Enslaved by Medad Stone at his tavern on the northwest corner of the Guilford Green, Bristol gained his freedom in 1802. Prior to that time, records suggest Bristol was pretty tightly controlled by his enslaver. A March 3, 1796 issue of the Connecticut Journal, features an advertisement by Stone in which Stone states that he, “the subscriber hereby forbids marriage of his servant, (a black man by the Name of Bristol), by  any person without his consent.” In 1802, Stone manumitted Bristol, making use of the 1792 Connecticut law, which held that if a person was between the ages of 25 and 45, was desirous of being made free, and was deemed healthy, that individual could be freed and the municipality would have no responsibilities for their care, should that person come to want. At the time Bristol was described as 26 years old, meaning he would have been born around 1776. That also means that when Stone was saying he needed to grant permission for Bristol to marry, Bristol would have been about 20. It is not clear what happened to Bristol after he was freed, but his story sheds light on the ways in which enslavers often attempted to control even the most intimate choices and actions of those they enslaved.