Described as a “Slave King” (sometimes also called a Black Governor), a position of leadership for enslaved persons in New England communities, Moses was born in 1762 to enslaved parents, Montros and Phillis. When their enslaver, Ruth Naughty, died, her 1771 will ordered that Moses and his siblings be “indentured for life,” asserting that it would be “much better for them to live in some good Regular & Religious Families as servants than to Enjoy Freedom.” The man she selected to hold Moses’s indenture was Rev. Amos Fowler, the longtime Congregational Church minister. Records show Moses was industrious, taking multiple paid jobs outside of the Fowler home. He was so versatile that he was known as a “factotum,” or someone who could do almost anything that was asked of him, and apparently so in demand that he raised enough money to pay for the son of Rev. Fowler to attend Yale. Moses died in 1812.