In the first image you see one of the great historic homes of Melrose, the Joseph Lynde house, built in 1702 and located at 409 Lebanon Street. In the second and third images you see a pair of newspaper advertisements in which Joseph Lynde has offered a reward for the capture of his enslaved man, John, who ran away from this house on June 22nd, 1757.
The first advertisement was published on August 1st and offered a reward of four dollars. The second ad was published six months later, on February 27th, and the reward was raised to twenty dollars. As an enslaved man in the prime of life who had already had Smallpox and was thus immune to future infection, John was incredibly valuable to Lynde. His clever, daring ruse in posing as a doctor, and Lynde’s attestation that he was a “great Talker,” attest to a colorful personality.
There is no evidence that John was ever captured. He left behind a wife, Violet, whom he had married in 1750 and who lived with her master, Thomas Hills, in Malden. Violet remarried and died a free woman in Malden in 1804. The final fate of John is unknown.
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