he called Stoney Brooke Plantation, he first ordered the construction of a sawmill, and used two of his slaves, Harry and Roco, for the construction. Suffield's third minister, Reverend Ebenezer Devotion, became minister in 1710, and "sixteen years later the town voted to give him £20 to purchase a slave. Reverend Ebenezer Gay, Devotion's successor, owned six slaves throughout his long term, 1742–1796. Reverend Ebenezer Gay Jr. manumitted his family's three remaining slaves in 1812. They were Titus, Ginny and Dinah. "Princess," a slave belonging to early Suffield settler, Lieut. Joshua Leavitt, died November 5, 1732. Some of Leavitt's descendants became ardent abolitionists, including Joshua Leavitt and his cousin Roger Hooker Leavitt, who operated an Underground Railroad station in Charlemont, Massachusetts. One of the earliest graduates of the Yale Medical School was one of Suffield's earliest physicians. Dr. Asaph Leavitt Bissell, born in 1791 at Hanover, New Hampshire, to parents originally from Suffield, attended Dartmouth College, and later graduated in the second class of the Yale Medical School. Bissell moved to Suffield, where he rode horseback to make house calls on his patients. Bissell's saddlebags are today in the collection of the Yale Medical School's Historical Society. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and , or 1.58%, is water. The town center (Suffield Depot CDP) has a total area of , all of it land. Suffield is on the west bank of the Connecticut River, south of the river's largest city, Springfield, Massachusetts, and north of Connecticut's capital, Hartford. Two bridges span the river to the town of Enfield: the Amtrak/Springfield Terminal Railroad Bridge and the Enfield–Suffield Veterans Bridge. The Metacomet Ridge, a mountainous trap rock ridgeline that stretches from Long Island Sound to nearly the Vermont border, runs through the center of Suffield from south to north as West Suffield Mountain. The Metacomet Trail traverses the ridge. Demographics As of the census of 2000, there were 13,552 people, 4,660 households, and 3,350 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 4,853 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 88.67% White, 6.95% African American, 0.24% Native American, 0.94% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 2.03% from other races, and 1.13% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.25% of the population.