Worcester Business Journal

12 Worcester Business Journal | September 28, 2020 | wbjournal.com Helping Your Business Starts with Knowing You. cornerstonebank.com 800-939-9103 Charlton • Holden • Leicester • Rutland • Southbridge • Spencer • Sturbridge • Warren • Webster • Worcester NMLS #403295 NOTHING BUNDT CAKES Al Gulachenski's vision of opening a bakery became a reality by partnering with Cornerstone Bank. "They took the time to listen to my idea and understand my business; they got it—and they went out of their way to make the SBA loan process easy." And that paved the way for his grand opening in December 2019. Al continues: "I can't say enough about what they did for my business and what they do for the community and helping others. If you're thinking about a new bank and want to avoid the big banks, you should call Cornerstone. I did … and I couldn't be happier!" Let us help your business. You'll experience the power of trust in action. "This dream of mine wouldn't have been possible without Cornerstone." - Alan Gulachenski, Owner, Nothing Bundt Cakes narrative where when they do acknowl- edge slavery at all, they make slavery something … that played a minor role economically," said Jared Hardesty, associate professor of history at Western Washington University and author of "Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston." "In the entire business economy of Massachusetts in Colonial times and aer the Revolution … slavery is a sig- nificant component of it," Hardesty said in an interview with WBJ. Colonies in New England exported salt, cod, timber, livestock, corn or rum to either feed enslaved people or to communities benefiting from their work, particularly in the West Indies. Smug- gling, shipping and slave trading helped the regional economy even without having enslaved people living locally, said Kirt von Daacke, assistant dean and an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. "Even if a town had few enslaved people, that didn't mean that slavery and the wealth that the slave trade and slavery-related business produced didn't directly impact economic development in places such as Worcester," he said. Slavery was legal in Massachusetts until 1783, among the first states to embrace abolition. Worcester County played a key role in that process through a slave vs. owner case initially tried in the Worcester County Court of Com- mon Pleas. Quock Walker, who was born into slavery as the property of a Barre family, filed a series of lawsuits as a young adult, starting with assault and bat- tery against the man who married his original owner's widow, according to a state website detailing the Massachusetts constitution and abolition. In time, one slave owner sued another for interfering with his property, and the state Supreme Judicial Court got involved. Ultimately, the court's chief justice in 1783 ruled slavery was incompatible with the state constitution's principles of liberty and legal equality. Aer abolition in Massachusetts, Worcester County was a leader in Mas- sachusetts during a rising antislavery movement in the 1840s, Rockman said, giving the highest levels of support state- wide to the Liberty Party, a supporter of the abolitionist movement, and to the Free Soil movement, which tried pro- tecting Western lands from becoming slave states. Blackstone Valley voters also helped drive an antislavery coalition to power in the state legislature. Worcester's mayor in the 1850s, Peter Bacon, refused to allow Worcester police officers to assist anyone recapturing a presumed runaway slave, said Rockman. at went against the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law requiring enslaved people be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. But the economic relationship between the Massachusetts and slavery continued during this time; it had just shied from the West Indies to the American South, Hardesty said. "Domestic cotton is going to be sent to New England," Klyberg said, "and so while the Blackstone Valley is known for having progressive thinkers and ardent abolitionists, you also have this massive industry which at its base is involved in slave-grown cotton." Slave-grown cotton & the Blackstone Valley Successful textile mills and large man- ufacturing plants were a large part of the American Industrial Revolution. In fact, Westborough-born Eli Whitney is credited with inventing the cotton gin in 1793, making the process of separating cotton from seeds far faster than before. With that breakthrough, the tex- tile industry boomed. Mills became prominent not just in the Blackstone The Crompton & Knowles Loom Works facility on Green Street in Worcester has since been remade into a commercial building hosting a mix of businesses. Continued from Page 11 PHOTO | COURTESY OF WORCESTER HISTORICAL MUSEUM

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