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Original Photograph of Wampanoag Woman's Homestead in Betty's Neck, Massachusetts
Photograph of the Massachusetts home of three Wampanoag women, Zerviah Gould Mitchell and her daughters Teweelema and Charlotte, descendants of the Great Sachem Massasoit, the leader of the Wampanoag at the time of the Pilgrims' arrival to Plymouth. Zerviah, who married the half Cherokee merchant seaman Thomas C. Mitchell in 1824, was the first woman of color to apply to Wheaton College.
The image shows a rustic board and batten house in the beginning stages of decay. A ladder and an old bed frame lean on the side of the house. The home was located on Native American ancestral lands some five miles from the village of Lakeville, Massachusetts. In May of 1879, Zerviah Gould Mitchell (1807-1898) and her two daughters, Melinda, a.k.a. Teweelema (1836-1919) or “Bride of the Forest," and Charlotte, a.k.a. Wootonekanuske (1848-1930), moved from North Abington, Massachusetts to a fifteen-acre plot at Betty’s Neck. The name Betty refers to the English name of Assowetough, a daughter of John Sassamon, the seventeenth century Wampanoag whose assassination in 1675 helped spark King Philip's War, ultimately leading to the defeat of the Wampanoag by the New England colonists.
Handwritten caption on verso: "The Residence of Zerviah Gould Mitchell & her daughters Teweelema & Charlotte Wampanoag descendants of Chief Massasoit, Betty's Neck in Lakeville, MA."
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