In 1779, Prince Whipple and a small group of other New Hampshire slaves petitioned the Legislature to free them.

Whipple eventually was freed by his owner, not the Legislature, which ignored the petition and did not ban slavery in New Hampshire until 1857. By then, census records showed no slaves remained in the state.

Now 230 years later, state Rep. David Watters wants New Hampshire to create a monument to acknowledge and commemorate its slaves.

"There's no public place we can acknowledge and recognize this history," said Watters, a Democrat from Dover.

Watters's bill would establish a commission to research the names and numbers of people enslaved in New Hampshire from 1645 to 1840, the year the last record of a slave was noted by a census-taker at B.G. Searle's farm in Hollis.

The commission would designate a nonprofit organization to collect donations to pay for the monument. Watters believes the monument should be on or near the State House complex, but he said he would leave it to the commission to decide. The only state money Watters is requesting is for mileage for commission members to attend meetings.

"The state Legislature was the body responsible for laws that permitted slavery or finally ended it," he said. "So I think it is an issue of visibility in the state capitol."

Watters noted there already are great monuments to freedom on the State House grounds - to 19th-century statesman and New Hampshire native Daniel Webster, a replica of the Liberty Bell and a more recent monument to fallen police officers.

"These are important public statements of our commitment to freedom. I think this would be an important companion to those," he said.

Watters may face some resistance to placing the memorial on State House grounds due to limited space. A dispute during plans to put the law enforcement memorial across the street from the State House was resolved when a mature tree was dug up and moved onto State House grounds to make room for it.

Watters's bill is still being readied for introduction to the House and a hearing this winter.

Jeffrey Bolster, a history professor at the University of New Hampshire, said some people don't know that the state had slaves - although the number of slaves was not as large as in other New England states. Today, only about 1 percent of New Hampshire residents are black.

In 1775 on the eve of the American Revolution, New Hampshire had 656 slaves compared with 5,000 in Massachusetts, 3,700 in Rhode Island and 6,400 in Connecticut, Bolster said. While other northern states abolished slavery in the late 1700s, New Hampshire largely ignored it and instead allowed it to wither as in institution until no slaves remained, he said.

Bolster believes New Hampshire was not immune to the thinking of the time that social hierarchies existed with white men who owned property at the top and indentured white servants and American Indian or African slaves at the bottom. The uppper class assumed it would be served by social inferiors, he said.

As times changed, many of New Hampshire's slaves became freed servants, though a few were sold, he said.

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