized those writings and they were very accessible to people and one of the great things as I but I have pictures I have the original pictures and it's I have a whole book of pictures of people from that era but I don't know who they all are meaning my sister's that made some guesses I'm pretty sure one of them is Nelson primus a younger Nelson primus I can't be sure of course where my sister is definitely sure that one of them is a younger throny primus like grandmother as a maybe a teenager and we have various other pictures of older people younger people a couple of babies and I wish I knew who they were and I've sort of scoured and I've asked I've checked with the Boston Public Library a couple of times to see if they may know or have any information on I've asked about because like I said Nelson primus he lived in Boston for about 30 years and I have a picture of his daughter Lila that I found in the Boston Public Library which is great are these pictures like definitely something that you want to keep to your family like in the photo album with your family or do you see yourself putting in museums along with other items that's a great question for now I want to keep everything in the family because we don't have much like I said the dress is out there the original letters are out there and a lot of getting back to Nelson's portraits he did a lot of portraits a lot of portraits and he lost didn't you tell me an estimate once of how many he lost in the in the earthquake yes in the fire yes earthquake in the fire yes had to be where was the earthquake in the school so one of the things we haven't said is that Nelson separates himself from the rest of the from the Hartford Center of the primus family you may know why he does that or why he doesn't do that well there's really no clear reason but in his letters and in a couple of his letters back home to his parents he mentioned specifically he did not want them to let people know that he was in Boston or give him his address but he didn't say why he just I guess he just sort of maybe want his own life he is an interesting character I mean he was married and he had Lila his daughter but he always the art was always with them in his head and I think at times it might have consumed him too because I think he was always thinking about it you know doing it art doing a portraits he did a lot while he was in Boston he did a few religious figures family which I think I'm pretty sure our private family collections in Boston he did a really really nice portrait of a fellow by name of Father Fitton who hangs now in Holy Cross College in Worcester wow yeah it's a really nice portrait I haven't seen it but I've seen pictures of it it's a really nice portrait you haven't gone to Worcester you you have gone everywhere did you have the way I have to call you out on the back of my family eventually you know maybe I'll stop him on the way home and like the portraits he did while he was living in Seattle and in San Francisco and I know there are a few in private collections around the country and I remember my wife and I don't when we were out in San Francisco not too long ago he had a collector no I'm sorry and that's not same yeah I'm in San Francisco in Oakland the Oakland Art Museum they have one of his original poigets it's not on display it's in the back room for some reason and I check with them well I do you plan on putting on display at some point and they said no and I haven't really gotten a straight answer why they're not so I said well if I come out there one of these days would it be possible for me to see it maybe so we'll we'll when I cross that bridge we'll see what happens but they're at the Savannah School of Art and Design in Savannah and Georgia there's a private collector down there who has a few of his portraits so there there are a few of them around yeah they're a few of them around that's great I would love to get my hands on one of them so I'm holding out hope by accident it just happened to run across one or somewhere along the way but but he did he did a lot of work with that yeah so we talked about a little bit about Rebecca we talked about Throneve we've talked about Nelson they're kind of all although Throneve is younger than Rebecca and Nelson they're still kind of all in this same generation but you know the family goes back to Ham Primus who is his house you've been involved in trying to save and and turn into some kind of historical place to gather to museum who knows what will come of it but that whole line obviously extends through several generations in Connecticut I'm just wondering like if I can give you 10 minutes with like a high school audience in Connecticut right what chapter of the Primus story would you tell would it be Nelson would it be Rebecca would it be Ham would it be Gad Asher would it be you well I definitely wouldn't be named I am I am the least exciting ball this I think I would tell the chapter of the Primus is in Hartford between 1850 and maybe 1880 if that's possible because I think that that's a key part of doing a lot going on between a Holdrich Primus and his his work Holdrich's is Rebecca's father right between Holdrich between Rebecca Nelson the other two daughters Isabelle and Henrietta they're growing up and their mom and their mom had a ball in her and the head was a seamstress but she's also very involved she does get involved with you know a variety of organizations that are involved with educating the Friedman like she's she's sitting on the on the board of institutions that are sending Rebecca down to to Maryland right to teach recently Fried population right right and they they've opened up their house to a lot of women in the area young women in the area like a like Adi Brown teaching them the Mexican skills the seamstress cooking all that kind of stuff and helping them pretty much have a life in a troubled time and opening up their house to them they had a piano in the house I found out which is pretty standard for a white middle class family but for a black middle class family right it's just that it is you know they had an economic comfort that was unusual for that moment right that actually is a question that's been on my mind as we're talking is like where does the family get their wealth from because I know that for the average black family in America during the time that's kind of like rare just because you know it's coming out of slavery and I mean of course black people are building lives for themselves like in the reconstruction era but could you speak to true well I think hold it for lack of a better word I think he worked his ass off and you know raising his family so do we have to believe that I'm not sure I think we're sure he worked he worked very hard raising the family he was very well respected by his employers too I mean he had quite a bit of responsibility in terms of handling orders handling deliveries and people seem to like from what I've read people seem to like working with him and he was so trusted by his employees that he actually went to San Francisco with one of the owners and I think they spent like five years out in San Francisco with the business eventually he had to come back you know to Hartford of course but by that time his wife my headable she kind of had things going to she was just sort of rolling along so to speak and they were doing anything they were doing anything I mean they're a big part of the community you know among the black community even though they you know where they were living was mostly a white neighborhood I believe at the time they was still very involved with the black community and with the church and this is Talcott Street Congregational which is earlier today Jesse took a walk to downtown Hartford to try and find the original site and he was there he was there he was looking for a plaque that doesn't exist yet it's common it's common but yeah the family was a were longtime members of the Talcott Street Congregational Church and that may even be one of the reasons of how Rebecca winds up in Zion Street and cemetery is that longstanding relationship with the church that they were willing to find a way to get her into the family plot in the 1930s when the family no longer had the means to to have access to right right and I think that was another thing with the primus family plot in Zion is quite large so I'm guessing maybe holdage may have something to do with that and maybe help maybe from some a couple of his son-in-law's who are also seem to be very prominent in the community you know they worked at the travelers insurance company they were they had what we would consider today sort of menial jobs as messengers and greeters but back then they were the best damn messengers and the best damn greeters that you can have on your business and people loved them people respected them and they worked their asses off of course they made their way they made their way as tough as it was and as many obstacles as a both you know subtly and obviously faced along the way they made their way so I'm happy with that I'm proud to be associated with that because I think it carries over to the generations do you see this hardworking spirit continue to influence your family yes I do I do yeah with me and my children yeah my whole family my my wife I think we sort of rub off on each other and being sometimes we call it being overly responsible but yeah the hard work does pay off but you do what you got to do to make things better and I appreciate what the primuses have done over the years and what they did because it it helps me eventually to be where I am and in terms of my life so Jesse you talked about this kind of long arc of your exploration of your of your family history at what point did it maybe it hasn't right but at what point did it stop being a kind of personal genealogy project and become more of I'm gonna call it more of a moral commitment a civic commitment because you you have become I mean it obviously this dates back all the way to Barbara Beaching but you have become the go to but when somebody does a primus event they're going to reach out to you and and you're there like you make sure that you're available and you drive to events and you support events and you you do press when people ask you to do press you worked with the Connecticut Freedom Trail to get the primus family in a variety of different ways on the Connecticut Freedom Trail so at what point during this long journey did it really start to become this commitment and you know less maybe never less of family exploration but it becomes more of this public facing mission that's really an excellent question I think it's always been there but it's it's it's taken on a lot of new meaning since mid 2023 and I say mid 2023 is when my sister Jackie led me to her nautical about the hand primus house in gilford and I said why see what's this all about and I read the article I said oh I said oh and I I said a lot of ooze because it took me by surprise and I said oh this is really interesting and I got in touch with the reporter who wrote the story and I'm not sure if she quite believed me in beginning when I told her who I was and she directed me to Tracy Thomas Ellie in gilford one of the world's greatest genealogists and Joel Hylander a architectural genius and I got in touch with them through emails and we sort of went back and forth and they both seem very excited but I actually existed that there was a descendant who existed and you know night I told them my you know who exactly I was I didn't say well I'm a blood relative of the primus is I said well my grandmother was adopted into my family so you know I believe being honest right from the beginning just so they'll know and we just kind of went up from there and since you know the thing with the house came up and sort of like as Scott had mentioned working on you know preserving it and Tracy encouraged me to join the Connecticut freedom trail which has been I can't say enough about the members of the freedom trail it's been great to work with them a really great great great great group of people I enjoy going to the monthly meetings meeting them in person when I can I feel a little handcuffed every now and then for some of the events that go on in Connecticut me being in Boston there are actually a couple of events we've come down to my wife and I but there are more that we would like to attend if we could but just being a member of the committee and the help and advice and import that I've gotten from them has been fantastic and I can't say enough about that so since the house I've discovered the house and primus house my level has been sort of up here that way I feel that this is very very important what I'm doing the work that I'm doing it's great for the family my sisters are very appreciative and happy you know and they've they've been discovering things along with me my whole family's been discovering things along with me and you know when I find something new I have to I have to go running to my wife and say oh look at it you know yeah this is great and she says oh wow that's good and she she'll sit there and listen she's been very very supportive I can't complain one bit so it's at this level when things come up like when Scott mentions that somebody wants me for something or has some information they want to share or ask me about something or somebody all he's willing to be out there always willing to be out there because the stories need to be told and they need to be retold and retold to try to keep them out there because it's important you know especially in this this time and age when certain pressures are out there to try to you know that's not that important it's not that important we can let's let's shut this down for a while no no we don't need to shut it down we need to probably bring them out even more you know just so people don't forget I see that as part of my I won't call it well it could be a little bit of a calling it's not a job although I do complain it looks like a job for my for my perspective and I've watched you work and I know what time I get emails from you I don't tell you it looks like a job I do complain about it every now and then but in the end I'm enjoying what I'm doing you know and it's giving me more of a purpose in life and I enjoy giving voice to my my grandparents my great-grandparents my great-great-great-grandparents and also my aunts and uncles several of whom I've never met in life but I know they're they're out there and they in a sense I think they appreciate what I've done you know sometimes I joke that I wish that they were taught to me and I'm not afraid from that I would like just because I know it I want to know yeah is this really you or is this somebody else you know and we get a little silly like that but overall I just I'm happy with what I'm doing do you feel like you know them personally at this point a few of them yes I'm getting to that point like I said my grandfather but they have so many kids yeah yeah I have to kind of go back and forth between each kid and try to find a little more about the person but with my grandfather I've been sort of trying to trace his life from when he was born and actually how he got to Hartford to meet his first wife who's not my grandmother my grandmother was his second wife so how did my grandfather end up in Hartford from Virginia and met her but they get married at the primus house so he has that connection or she has that connection to the primus family even before he marries my grandmother so when he gets married to my when he gets married to his first wife my grandmother is living in the house and so I'm saying sounds like a little family drama yeah it sounds a little yeah you know what kind of relationship is this you know in how did grandpa get the Hartford that's what I'm trying to figure out right now how do you get the Hartford from from Hampton then from Hampton and I know oh I know how you got from Hartford to Boston but just figuring out that progression between him being born in Virginia Steven's built Virginia and getting to Hampton and tenting Hampton graduating Hampton being an active member of the alumni association I found several articles where he is heading in some committee to build a new gym and listen that and trying to call in all members to do this and that and at some point he was working in Buffalo in the Europe at a train car company he led to the train car company but I think was for a short while so just connecting all of those dots with his life and he was he was big in politics in Everett where they ended up Everett massachusetts he ran for the school committee a couple of times he was the first black man to run he didn't make it I don't think but he was still very involved with the schools in Everett between like 1912 and mid-19 mid to late 1920s where all the kids were going to school my father was one of the last ones attending the Everett public schools so he really really interesting characters I think I know a lot more about him I think right now than really anybody else but I want to get to know the rest of the family too and try to get more insights into their daily lives if you could create a plaque for an unmarked spot tomorrow where would it go who would it celebrate what would it celebrate you know in the larger primus family history at this at this moment because we just we just created we just created a great plaque now so maybe that's not a great question but on your mind right now like do you have a next project of where you want to put a plaque I couldn't get in trouble thanks for talking about it well I would eventually like to get a plaque at the hand primus house gilford and that that depends on a lot of things too you have to kind of see how that goes but that hand primus house continues to stand it's yes yes project one yes yes yes but I have I have a little something rolling around back in my head we we mentioned off the year the Rebecca primus school site and royal oak Maryland where I thought about the possibility of maybe looking into a plaque for that space but then you know sometimes how my mind works I'm I'm thinking a little beyond that I think that well wouldn't be great if we could recreate her school on the site wouldn't that be something wouldn't that be a nice project you know that yes yeah that would be an amazing project yeah no you're not in trouble that would be amazing that that would be absolutely amazing that would be amazing that would be amazing now we know what to get chia is the hand primus house currently being used or does it just stand as a house that's being honored and it's just stands as a house it would be so interesting if that could be turned into a museum yes it wouldn't be we've we've definitely had those conversations what we don't have is those dollars yeah yeah we certainly know like that's that's kind of what's standing in the way right and the fact that the state still wants to do the dam project I'm not sure what that stands at the moment right just as a quick this kind of came into public consciousness because the town was going to tear the house was going to be torn down as part of a a traffic rearrangement like roads are going to we're going to move and then the dam was was coming down right it's yeah we're going to rebuild it oh they're going to rebuild dam right and and the roads were going to be rerouted as well and the primus house is in the way and so you know there was this great effort to save it and hopefully save it on site even just move it but this status is still uncertain saved for now but uncertain in the longer I think is the way kind of the way to put it so yeah no a plaque there would be great a school I mean we can put a school in honor of Rebecca in Hartford too like yeah like there are plenty of spaces that that would be certainly welcome but you know it is preserving these sites in the long run like in the short term getting a plaque up I don't want to say it's simple because we've just done some work and it's not simple right but trying to think in the longer term over generations of how how to institution build you know create enough institution around some of the primus historical sites that's a much bigger challenge that's why it's great that the letters are in an institution that hopefully will be around for a while right I mean so some of those markers can be around but it is an interesting question like 20 years from now you know how does this family history stay and stay vibrant because it is vibrant but as Jesse noted earlier right it has to be told and retold and shared right and that is both the challenge and the beauty of summer's work right yeah it is a challenge it is a challenge but I mean it's a good challenge and I'm willing to keep it going because anytime anybody asks me I'm willing to tell them the story you know I've told people many stories and it's good it's great I mean people are already interested and they say okay well tell me to stop if you want me to stop talking yeah I'm learning to stop talking so I'm learning yeah my wife says I at one point you didn't talk enough from now you're talking too much it's a well you know hey you know how I go I'm getting older so I just I just kind of go on and on and on to see pictures from the event including the headstone visit our Instagram page at primus project Trinity don't forget to follow there are also a variety of really great resources to learn more about the primus family and Rebecca primus Barbara Beeching who was once a master's student at Trinity College wrote hopes and expectations on black middle class life in Hartford so grab a copy of hopes and expectations which has some really great material on the primus family there's also beloved sisters and loving friends another book this one by scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin which focuses on Rebecca's life through the remarkable correspondence she had with her romantic partner Addy Brown the letters between these two women really provide an intimate and a rare look into black women's lives and community and love in the 19th century to continue engaging with this history search the Connecticut Freedom Trail for the two primus sites the primus family resting ground at Zion Hill cemetery in the Ham Primus house in Gilford Connecticut visit these places engage with these places because that's how black history comes alive the research of the primus project was made possible by the Henry Louis foundation and at Trinity College the office of the president the office of the dean of the faculty and the public humanities collaborative please search primus project Trinity College in your browser to find more information about the project including its researching contact details thank you for listening to the primus project podcast we look forward to connecting with you in our upcoming episodes