Born around 1750 and purchased as a child by Mary Peters, Cesar Peters later became the property of her son, Rev. Samuel Peters, the rector of Hebron’s Anglican church. A Loyalist, Samuel Peters fled to England in 1774, leaving Cesar Peters, his wife, Lois, and their growing family to live and work on or near his Hebron property with the newly formed State of Connecticut failing to free them. In 1787 with Rev. Peters still residing in London, his nephew in Hebron attempted to settle his personal debt to his uncle by selling Cesar and Lois Peters and their eight children. Rev. Peters’ nephew, brother-in-law, and a slave trader forcibly took the family to Norwich to be loaded on a ship headed for South Carolina. However, the plan was foiled by the Peters’ incensed Hebron neighbors, who concocted a story that Cesar had stolen goods from a local tailor. (He had had clothes made for him but had not yet paid.) They arranged for a justice of the peace to issue an arrest warrant, and after presenting it to the slaver, the neighbors brought the family back to Hebron. 

In 1789, the Connecticut General Assembly reviewed petitions to free the Peters family and ultimately agreed to do so. As a free man with local help, Cesar Peters brought a court case for 1000 pounds against his abductors.  Since some of Cesar Peters’ children had been born after 1784 and were technically free, the abductors settled out of court. The family moved to Colchester and later to Tolland, where Lois died in 1793. Cesar remarried a woman named Sim and moved to Coventry. In 1803, Cesar and Sim moved back to Hebron, and found ready employment as skilled farm labor working for gentlemen farmers living in Hebron Center. In 1806 Cesar Peters purchased a small farm with a two-story house which had been the home of his abductor. He lived peacefully with his abductor’s brother as a neighbor until he died on July 4, 1814.