The life of Dutchess [also commonly spelled “Duchess,” and occasionally referred to as “Charity”] Channing Quamino (c. 1739–June 20, 1804) provides the opportunity to study the business of slavery in early Rhode Island through the experiences of one enslaved woman’s life. A renowned pastry maker and entrepreneur, Dutchess Quamino is remembered as “the pastry queen of Rhode Island” who baked her way to freedom in the late-eighteenth century.1 Like many enslaved women in colonial New England, the details of her life are shrouded in mystery.2 Nevertheless, and though commodified in historical documents for their productive and reproductive labors, the intellectual and financial contributions of enslaved women like Dutchess Quamino were instrumental to the business of slavery in early Rhode Island. Though many of the details of her life are unclear, the legacy of Dutchess Quamino’s life and legacy are a vivid reminder that the resilience and skill of enslaved women contributed significantly to the economic and social history of early Rhode Island.3
As historian Christy Clark-Pujara argues in her book Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (2016), Rhode Island’s colonial economy was undergirded by the labors of enslaved persons. Clark-Pujara’s book highlights the role of local merchants, slave traders, and enslavers in perpetuating the institution of slavery in Rhode Island, and how the profits from “all economic activity that was directly related to the maintenance of slaveholding” stemmed from the labor performed by enslaved women like Dutchess Quamino.
Quamino was born to a minor royal family in Africa’s Gold Coast (a former British colony in West Africa known, now the Republic of Ghana) around 1739.4 The details of how or when she was forcefully relocated to Newport, Rhode Island via the trans-Atlantic slave trade are not known, though scholars agree she likely came to Rhode Island as a young child.5 During the 1740s, Rhode Island traders sent an estimated forty-eight slaving voyages to West Africa.6 Enslaved captives faced abuse, inadequate access to food and water, and disease onboard these forced transatlantic journeys.7 After arriving in Newport, it appears that she became enslaved in the household of Newport attorney William Channing.8
By adulthood, she had demonstrated considerable skill in the culinary arts, specifically in pastry making. Quamino’s culinary skills enabled her to perform complex cooking and baking tasks which would have required years of training and hands-on experience.9 An artisan in her own right, or “a worker in a skilled trader, especially one that involves making things by hand,” the skilled labors performed by enslaved women like Dutchess Quamino played a critical role in the economic and social fabric of early Rhode Island society.
A handful of other clues survive about Dutchess Quamino’s life while enslaved in the Channing household. “With the consent of their masters,” Dutchess married John Quamine [or Quamino] on November 5, 1769.10
The couple had at least three children–Charles (born in 1772), Violet (1776), and Katharine Church (1779).11 John Quamino likely purchased his freedom with earnings gained from a winning lottery ticket. He later enlisted in the American Revolution, but by the autumn of 1779, he had died.
By 1780, Dutchess and her children had secured their freedom.12 Local folklore is that through her specialized skills as a pastry maker, she baked her way to her and her children’s freedom, earning the reputation of the most notable cake baker in Rhode Island.13 Dutchess Quamino died on June 20, 1804, at the age of sixty-five. Her epitaph reads:
In memory of DUCHESS QUAMINO, a free Black, of distinguished excellence; Intelligent Industrious, Affectionate, honest, and of exemplary piety; who deceased [died] on June 20, 1804, aged 65 years.
“Blest thy slumbers in this house of clay
And bright thy rising to eternal day.”
Enslaved women like Dutchess Quamino remind us that skilled labor crossed gender lines and that greater attention should be paid towards understanding the considerable knowledge and expertise that these women exercised in the course of their daily work.
- Victoria Marin, “Tracing the legend of the ‘pastry queen’ who baked her way to freedom,” Washington Post, June 16, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/06/16/duchess-quamino-enslaved-pastry-queen-rhode-island/, accessed on July 15, 2024. ↩︎
- Much work remains on the study of enslaved women’s lives and labors in early New England. With the exception of Catherine Adams and Elizabeth Pleck’s Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), no other published monograph has examined enslaved women’s lives and labors in New England in great detail. Two exceptions to this are the dissertations (and forthcoming monographs) by Felicia Yvette Thomas and Jerrad P. Pacatte. Felicia Yvette Thomas, “’Fit for Town or Country’: Black Women and Work in Colonial Massachusetts,” Journal of African American History, 105, no. 2 (Spring 2020), and Jerrad P. Pacatte, “The Work of Freedom: Enslaved Women, Labor, and Emancipation in New England, 1740–1840,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, forthcoming: New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 2025). ↩︎
- In 2024, the Newport Historical Society unveiled the “Voices from the NHS Archives” database, an interactive, publicly-accessible database which enables users to study and engage with many of the original primary source documents in which the names and stories of the enslaved were uncovered. I am appreciative of Ingrid Peters and her biography of Dutchess Quamino; see Ingrid Peters, “Dutchess Quamino,” Voices of the NHS Archives,
https://collections.newporthistory.org/People/Story/story/19484, accessed on July 1, 2024. ↩︎ - Edward “Ted” Andrews, “Dutchess Quamino,” in the African American National Biography, edited by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013). ↩︎
- Andrews, “Dutchess Quamino,” and Ingrid Peters, “Dutchess Quamino,” Voices of the Archive, ↩︎
- Historian Jay Coughtry’s work on Rhode Island slave trading voyages remains the single most definitive study for understanding Rhode Islanders participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade. See Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981), see esp.Table 1 “RI Slaving Voyages to Africa, 1709–1807,” 27, for the number of slaving voyages to Africa during the 1740s. ↩︎
- Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York, NY: Penguin, 2008) and Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to the American Diaspora (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). ↩︎
- Ingrid Peters reminds us that a bill of purchase for Dutchess has yet to have been found. Thus, while it is generally agreed that William Channing enslaved Dutchess, it is also plausible that John Channing, Jr. (1714–1771) or his son William (1741–1793) might have enslaved Dutchess as well. Peters, “Dutchess Quamino.” ↩︎
- An insightful study of enslaved persons and the culinary arts is Kelley Fanto-Deetz, Bound By the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2017). ↩︎
- Enslaved persons in New England were typically married before members of the clergy or justices of the peace. See Adams and Pleck, Love of Freedom, Jared Ross Hardesty, Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England (Amherst, MA: Brightleaf, 2020), and the long-awaited book by Gloria McCahon Whiting, Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 2024). ↩︎
- Andrewes, “Dutchess Quamino,”. The Newport Historical Society’s website provides free, digital access to the baptism records of Dutchess and John Quamino’s children. ↩︎
- As both Ingrid Peters and Ted Andrews assert, details concerning the manumission of Dutchess Quamino and her children are relatively little known. Peters, “Dutchess Quamino,” and Andrews, “Dutchess Quamino.” ↩︎
- George Gibbs Channing, Early Recollections of Newport, R.I., from the Year 1793 to 1811 (Boston, MA: Nichols and Notes, 1868), 170–171. ↩︎