It is not known exactly what date Primus Lynde died, merely that it was in mid-June of 1787. He was one of several people enslaved by the wealthy Lynde family, one-time owners of the Pickman House. It is extremely unlikely that Primus was his original name; New England slave-holding families extended their obsession with all things Roman to those they enslaved, and Lynde’s other slaves included Scipio, Cicero, and Cato. As with many enslaved people from this time, information is difficult to find for Primus. We know that he could not have been born earlier than 1723 and he is referenced in Benjamin Lynde’s diary as early as 1733 (unless Lynde named two enslaved people Primus, which is not impossible). Either way, he would have lived in the Lynde household from a young age, through both Benjamin Lynde Sr and Jr. As someone who frequently accompanied Lynde (a justice of the Superior Court) to his work in Boston, he could not have been unaware that Lynde served on the panel of justices that condemned an enslaved woman to be burned at the stake for petit treason, the second time such a sentence had been carried out in Boston..
Benjamin Sr. 's will left 100 pounds to Primus and Benjamin Jr’s 1776 will established that Primus was to be emancipated upon Lynde’s death. For whatever reason, Primus stops appearing in still-alive Benjamin’s diary after a single 1778 entry: ‘My Man Primus left us’. He is largely absent from records after this point, except for William Pyncheon referencing him delivering a billet for Lynde in 1781. Primus married twice, first to Jane (“servant to George Smalls of Danvers”) in 1757 and second to Venus (“servant of Hon. B. Pickman”) in 1763. Primus' last record appears in Pyncheon’s diary, in which he references ‘Primus Lynde’s funeral’.
Primus’ story is not an unusual one. Despite Massachusetts’ general distaste for the slave trade itself, wealthy New England families were perfectly happy to use the labor of enslaved people while outwardly lamenting the conditions that had brought them there. Because there is no African American section of Charter Street Cemetery (Howard St would be the first Salem cemetery to have one) it is unknown where those enslaved by the families whose tombs stand in Charter Street may be buried today, although it is known that a small number of African Americans, enslaved and free, were buried in the cemetery.