Zachary, later called Zacheus Still, was born enslaved on a large farm in the Tantummaheag section of Lyme on October 28, 1726. He was the eldest son of Temperance, a “molata girl,” and Oxford, a “negro man,” identified as “two slaves of Richard Lord of Lyme.” Zachary’s parents had been “married together” the previous January by the town’s first minister, Moses Noyes, and Zachary had three sisters and three brothers, Jane, Abiah, Luke, Jordan, Joel, and Hepzibah. In 1735, Richard Lord Jr. sold Zachary’s parents together with Joel, age seven months, to a buyer in Colchester but retained Zachary, age seven, with four of his siblings in hereditary servitude. Whether Zachary saw his parents again is not known.

Zachary appears again in the historical record in 1755 at age 28 when he served in a New York regiment during the French and Indian Wars using the name Zacheus Still. Back in Lyme two years later, he refused to continue serving Richard Lord, Jr., who then sued James Ely, claiming that Ely had persuaded and enticed Lord’s “servant man,” valued at “the price and value of Seventy pounds,” to “walk away” and “depart.” New London’s Superior Court twice heard arguments from Ely that Zacheus Still was not a “slave for life” because his grandmother, a Narragansett Indian, had been born free, but the court found for Richard Lord in 1758 and awarded him $50 damages plus court costs.

Zacheus’s later life is sparsely documented. In 1759, a year after the court upheld Lord’s claim that he was a slave for life, his name appears on a muster roll for the Ninth Company of Connecticut’s 4th Regiment commanded by Capt. Zebulon Butler from Lyme, who the next year would marry Richard Lord Jr.’s niece Anne Lord. After that second interval of military service, Zacheus, age 35, lived in Saybrook with uncertain financial means. In 1761 he had apparently married, and that year in a debt action, Stephen Nott sued a “mulatto” named Zaccheus in Saybrook. 

Zacheus appears again in Connecticut records in 1775 when he returned to military service during the Revolution. At age 49 he joined the 6th Regiment of the Continental Line commanded by Col. Samuel Parsons from Lyme and held the rank of Private. His service likely resulted in his being considered “free” but did not bring recognition as a Revolutionary veteran or provide a military pension. The military service of Zacheus Still has still not been recognized.

The circumstances of Zacheus’s later years have not been traced. A Lyme town treasurer’s report notes payment for the support of “transient Negro Zaccheus” for 13 ½ weeks in 1813. By then Zacheus Still would have been 85, but he may have returned to Lyme late in life and received town support. His death date is unknown.

Research and Biography provided by Witness Stones – Old Lyme