Prince Mortimer was born in the year of 1724 in Guinea, on the West Coast of Africa. He was a slave and prisoner. He was captured by slave traders as a boy at the age of six and was transported to a slave colony in Middletown, Connecticut. He spent his early decades by tending crops and farm animals in different farms.Arround 1760 Prince was accrued by an Irish man named Philip Mortimer who had recently settled in the area and established a rope factory prospering as a river port and shipbuilding community in Middletown. Prince labored the next several decades as a spinner in Mortimer's ropewalk and he reputedly spent some time in the service of the Continental Army during the War for Independence. When Philip Mortimer died in the year of 1794, in his last will his tribute and freed all seventeen of his slaves. The will was successfully challenged by George Starr, a wealthy Middletown merchant who had married Ann Carnall, Mortimer's niece, shortly before the war. Ann and George had two children, Martha and Philip. Mortimer’s…show more content… The most modern and enlightened prison in the world when its doors opened in 1827, Wethersfield was built on a design known as the Auburn Plan, named after the New York prison where the idea was first conceived. It an extremely rigid behavioral regime. Except for that period of the day during which they were required to work, the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement in a 3−1/2' × 7' cell with no heat, water, or sanitary facilities other than a bucket. During the day, the prisoners labored, in lasting silence, in several shops in the work yard. The warden let out their services to various businesses that paid the prison for the value of the labor. In this way, the prison sought to contribute the cost of the prisoners'
