Jupiter Hammon
Jupiter Hammon was a significant figure in early American literature, recognized as the first published African American poet in the United States. Born in the late 17th century on the Lloyd plantation in New York, Hammon was the son of at least one enslaved individual who survived the Middle Passage. He received an education, likely through private tutoring and local schooling initiatives aimed at educating enslaved people and marginalized communities. Hammon's life was marked by a transformative religious awakening in his early twenties, which inspired him to write and preach. His notable works include the poem "An Evening Thought Salvation by Christ with Penitential Ties," published in 1760, which established his literary legacy. Despite limited records of his personal life, including the absence of information about siblings or descendants, Hammon's contributions to literature and his role in the early African American literary movement remain influential. His work serves as a crucial link in the historical narrative of African American culture and expression.
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Jupiter Hammon
Poet
- Born: October 17, 1711
- Birthplace: Oyster Bay, New York
- Died: 1806?
- Place of death: Hartford, Connecticut
Biography
Jupiter Hammon was the son of at least one slave on the Lloyd plantation who survived the Middle Passage from Africa as early as 1687. Only two slaves remained on the Lloyd plantation their entire lives: Opium, who was unsuccessful in his several attempts to flee slavery and who according to at least one scholar, may be Hammon’s father; and Hammon, who served four generations of Lloyds in Queens Village on Long Island, New York and Hartford, Connecticut.
Hammon grew up on the Lloyd plantation where the Lloyd sons received private tutelage. Hammon may have participated in a number of those tutoring sessions and/or he may have attended a local school established by the Church of England’s Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which attempted to educate slaves, Native Americans, and whites who were not affiliated with a church. That Hammon was educated is evident by his service to the Lloyds as a guardian of the family’s savings and as a clerk in a Lloyd business, as well as his poetry, essays, and sermons.
According to Lloyd family records, Hammon, at the age of nineteen, suffered from a nearly fatal, gout-like disease in 1730. Three years later, he experienced a religious awakening which ultimately led to his writing and preaching. Hammon attended the Congregational assembly in Huntington, Long Island, New York, and the Anglican church in Stamford, Connecticut. Based on an entry in a Lloyd family account book, Hammon’s master gave him money and sent him on an errand to repay a debt on October 6, 1790. The next chronological reference to Hammon after the 1790 entry is in an 1806 reprint of his sermon essay, An Address to the Negroes in the State of New-York. The eulogistic tribute included in the reprint offers proof that Hammon died prior to the reprint’s publication.
With the publication of Hammon’s first poem, An Evening Thought Salvation by Christ with Penitential Ties, he became the first African-American poet to be published in the United States. Hammon’s poem is not the first one by an African American; Lucy Terry’s Bars Fight (1746) holds that distinction, although it was not published until 1855. The same year that An Evening Thought was published marked the publication of Briton Hammon’s Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance. It is believed that Jupiter Hammon and Briton Hammon were unrelated. Whether Jupiter Hammon had siblings, a wife or children remains unknown. Although details about Hammon’s life are scarce, his status in literary history is secure; Hammon is acknowledged as one of the progenitors of African American literature.