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Enslavement in Pennsylvania
Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Biography of Asylum Peters, Born in the Settlement of Azylum
The settlement of Azylum was laid out in 1793 on 1600 acres carved out of the northern Pennsylvania wilderness and was intended as a new home for immigrant French nobles fleeing revolution in France and rebellion on the sugar plantations of Saint Domingue. About thirty cabins were built and occupied by the refugees, many of whom brought enslaved Black workers. Records of the persons enslaved here are sparse and mostly exist as anecdotes or as scraps of information. The only person enslaved at Azylum for which more than a few details exist is the man known as Asylum Peters, profiled below, who was born in the settlement to enslaved parents during the first year of its existence. His death in 1880 in Potter County prompted a local writer to profile his life in a short newspaper article.
Asylum Peters
Article from the Potter Enterprise, published upon his death in late 1880.
(text of article)
Asylum Peters.
This aged colored man, so well known to the old settlers in the vicinity of Lymansville, died at the house of Walter Edgecomb, in Homer, Nov. 24th. Being one of the first settlers of Potter, a brief sketch of his life might not be out of place at this time.
Mr. Peters was born in Bradford county, Pa., in the year 1793, and named after the township in which he was born. In 1806 he came to Ceres, M'Kean county, with General Bravo, a surveyor and the man who located the three warrants known as the Bravo lands. He was cook for Bravo and his party while they were surveying, and when that work was done the boy Asylum was sold to Wm. Ayers for one hundred dollars with the understanding that Mr. Ayers should give him a certain amount of schooling and his freedom when he was twenty-one years of age.
In 1808 Mr. Ayers moved into Potter county, and occupied the Keating farm, six miles east from Coudersport, coming in on what was then the only road in the county, the "old Boon road" which run north of Coudersport near where Sam Thompson now lives, passing up Prosser hollow and across what is now known as the Harris farm, to the Keating farm in Sweden township, thence in a southerly direction to the Hopper house on the Jersey Shore Turnpike, thence down the Cross Fork to the mouth, and thence to a point near Renovo.
Mr. Ayers' family consisted of wife, two sons, one daughter and the black boy Asylum, and they were the first settlers in the county.
Before his time was out Peters left Mr. Ayers and went to live at Isaac Lymans, at what is now Lymansville, where he remained until after he became of age, when he went to live with Jonathan Edgecomb and has ever since remained with the family, where he has been kindly treated and where he has always felt that he had a home.
Mr. Peters was the only man that was ever lawfully a slave in this county, and the only person who has lived here seventy-two years. By his death we are reminded that Pennsylvania was once a slave state, and some of the younger readers of the ENTERPRISE will be surprised to learn that as late as 1840, more than sixty colored persons were legally held slaves in this Commonwealth.
ALMERON NELSON.
Sources: Almeron Nelson, "Asylum Peters," Potter Enterprise (Coudersport, PA), 01 December 1880, page 3.
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