47 Division Street: The Peter Bours House
By: Michael J. Simpson, M.A., A.M., & Fred Zillian, PhD
The Peter Bours House at 47 Division Street in Newport, Rhode Island, stands as a complex symbol of American history. Built around 1760 by a merchant and slave trader, the home was once the site of enslavement, where at least three African individuals, Moll, Bell, and Pomp, may have been held as property. Yet, in the decades that followed, this same space was transformed by Newport’s Black community into a site of education, music, and mutual aid. Free and enslaved Black residents, including the renowned music teacher Newport Gardner, held religious gatherings here and gave lessons within its walls. A school for Black children operated in the house during the late 18th century, and several leaders of the Free African Union Society, the first Black mutual aid organization in the United States, gathered inside as well. This layered history reveals how a home built on human bondage became a center for Black
self-determination and community resilience.
Peter Bours I, Esq. (c. 1706 – September 20, 1761) was a slave trader and colonial politician, who served two separate terms as the Speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, once from 1744 to 1746, and again from 1757 to 1759.¹ Between 1733 and 1736, he financed three separate “triangle” voyages from Newport to West Africa and then on to Saint John, Antigua. Each voyage embarked about 150 enslaved people, making Bours responsible for trafficking at least 450 people. One of Bours’ fellow investors was George Scott, who also captained one of the 1733 voyages.² Scott famously survived a slave revolt aboard the vessel Little George in a voyage to Gambia financed by the “enormously wealthy merchant” Godfrey Malbone just two years prior in 1731.³
The Rhode Island Slave History Medallion installed at the Peter Bours House.
The will of Peter Bours I (Esq.), dated September 30, 1761, confirms his ownership of at least three enslaved individuals. It also includes references to the purchase and transfer of an unnamed “Negro” to his sons. In the accompanying estate inventory, these individuals are listed in stark terms, sandwiched between furniture and household linens: “a woman Moll … a girl Bell … a Negro Man Named Pomp [or Pompe].”⁴ The placement underscores how enslaved people were legally categorized as property, rather than recognized as human beings.
Reverend Peter Bours II (c. 1726 – February 24, 1762) was born the son of Peter Bours I, Esq. and his wife, Anne Fairchild, in Newport, Rhode Island. In 1747, Bours II graduated with an A.B. from Harvard College, and later received a Master’s degree. He traveled to England briefly to preach there before returning to New England to St. Michael’s parish in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1753. That fall, he married Abigail Hazard, of Newport, Rhode Island. Nine years later, “after a very short illness,” Rev. Bours died in Marblehead, where he was buried.⁵ His wife then returned to her family hometown in Newport, where the next year she remarried to Rev. Samuel Fayerweather. Rev. Fayerweather, originally from Boston, was the minister of the Second Congregational Church until 1754, when he was replaced by Ezra Stiles.⁶
St. Michael’s parish in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Thus, the home may have been originally built by Peter Bours I following his second term as Speaker, and when he died in 1761, it passed to his first born son, Bours II, who then passed it to his wife Abigail (Hazard) Bours when he died in the following year. The widow Bours then married the Reverend Fayerweather, and soon moved to Narragansett, leaving the Bours house vacant for rent.⁷ Upon recommendation from Benjamin Franklin, Trinity Church began the process of opening a school for free and enslaved Black children under the tutelage of the Reverend Thomas Pollen. Rev. Pollen, however, left that same year for Jamaica, and was replaced by the Reverend Marmaduke Browne. Rev. Browne picked up the project where it left off, opening the school in 1762, perhaps in conjunction with Peter Bours I.⁸ As an Anglican, the now-deceased Bours had been following Rev. Pollen’s plan from within the congregation, and may have offered up his home as a dying wish.⁹
Painting of Reverend Peter Bours II (c. 1726 – February 24, 1762) by Joseph Blackburn
Mary Howland married Dr. John Brett in 1739, and served as the Trinity Church’s schoolmistress for free and enslaved Black children beginning in 1762 until at least 1775, and continued to tutor until her death in 1800 at 85.¹⁰ Her annual salary from the church was twenty pounds, though her tenure was not without “complaints of negligence” from the Rev. Browne who found Mrs. Brett to be “too much disposed to earn her money without exertion.” In March of 1773, the overall school attendance was low, so the church’s new minister, Reverend George Bisset, took out an ad in the Newport Mercury.¹¹ It read:
“Newport, August 3rd, 1772.
NOTICE is hereby given to the public, that a SCHOOL will be opened on Monday the 10th inst. by Mrs. Mary Brett, at her home in the High Street, nearly opposite to the house of Judge Johnston, for the instruction of thirty negro children, gratis, in reading, sewing, &c. agreeable to a benevolent institution of a company of gentlemen, in London. N.B. The said school is now under such regulations, that it is not doubted
but satisfaction will be given to those who may send their young blacks.”¹²
By the fall, the school had an average of about seventeen or eighteen students. However, the increase was not enough for Rev. Bisset, and he took out an advertisement in the Newport Mercury that reads much more like a threat to the community of Newport;
“WHEREAS a school was established, several years past, in the town of Newport, by a society of benevolent clergymen of the church of England, in London, with a handsome fund for a mistress to instruct thirty Negro children, in reading, sewing, &c. And whereas it hath hitherto been found difficult to supply the said school with the number of children required notice is hereby given to the public, that the said school is now kept by Mrs. MARY BRETT, in high-Street, nearly opposite to judge Johnston’s, and is open to all societies in the town, to send their young blacks, to the said number of thirty : And provided that the number cannot be nearly kept up for the future, the gentlemen to whose care and direction the said school has been entrusted, will be obliged to give it up entirely at the expiration of six months.”¹³
By the 1780s, the house began to be referred to as the “Bella Bouse house.” This name may derive from “Bell” or “Bella,” the enslaved girl listed in Peter Bours’s 1761 will.¹⁴ While there is no direct evidence that Bella lived in the house, the persistence of her name suggests how the presence and labor of enslaved Black individuals remained etched into the identity of the property long after their names faded from written records. Under 16 in 1761, Bella Bours would be in her 30s in the 1780s, and one possibility is that she managed the building on behalf of Trinity Church and the widow Bours. This would explain why the building was used for meetings of the Free African Union Society and as a rental space for music lessons from famed African composer Newport Gardner.¹⁵ Thus, the relevance of the house to Black history stems not only from the enslaved Africans whose slavesholder owned this house but also to the free Black peoples who met at the residence and eventually established the first Black mutual aid society in America.
The Free African Union Society was organized in the home of Abraham Casey on Levin Street, Newport, on November 10, 1780. The issues it addressed included repatriation to Africa, the education of Black youth, the improvement of burial proceedings, the religious health of the Black community, and financial assistance to those in need. All members were required to pay dues and be upstanding members of their community. Similar societies were formed in Providence, Philadelphia (1787), and Boston (1796), but Newport’s was the first free Black association in the United States.¹⁶ Unlike white associations of the time, the society had no restrictions based on occupation, religion, or ethnicity, and enslaved men were not restricted from joining.¹⁷ According to records, in 1783, the society met at least once in the home of Bella Bours and Newport Gardner on High Street, now known as Division Street.¹⁸
A detail from the African Union Society notes dated December 5, 1794, from the NHS collections.
Newport Gardner (born Occramar Marycoo, or Nkrumah Mireku, c. 1751 – c. 1827) played an especially important leadership role in the Black community of Newport, beginning in the late 18th century. Mireku was born in West Africa, perhaps somewhere in modern-day Ghana, which was at that time a major slave port known as Cape Coast Castle. According to secondary sources, Mireku was entrusted by his parents to the captain of a slave ship, who “pledged to see the boy was properly instructed,” only to then sell him to Caleb Gardner of Newport.¹⁹ It was then that Nkrumah Mireku was to become Newport Gardner. He taught himself to read and write in English and French. He also showed a gift for music, not only singing but also composing church music. He took lessons from composer Andrew Law, and soon gave his own lessons in the “upper chamber” of the Bours house, using the money to purchase a portion of his freedom.²⁰ Mireku’s composition “Crooked Shanks” may be the first by an African person in the United States.²¹
Letter written by Newport Gardner to “Sarah Burk to the care of Mrs. Gardner Ladd, Alexandria.” (2012.3)
The records of the Free African Union Society indicate that Mireku, as Newport Gardner, was admitted to the Society on August 24, 1789, even though he was evidently not free. He gained his freedom in 1792, and then became a full-fledged member, rising in its ranks to the position of clerk in 1793. When this society dissolved, a new one was formed, the African Benevolent Society, at Mireku’s home on Pope Street in 1807, and by 1810, he had become President of the society, a position he held for the next ten years.²² On March 25th, 1808, in the Newport Mercury the society announced their own school for Black youth around the corner from the Bours house:
“NOTICE.
THE AFRICAN BENEVOLENT SOCIETY of Newport, with it may be generally known, that they have opened a SCHOOL, kept by Newport Gardner, in No. 8, School-street, the object of which is the free instruction of all the coloured people in this town, who are inclined to attend.– As the plan of this School is approved by many judicious persons, it is hoped the white people as well as coloured, will encourage the attendance of the Africans under their care, who need instruction.”²³
The prominence of an African-born leader like Mireku perhaps influenced the Society’s later attempts to fund relocation of members back to Liberia, in West Africa. Though he eventually became fluent in English and French, “he was very careful to cultivate his recollection of his African tongue, so that in the case Providence should open a way, he might return to Africa, and find a people with whom he might converse intelligibly, and to whom he might communicate the great truths of the gospel.”²⁴ Thus, to local ministers like Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles, he was uniquely qualified to lead a ministry in Liberia. In 1826, with thirty one other Black Rhode Islanders, Mireku finally had received the backing to return to Africa. This group departed on the brig Vine in January and arrived in Liberia, on February 6th. Within six months, Mireku had succumbed to fever and died. A sad circumstance, but nonetheless, Newport Gardner died Nkrumah Mireku, a free man on the continent on which he had been born.²⁵
The grave of Occramer and Limas Marycoo’s daughter Silva, who died in 1784. Occramer Marycoo, who also used the name Newport Gardner, was perhaps the first Black African to have music published in America. Photo: Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries.
The story of the Peter Bours House is not just about a wealthy white family and their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, it is also about how Black Newporters, both enslaved and free, reclaimed and redefined space in a town shaped by white supremacy. From the listing of enslaved people alongside furniture in Peter Bours’s will to the musical instruction of Nkrumah Mireku and the education of Black children in the same home, 47 Division Street embodies the contradictions and transformations of early American life. It reminds us that within structures built by and for the powerful, those once excluded found ways to build community, preserve culture, and assert their humanity. Today, acknowledging this inclusive history is essential to understanding Newport’s unfolding story.
