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PA Enslavement FAQs

A series of pages exploring
various aspects of enslavement in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Slave Advertisements

Pennsylvania's First Newspaper Advertisement for a Public Slave Auction

ON Monday the 6th of August, at the Court-House in Philadelphia, will be exposed to Sale by Publick Vendue, A very good Negro Woman and her Child, A Boy about 2 Years old, and a Mulatto Boy about 9 Years of Age, for the Term of 22 Years: All lately taken in Execution, By Owen Roberts, Sheriff.

Source: The American Weekly Mercury, 26 July 1722.

Notes

Enslaved Africans existed in the settlement of New Sweden, in the southeast portion of what is now Pennsylvania, in the 1630s. The establishment of the Province of Pennsylvania in 1681 as a land grant to William Penn from English King Charles II expanded the territory into an area similar in size to the modern state. William Penn sailed from England in 1682 and established Philadelphia on the banks of the Delaware River, and the small settlement filled quickly with Quaker immigrants. Two years later, in 1684, the Bristol merchant vessel Isabella landed a cargo of 150 enslaved Angolans, brought from Western Africa and every slave was quickly purchased by the new settlers. In that year, enslaved labor was firmly established as a part of Philadelphia's economy and society.

Historian Gary B. nash estimated that between 1682 and 1705, one in fifteen Philadelphian households owned slaves. Enslaved Africans were therefore bought and sold within the settlement from the start as the fortunes of individual settlers rose and fell. The small size of the population ensured that the public sales of any types of goods, enslaved people included, could be effectively promoted by word of mouth and through printed broadsides and pamphlets.

It wasn't until December 1719 that Philadelphia got it's first newspaper, The American Weekly Mercury, first published by printer Andrew Bradford as a single sheet, two page edition on December 22, 1719. Within just a few issues, regular advertisements for enslaved people began to appear. Most were posted anonymously, with Bradford acting as the go-between to arrange a private sale.

The advertisement above, appearing a year and a half after Bradford began publishing his newspaper, represents a significant event in the history of enslavement in Pennsylvania: the first newspaper advertisement for the public auction of an enslaved family. This gruesome spectacle of a woman and two children, seized by the Sheriff and displayed for public inspection in front of the Court House before being bid upon by strangers, was probably not entirely unique. Undoubtedly the public auction of enslaved people had occurred before in the four decades history of the province. But this was the first time such an event was publicly advertised in a widely distributed Pennsylvania newspaper.

The woman and the 2-year-old boy were mother and son, as stated in the ad. The 9-year-old "Mulatto Boy" may or may not have been related to the other two. While the mother and son were slaves for life, the 9-year-old was being sold for a term of 22 years, meaning he would, if nothing went wrong, gain his freedom at age 31.As long as he did not escape or try to escape, get into trouble with the law, damage property, or get anyone pregnant, all of which could add time to his term of enslavement, he would be freed in 22 years. As long as his enslaver did not move them all out of the province, sell him, die, or become insolvent, any of which could jeopardize his manumission, and as long as his enslave chose to honor the agreement.

The difference between being enslaved for life and being enslaved to age 31 had everything to do with parentage and skin tone. As a "mulatto," the child of one white parent and one black parent, the boy's fate and status was determined by laws designed to control non-white inhabitants in the American colonies. In this case, Pennsylvania probably borrowed from bastardy and slave statutes passed in neighboring Maryland decades before, which were themselves derived from English common law. A 1664 Maryland law allowed that a child born to a free European woman married to an enslaved African could be freed after providing thirty years of service to the enslaved man's master. That law was modified by a 1692 act forbidding any white woman from marrying or "permitting themselves with being gotten with child by Negroes or any other slaves." If married, a child of the union would be indentured to the local Parish until age 21. If unmarried, the child would be indentured to age 31.

Pennsylvania passed a similar law, but not until 1726, four years after the date of the above sale, so the Mulatto boy's term of 31 years was more likely derived from older provincial customs.

Sources for Notes

Gary B. Nash, "Slaves and Slave Owners in Colonial Philadelphia," African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives, Joe William Trotter, Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, Editors, Pennsylvania State University, 1997, p. 44.

Larry Hunt, "Mulattoes in Colonial Maryland: The Effects of Colonial Law on Patterns of Freedom and Enslavement," Social Science Quarterly, 103/4 (May 2022), pp 945-958.