Thaddeus & Mary Newton Memorial Celebration

Memorial
Written By John Mills

It’s been 6 months in the making! The Mary & Thaddeus Newton Graveside Memorial Celebration went off without a hitch! It occurred at 11am on Friday, June 21st. Military honors for Stephen Newton, their son who died in the assault on Fort Wagner, were provided by the Connecticut National Guard, as well as by the Massachusetts 54th Regiment who traveled down from Boston to join us! We also had descendants, of whom the Alex Breanne Corporation discovered, fly in from Florida to attend!

Along with unveiling the newly repaired gravestone of Mary & Thaddeus Newton, as well as a newly installed gravestone for Stephen Newton, we also announced the addition of the plot to the Connecticut Freedom Trail. We unveiled a newly installed granite pillar holding the Freedom Trail plaque.

We had incredible speakers, including:

  • Richard Blumenthal - U.S. Senator

  • Justin Elicker - New Haven Mayor

  • Command Sgt. Major Paul Vicinus - 169th CT National Guard

  • Steven Cousin - Pastor, Bethel AME Church

  • Michael Morand - New Haven City Historian

  • Todd Levine - CT State Historic Preservation Office

  • Charles Warner Jr. - Connecticut Freedom Trail

  • Kelly Mero - CT 29th Regiment Descendants Group

  • Marc Ormerod - Monument Preservation & Restoration

  • Dale Fiore - Evergreen Cemetery

If interested, you can view the ceremony on YouTube here.

Thank you to all that attended, as well as all that agreed to speak in honor of this incredible family. Also, I am immensely grateful to all of those who donated to the Alex Breanne Corporation, helping us fund this amazing restoration and unveiling event! Thank you for your kindness and generosity. For those who would like to help us in funding future efforts, you can donate at https://alexbreanne.org/donate.

Thank you and God Bless.

John

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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