Study Areas

Enslavement

20th Century History

March 28, 1792: Buck Nelson Escaped from Thomazin Ellzey While in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania

Twenty Dollars Reward.
RANAWAY from the subscriber on the 28th day of this instant, on the Yellow Breeches Road, about three miles from Shippensburgh, who lives when at home in Fairfax county, about eighteen miles from Alexandria, in Virginia, about 75 miles from Williams Port, the Negro BUCK NELSON, about twenty years of age, about five feet eight or ten inches high, his complexion rather yellow than black, smiling countenance, little or no beard, very active and lively, drives horses or oxen well in a carriage, a good ploughman, and an excellent hand with a sythe, either among grain or grass.
The above reward shall be paid on the delivery of the said Negro at my house,
THOMAZIN ELLZEY.
March 29th, 1792.
N.B. It is supposed the above negro has taken with him a pair of buckskin breeches partly new, a pair of white ticken overalls, and a white wool hat.

Notes: Buck Nelson escaped from Thomazin Ellzey "on the Yellow Breeches Road, about three miles from Shippensburgh." Although somewhat imprecise, Ellzey is probably referring to modern day Walnut Bottom Road (Route 174), which at the time was a twenty-mile-long free road between Shippensburg and Carlisle, in Cumberland County. The community of Lees Cross Roads in Southampton Township lies at a point along this road three miles from Shippensburg, and is possibly the place that Buck Nelson escaped. Although Lees Cross Roads is named for a tavern that stood there at one time, it was not yet in existence in 1792.

Thomzin Ellzey inherited Nelson from his father, Lewis. A genealogist reports this line in the 1786 will of Captain Lewis Ellzey: " I give to my son Thomasin Ellzey my negro boy named Nelson." Nelson would have been about fourteen at the time of the bequest.

By 1792, Pennsylvania was a destination for southern freedom seekers looking to blend in with the state's growing free Black population. Both Shippensburg and Carlisle had free Black communities, as did more distant Chambersburg to the west and Harrisburg further east. To the enslaved Buck Nelson, accompanying Ellzey on his journey into Cumberland County at this time presented a significant opportunity. Slipping away from Ellzey on a back road in rural Cumberland County, Pennsylvania was far easier than trying to escape from the Ellzey estate in Fairfax County, Virginia and then making an arduous journey of more than seventy miles through the more hostile slave states of Virginia and Maryland.

For another story of an enslaved person escaping from their Southern enslaver while traveling in Pennsylvania, see 1796, October: Teenaged Bob escapes from Temple Smith while in York

Sources: The Carlisle Gazette and the Western Repository of Knowledge, 18 April 1792.
Cumberland Valley Visitor's Bureau, "Tavern Tour West," 2016, https://www.visitcumberlandvalley.com/blog/post/tavern-tour-west/, accessed 30 September 2025.
Janet McKenney, "Re: Thomazin Ellzey 1700 VA?," 2001, Genealogy.com.

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

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