Collection

Slavery and Emancipation Documents

• 1737-1875 (Creation)

1 box

This collection contains 58 items are related to slavery or emancipation in the states of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Texas and the countries of Cuba, the Caribbean, Jamaica, and Paris, France.

The descriptive write-up provided by Respess and William Reese, Company is used in the listing of documents. Each document purchased has a title, date, and some have an abbreviated transcription of the text.

The Texas document recounts the hiring, auctions, renting, and transferring ownership of slaves. The Missouri documents concern the purchase and transferring of ownership of slaves named Nancy, George, Phebe, Washington, Lucinda, Madison, Benjamin, and Sarah. No last names or additional information is provided except that Nancy is a Mulatto Woman and George is "of the age of seventeen or thereabouts." Of particular note are two documents, a Texas free woman of color filing a complaint regarding an illegal beating by a group of five men one and the other document is from Missouri and details a sale of slaves by a woman, a rarer document than those recording sales by men.

The collection is arranged into six series:

• Series 1, Texas Slavery and Emancipation Documents (15 documents),1838-1875; Undated
• Series 2, Missouri Slavery and Emancipation Documents (4 documents), 1827-1861
• Series 3, Addendum 2009 (10 documents), 1737-1866
• Series 4, 20 items removed to cataloging and placed in the library, 1787-1865
• Series 5, Portuguese and British Slave trade (7 documents), 1756-1800
• Series 6, Texas and Florida, (2 documents), 1830; 1835

A list of items removed to cataloging or placed in the map cases is included at the end of the item or in Series 4.

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

• English
• French

Addendums

• December 2008: 29 additional slavery and anti-slavery documents and publications. Of the 29 documents, 9 are manuscript items that include writings, slave sale broadsides, letters, and articles from Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, Cuba, the Caribbean, Jamaica, and Paris, France. 20 published items removed to the library for cataloging.
• March 2009: 1 bill of sale for a slave from Guadalupe County, Texas, 1832.
• April 2010: Slavery Documents-Portuguese Parliamentary Slave Documents (6), 1756-1800; Victoriae Reginae CAP 83.
• May 2011: 1835 broadside titled "Citizens of Shell Point Anticipate Secession before Achieving Statehood.

Finding Aid Authors: Rebecca Hankins.

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• Emancipation
• Race relations
• Slavery
• Africana Studies

• Africana studies
• Documents, Legal