Five-minute digest

Amos Fortune, Free Man

Elizabeth Yates

Summary

Amos Fortune, Free Man is a biographical novel about a real man who was born in Africa around 1710, enslaved in Massachusetts, and died free in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in 1801. Its ten chapters carry dates. In the spring of 1725 slave hunters fall on the village of the At-mun-shi during their planting ceremonies; the chief is killed and his son At-mun, about fifteen, is captured, while his younger sister Ath-mun is left behind. At-mun survives the Middle Passage aboard the slave ship White Falcon and is sold on the Boston wharf to Caleb Copeland, a Quaker weaver who did not mean to own anyone. Renamed Amos, he grows up in the Copeland household beside the children Roxanna and Roger, learns weaving from Caleb and reading from Celia Copeland, and becomes a Christian. Caleb intends to free him, but when Caleb dies in debt Amos is sold again, to Ichabod Richardson, a tanner of Woburn, who teaches him the leather trade and lets him work toward his freedom. Amos buys it at about sixty. Thinking of the sister he could not save, he spends his savings freeing others: first Lily, sick and feeble, whom he buys and marries and who dies within months; then Lydia Somerset, bought from Josiah Bowers for fifty pounds, who also dies; and in 1779 Violet, bought with her small daughter Celyndia from James Baldwin. With Violet and Celyndia he travels north into New Hampshire and in 1781 settles in the hill town of Jaffrey, where he sets up a tannery and saves coins in an iron kettle toward land of his own. When he wants to spend the savings to help Lois Burdoo, a poor widow with children, Violet hides the kettle; Amos climbs Mount Monadnock in his anger to wait for God's answer, comes down at peace, forgives her, and buys twenty-five acres where they build a house and a new tannery. In 1793 the town puts Lois's daughter Polly up at a public vendue, the yearly auction of the poor; Amos bids so low that he wins her, and she spends a happy free year in his home before she dies. In his last years Amos sees Celyndia grown and leaves his property to the church and the school of Jaffrey. E. P. Dutton published the book in 1950 with illustrations by Nora S. Unwin, and it won the Newbery Medal in 1951.

Top Lessons

Freedom spent for others
Amos's long-awaited liberty is not the end of his story. He uses his savings again and again to buy the freedom of women who cannot buy their own, remembering his sister. Yates shows freedom as a gift to be used for others rather than a prize to be kept.
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Anger brought to God
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Dignity in work
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A free man before he was freed
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Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Illness and age are part of the story rather than its subject. Amos buys and marries Lily knowing she is gravely ill and cares for her until she dies within months; Lydia also dies soon after her redemption; Polly Burdoo, weak from hardship, dies after her year in the Fortune home; and the last chapter shows Amos in old age. The Middle Passage chapter touches on the crowding and suffering in the hold of a slave ship. The town's public vendue of the poor reflects how eighteenth-century New England towns provided for paupers and the sick by auctioning their care.

Nursing Caregiving Aging Senescence Death Dying

Woburn, 1740-1779
Amos buys the sick Lily's freedom, marries her and nurses her until her death.
Auctioned for Freedom
Polly Burdoo is taken into the Fortune home after the vendue and dies there.
Evergreen Years, 1794-1801
Amos's old age and death at about ninety-one.

Amos Fortune, Free Man

Summary

Top Lessons

Freedom spent for others

Anger brought to God

Dignity in work

A free man before he was freed

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens