Powerful Personal Stories
Focusing on numbers can divert our attention away from the personal, powerful stories of endurance and achievement. These items from DCHS Collections reveal how the legal system imposed a legal definition on men, women and children declaring them as legal property.
A woman named Rachel is “sold” to Christian Tobias on February 4, 1771
Town of Washington permits Isaac Smith to manumit an enslaved woman named Dinah, February 1826
Bartholomew Noxon, Jr., records payments by his “negro boy Cezar” who purchases his own freedom
September 1771, Francis Brett “sells” a man, two woman and a boy to family members
Dick of Fishkill is sold for $200
Newspaper ads reflect buying and selling and notice of freedomseekers
From Other Collections
Indictment cites Johannes Radcliff’s illegal “entertaining” of 20 enslaved persons
Rhinebeck’s Dr. Ananias Cooper writes to Robert Livingston at Livingston Manor about the condition of one of his enslaved men, June 30, 1783
Janet Montgomery purchases a 14-year old girl