(Black Past.org) Prince Whipple fought in the battles of Saratoga and Delaware during the War for Independence. He also was one of twenty men who petitioned the New Hampshire legislature for freedom in 1779. His owner, General William Whipple, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an aide to General George Washington. Prince Whipple has been identified by some as the African American figure on the painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. However, there has been some skepticism on whether or not it's true that Prince Whipple was with Washington when he crossed the Deleware River on Christmas Eve 1776.
Prince Whipple was brought from the coast of Africa to the colonial trading center of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1760 when he was 10 years old. He was enslaved as he grew into manhood. He was a body servant to one of the colony's most influential leaders. In 1779 Prince Whipple was one of twenty petitioners who identified themselves as African men who were taken from their native lands "while but children but incapable of self-defense" now making a plea to the New Hampshire legislature for manumission and for abolition of slavery in New Hampshire. The petition was labeled without legislative action. While the author of the document is unknown, Whipple was literate, as was most of the other petitioners.
Prince whipple married his wife Dinah, on her 21st birthday, which happened to be the date of her manumission, February 22, 1781. Whipple wasn't free until 1784. Prince Whipple died on November 21, 1796, at the age of 46 and is buried with his wife and at least one daughter and a granddaughter near the tomb of his former owner, William Whipple, at North Cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Prince Whipple was born in 1750.
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