In the decade since the founding of the Documenting Venture Smith Project, scholars of trans-Atlantic slavery have come to view Venture as one of the truly iconic figures of American slavery. A conference in Hartford this Thursday and Friday is illustrative. Scholars from three continents will be joined by artists, activists, law enforcement, educators and students in a major event inspired by the enslaved African prince who reclaimed his liberty and became a prosperous and respected Connecticut citizen.

Thursday’s events will confront the reality of contemporary slavery and how to stop it, featuring a keynote address by Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro. Friday’s session will feature a keynote address by Dr. Rex Ellis, associate director for Curatorial Affairs of the Smithsonian’s soon-to-open National Museum of African American History & Culture, and poet Dr. K. Opoku-Agyemang, professor of English, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Both will participate with a panel of distinguished public history professionals in a discussion on slavery sites in the Atlantic world, focusing on the proposed UNESCO World Heritage Site uniting places central to Venture Smith’s epic transatlantic story.

Venture’s 1798 autobiography is unique as an uncontested, unmediated testimony of an African survivor of the middle passage. Venture’s story stands alone as an independently-verifiable, first-person account of the journey from life in Africa, through the experience of slavery in America, to freedom.

On April 10, 2015, friends of Venture, including U.S. Reps. DeLauro and Joe Courtney, gathered at Stonington’s Barn Island Wildlife Management Area to celebrate the installation of a sign commemorating the 250th anniversary of his regaining his freedom. Not long after the sign’s dedication, several individuals complained that the sign and its accompanying plaque contained inaccuracies.

Most of the charges, however, did not so much impugn the accuracy of the sign as the credibility of Venture himself. Marta Daniels took the sign’s authors to task for relying on Smith’s “Narrative,” which she dismissed as “well known for its ambiguity and inaccuracies.” Likewise, Dr. John W. Sweet expressed frustration with Venture’s discussion of land purchases as “very confusing and quite possibly garbled.”

The crux of these critics’ complaint bears on Venture’s assertion that he purchased the tract of land on which the sign stood in 1761, when he was still a slave. They argued that Venture could not have owned the land at that time, because they could find no records to corroborate the sale, and “because under Colonial law, slaves were property and could not own property.”

Venture himself made it clear that he paid for the land through a proxy, since as “the property of my master,” he could not assume the obligation himself. In fact, Venture’s account of his purchases both of land and of his freedom are terse, precise, and consistent with external evidence.

Ironically, both critics previously accepted Venture’s account without difficulty. In “Bodies Politic” (2003), Sweet wrote that Venture “bought land next to his master’s farm, which he cultivated ‘with the greatest diligence and economy.’” Likewise Daniels, writing in 2005, acknowledged that Venture earned money to buy his freedom in part by planting crops on land “he had already purchased.”

Another critic, East Haddam dentist and town historian Karl Stofko, used the same dates on the sign he placed at Venture’s grave site (since taken down) and in promotional materials for annual events.

Thus it is perhaps not the content of the sign that these Venture enthusiasts find so objectionable, so much as the challenge the Documenting Venture Smith Project has posed to their sense of ownership of Venture’s story.

In one regard, however, we agree with our critics: Connecticut’s priceless Venture Smith sites must be preserved. Until a national study is conducted, no signage should be posted to call attention to the site. Fortunately, with last April’s dedication, we were able to commemorate a great historical event.

Chandler B. Saint is president of the Beecher House Center for the Study of Equal Rights and co-director of the Documenting Venture Smith Project.