Fortune Gravesite

Riverside Cemetery, Waterbury, CT

Fortune’s Life and Death

Fortune, an enslaved African American man, his wife Dinah and their children were owned by Dr. Preserved Porter in Waterbury in the 1780s and 1790s. When Fortune died in 1798, Dr. Porter dissected Fortune’s body, and then blanched his bones so they would be clean and dry.

Fortune’s Remains and Their Journey

Porter used Fortune’s skeleton to teach anatomy to his students and Fortune’s remains were passed down in the Porter family for generations. In 1933, Dr. Sally Porter Law McGlannan gave Fortune’s bones to Waterbury’s Mattatuck Museum where they were put on display as “Larry the Skeleton.” Fortune’s remains were on display at the museum into the 1970s when they were moved into storage.

Rediscovery and Historical Investigation

In the 1990s, local activists working with the museum formed the African American History Project and undertook a proper investigation into Fortune’s history and the 215-year journey of his remains.

Honoring Fortune’s Memory

In 2013, Fortune was given a state funeral at the Capitol in Hartford, a service at St. John’s Church in Waterbury and was laid to rest in Riverside Cemetery, a National Register of Historic Places Site.

A mural dedicated to Fortune was created at the North End Rec Center in Waterbury in 2024.

This site is open to the public.