Black History / Cameron Blevins '08
The Topography of History

Story by Travis Kaya '10 / Photo by Lynn Saville

Cameron Blevins ’08 is applying some very forward thinking to his historical research, using high-tech imaging software to gain a much sharper picture of the life of Connecticut slave-turned-wealthy-landowner Venture Smith.

The son of an East African prince, Smith was brought to the fields of New England via the Middle Passage in 1737 before managing to buy his freedom. Today, Smith is the subject of a growing body of research, and Blevins, a Connecticut native, is right at the center of it. He was invited last month to deliver the keynote address at an annual summit of scholars and historians, where Blevins wowed the crowd with his research on the 3-D topography of Smith’s land holdings.

“We were phenomenally impressed,” says Chandler B. Saint, who helped put on the event as president of the Beecher House for Equal Rights. “What he had done was an entire new approach to the analysis of the homestead.”

Blevins and his colleagues are working to clarify the remarkable yet still somewhat hazy narrative of Smith’s life. What is known about the historical icon comes almost entirely from an autobiographical narrative recorded by a white schoolteacher, who some historians accuse of editorializing. Nevertheless, the story gives a rare glimpse into slavery in America and one man’s struggle to overcome it.

After purchasing his own freedom—and later his family’s as well—at age 36, Smith eventually was able to buy a 10-acre tract of land with meager earnings from his former master, using it as a launching pad for his success as an entrepreneur and wealthy landowner. By the time of his death in 1805, Smith had achieved a degree of prosperity well beyond that of the typical Connecticut farmer.

“It is ultimately a success story,” says Blevins. “It’s one of the only slave narratives that encompasses memories from Africa, the Middle Passage, life as a slave and life as a free man.”

Growing up in Quaker Hill, Conn., Blevins was fascinated with Smith’s journey since he first heard about the local legend in his high school history class. Now a senior history major at Pomona, Blevins began work on his research just two years ago with the help of a summer research grant issued annually by the Hart Institute for American History.

“It would never have been possible without Pomona being able to give grant research money to undergrads,” Blevins says. “As a 19-year-old sophomore, it was a pretty ridiculous opportunity.”

Through his research, Blevins eventually met up with a growing community of Venture Smith scholars from colleges and universities across the U.S., adding to the compendium of ongoing Smith research. “It’s sort of an exploding field as far as a history field can be,” says Blevins.

Blevins’s work comes on the tail of a much-publicized 2006 attempt by researchers to exhume Smith’s body to conduct DNA testing meant to help trace his heritage to a particular East African tribe. Broadcast in the BBC documentary A Slave’s Story, the test was ultimately inconclusive as the acidic soil in Smith’s grave made DNA extraction impossible.

For his own research, Blevins waded through volumes of dusty records in East Haddam, the town that Smith called home for 40 years, before turning to software specialist Warren Roberts at the Honnold/Mudd Library for technical assistance. Through the library, Blevins learned how to use computer software to breathe new life into his collection of historical maps, revealing not only the expansion of Smith’s land holdings from 10 acres to more than 125, but also the 3-D topography of the region.

“Cameron wanted to see what he couldn’t before,” Roberts said. “We were able to come up with some very detailed surface data to include in his research.”

Blevins is using software called Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that digitally layers centuries-old maps onto modern 3-D satellite imagery. Designed for the military in the 1980s, the tool has been used in a wide variety of research fields including studies of population dynamics, the spread of diseases, water conservation and, now, American history. “GIS serves to evaluate not just [Smith’s] transactions but the value and use of his land,” Blevins says. “It explains how he managed to become so successful that people were interested in publishing his narrative and allowing his story to survive.”

After mapping out large swaths of Smith’s landholdings, Blevins found that the majority of the
land was hilly and rugged. Analyzing land transactions in the state record alongside their actual topography, Blevins determined not only the basic details of Smith’s property growth, but also the land’s inherent value.

Hoping to fill in historical gaps about Smith’s entrepreneurial ventures, Blevins has been working to find out exactly what Smith’s land was used for. Most recently, he used the technology to determine that Smith most likely used his first piece of property for logging rather than farming, offering insight into the economic steppingstone that led to Smith’s later financial success.

Blevins hopes to use GIS in his future research on Venture Smith. He is working on a senior thesis on the topic, and has been asked to write a piece for an upcoming book compiling work from some of the nation’s leading Smith researchers. With graduation just a semester away, Blevins hopes to attend graduate school and continue work in the field.