Timothy Fitch (1725-1790)
Shipowner & Slave Trader, of Boston and Medford, Massachusetts
He conducted business in Boston, Salem, Nantucket and Medford. He owned several ships that were operated in the Atlantic slave trade (the “Triangular Trade”). His ships primarily transported slaves, rum and molasses. Rum and molasses from Medford was taken to West Africa where they were used to buy slaves and those slaves were then shipped back to the Americas and sold. As evidenced by a letter that he wrote to one of his captains in 1761, he viewed slaves very much as a commodities: "You are not to take any children and especially girls, if you can avoid it by any means, and as fiew women as possible… but as many prime young men boys as you can get from 14 to 20 years of age. Take no slave on board that has the least defect, or sickly".
