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Slavery

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Free Persons of Color

The Violent Decade

Underground Railroad

US Colored Troops

Civil War

The Year of Jubilee (1863)

August 1828: Young William escapes from Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland

Forty Dollars Reward.
Ran away from the subscriber, living in Port Tobacco, Maryland, on the 13th instant, my negro boy slave, named William; he is of a bright yellow complexion, about seventeen or eighteen years of age, four feet ten or eleven inches high, stout and well proportioned; a little inclined to be bow legged; his hair nearly straight; in an excellent house servant and waiter, and unusually smart and intelligent for one of his color.

As I have not heard of him since he eloped, I have thought it probable he will attempt to get to some non-slaveholding State, and on his way thither will pass through the District of Columbia, where he has relations living, or Baltimore--probably both of these places.

Whoever will apprehend said runaway, and confine him in jail so that I get him again, shall receive, if taken in Charles County, twenty dollars, if taken out of Charles County, the above reward.

John Matthews.
Aug 29.

Source: Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), Monday, 6 October 1828.

Covering the history of African Americans in central Pennsylvania from the colonial era through the Civil War.

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