← Back to the 365 Library
Contribution #317 of 365
Enoch G. Bell
Ropemaker in New Bedford's Maritime Economy
1849–1860
The contribution
How this work helped shape America
Born enslaved in Washington, D.C., around 1815, Enoch G. Bell gained freedom and later worked as a ropemaker in New Bedford, Massachusetts. His skilled labor produced and maintained the cordage essential to ships, rigging and the city's whaling commerce. Bell's career places Black skilled labor within one of nineteenth-century America's major maritime industries.