10 year Anniversary Celebration of the Burial of “The Man Fortune”

Memorial
Written By John Mills

Rendering of “The Man Fortune”

Head stone of Fortune at Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury, CT.

This week, I met with Ms. Francis Martin, the Mattatuck Museum Archivist. Ms. Martin was so incredibly kind, guiding me through the museums archives, including the letters to the museum from the descendant of the enslaver who donated the bones of Fortune to the museum in 1932.

Fortune was an 18th century enslaved man in Waterbury Connecticut. Upon Fortune's death occurring at a river or brook in 1798, Fortune’s enslaver , Dr. Preserved Porter, is said to have cut him into pieces at that spot, then took him back to his home and boiled his body parts to remove all flesh. Dr. Porter retained Fortune’s skeleton as a teaching tool, even opening a school using the bones as instruction.

Fortune’s bones would be willed to descendants, serving as an initial training tool for generations of Porter doctors. In 1932, Fortune’s bones would be donated to the Mattatuck Museum by Dr. Sally McGlannan, the 2nd great granddaughter of Dr. Preserved Porter. The bones would remain on display at the museum until 1970, when the museum took down the display and placed the bones in storage.

In the early 1990’s, the bones were examined by experts to gather details of Fortune’s life, diet, injuries and likeness. Fortune would ultimately be buried in Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury on September 13th. 2013.

For nearly 2 years, I’ve been researching the life of Fortune, attempting to find as much as I can about his life. For this reason, I was informed by Ms. Francis Martin of the Mattatuck Museum that I had been selected by individuals at the Museum and Riverside Cemetery to deliver Fortune’s story at the 10 year anniversary memorial of Fortune’s burial, occurring on September 13th, 2023.

My heart is full. I'm immensely honored and humbled, as well as emotional. I do not yet have the time nor location, but as soon as I get that I will share.

I hope you will consider attending.

John Mills

Originally from San Diego, John Mills is a technologist by trade, but an equity advocate and independent scholar by passion. The descendant of both southern and northern enslaved, John focuses on unearthing little known people and stories of this country’s history in slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. John presents research through the lens and perspective of a descendant, with intent to inspire understanding and empathy, a means to inspire good, God fearing people, now armed with information, to look into whether they may be unwittingly aligning to biases resulting from the reverberating effects of a past time. John is a member of the Connecticut Freedom Trail and a member of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum Council. John is also working with an international team funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in an effort to deliver transformational impact on digital methods in cultural institutions...a means to decolonize museums. Finally, John is working with the state of Connecticut, business leaders and scholars in Middletown, CT to honor and memorialize a former enslaved individual by the name of Prince Mortimer.

https://alexbreanne.org
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