Black Joe's grave lies in a hollow of Marblehead's Old Burial Hill where the winter snows drift deep, blanketing all but the carved eagle holding the banner than reads "Victory Peace." In summer, the gravestone of Marblehead's most famous black resident stands in stark relief against the grass, its back scarred as if a streak of green lightning had struck it one night when the spirits of the dead grew restless.

The town has several times honored this former slave, whose tavern still stand on Gingerbread Hill beside the mill pond that bears his name. After World War II, a group of citizen's privately erected the present gravestone to honor Black

Black Joe's presence hovers over Marblehead, but why?

Not because of his service in the Revolutionary War, for there where many local black soldiers, like "Pomp" Deveraux, who marched beside his master in Marblehead's militia, the Glover Regiment. So many slaves were freed to join the army that by 1778, Massachusetts boasted two negro companies which included several Marblehead blacks in their ranks. Unfortunately, the details of Black Joe's military service, and even the name of his regiment are lost to history.
Ownership of a tavern made Black Joe master of his own fate, able to devote his later years to fiddling and spinning yarns, but that was not unusual either. In the late 1800's Marblehead boasted many taverns, yet most of them are no more than a name on yellowing newsprint today.

No, Black Joe's fame springs from the fact that he and his wife Lucretia were "characters" in the finest Marblehead tradition, capable of capturing the imagination of a town that prides itself on independence and individual quirkiness. They were exceptional for their time, no doubt.

The stories about Black Joe and Lucretia's life together still have the power to amuse and delight. They also reveal the bias that has hidden away so many women's contribution to history. While Black Joe got a remarkable gravestone, Lucretia's resting place is unknown. The cookie was named after him even though she created the recipe and spent the better part of her life mixing the batter. Black Joe is a household word in Marblehead and yet, Aunty 'Crese, as Lucretia was called, has received no comparable public recognition.

It is hoped that this account will redress that imbalance.

Black Joe was the son of a black mother and native Gray Head Indian father. He was born in 1750, when nearly every Marblehead family of sufficient wealth owned several slaves. He was thirty before the new Massachusetts constitution gave free black men the right to vote and forbade slave owners to treat the children of slaves as property. He must have been gainfully employed for his name does not appear as one of the black "drifters" forced out of Marblehead in 1788, when they were regarded as such a drain on the town's charitable funds that Town Meeting ordered all former slaves to find work or leave.

Seven years later, when Black Joe was forty-five, he bought the northeast end of a house on Gingerbread Hill from William Peach, a relative of John Peach, Sr., on of Marblehead's founders. The "mansion-house," as the deed describes it, is small by contemporary standards. A colonial saltbox, it is thought to have been built by ship's carpenters in 1690. For two years, John and Lucretia Brown's hone consisted of a first floor parlor and a small "keepin room" where infants slept, a bedroom on the second floor, and half an attic. When the co-owner Joseph Seawood died, his widow Mary sold their portion to the Browns, including the small "borning room" where women delivered.

With all that space and an energetic wife 22 years her husband's junior, who wouldn't open a tavern?

While Black Joe lived, his tavern was the liveliest spot in town, and the Barnegat section of town surrounding it, the roughest neighborhood. During "Election Week" in May, slaves were given their only legal holiday on Wednesday, and the schools closed so that all citizens could turn out to see the soldiers training.

Then Gingerbread Hill came alive with parents and children, and Aunty 'Crese did a brisk business in "Joe Froggers". The never-stale cookies, named for her husband and the neighboring amphibians in the pond, accompanied many a Marblehead fisherman on long sea voyages. "Sir Switchels" were a big hit too, a thirst-quenching blend of water and molasses, which a touch of vinegar to cut the sweetness.

Nights on Gingerbread Hill, however, were a different matter, earning the Barnegat area an unenviable reputation. According to Marblehead Historian Joseph Robinson, "a more uncouth assemblage of ruffians could not be found anywhere." It would not be surprising if the term "Down bucket!" originated here, that fearful Marblehead expression warning those below that the contents of the chamber pot where about to be flung out a bedroom window.

Undaunted by their ill repute, both white and black men gathered at the tavern after a long day of fishing, blacksmithing, boatbuilding, farming or shop keeping to spend the night dancing, drinking and gambling. About five percent of Marblehead's population were black and the two races mixed freely, crowding into the two downstairs rooms, each no bigger than 10 by 14 feet. Inexpensive clay pipes passed from hand to hand, the long stems shrinking as each man broke off the tip after taking a few puffs. Even the bitterest cold night was warmed by the wood fires, alcohol, and the body heat of active men dancing jigs and reels to Black Joe's fiddle accompaniment.

Aunty 'Crese kept a sharp eye on the girls who helped serve her homemade beer and rum, and the fish chowder from the kettle hanging over the fire. If any other women were present, they were probably even less respectable than the men. 'Headers with nicknames like Spanish Joe, Short Jacket, Eagle Beak, Horse Eye, Pie Mouth and Corkleg tossed pennies against the wall or matched coins, heads and tails, in the candlelight reflecting off pewter sconces.

Years later, Black Joe's Revolutionary War gun was discovered in the attic, another man's initials in the walnut butt. It was probably passed on to Black Joe from a soldier too wounded or dead to have further use of it. It is not unlikely that Black Joe kept his musket close at hand, hanging upside down from one of the rough-hewn beams to keep dust from clogging the firing mechanism. The French steel bayonet may have helped him bring the merrymaking to an end many a night. Drink and exasperation oftentimes combined to send handfuls of pennies into the pond, and in the general confusion, it was not unusual for a sore loser to follow his money into the water.

The tavern's gambling crowd was known to be ready to wager at the drop of a hat. One day, the story goes, patrons began to argue about whether a horse and carriage could make it down Gingerbread Lane, a small path that still traverses the hill directly across from the tavern's front door. A baker making deliveries took up the challenge and urged his horse down the steep embankment. The baker lived to collect his money, although reports insist his wagon was in splinters by the time it reached Beacon Street. Another version says the horse did not survive.

Widow Bowen, who ran a rival tavern on Gingerbread Hill, did her best to compete with such goings-on. "Ma'am Sociable," as she called herself, baked 'lection cakes with just as many raisins and currants as those of Aunty 'Crese, sold penny candy, brewed alcoholic beverages and encouraged penny-pitching contests. Highly competitive, she had a practice of waylaying visitors heading towards Black Joe's tavern, stopping them in the street, and inquiring, "Have you any pennies, my dear?"

Understandably, this was a source of friction between the two women. There is no evidence that Aunty 'Crese ever retaliated, but Widow Bowen's suspicions grew that Aunty 'Crese was stealing from her flock of geese paddling about on Black Joe's pond. Her shrill accusations inspired the neighborhood boys to invent one of the few practical jokes to make the history books. The boys would crawl into Widow Bowen's bushes and squawk noisily until the old woman came running out, convinced she had caught Aunty 'Crese in the act.

Lucretia, the daughter of two slaves freed by Marblehead's Samuel Tucker, Commodore of the Continental Navy, used to visit Burial Hill after her husband died. A widow at 40, she would rise at daybreak to reach the graveyard while the dew still glistened on the wild roses that clung to the rocky ledges. She would gather rose petals and carry a bundle back to the tavern where she placed them, liberally sprinkled with coarse salt, in covered wooden buckets called "firkins."