Study Areas:

Slavery

Anti-Slavery

Free Persons of Color

The Violent Decade

Underground Railroad

US Colored Troops

Civil War

The Year of Jubilee (1863)

August 1845: Clement B. Grubb Buys Wiliam Dorsey's Freedom

Slave Case.--The Lancaster Examiner states that a colored man named Wm. Dorsey, was brought before Judge Lewis on Saturday, charged with being a fugitive slave. It having been conclusively established that he had escaped from slavery, and that the present claimant was his owner, the Court in compliance with the law, directed him to be surrendered to his owner who resides in Maryland.

Dorsey had been for several years employed at one of the Furnaces of Clement B. Grubb, Esq., had sustained a good character, and had been married since he came to that county. With a liberality of the noblest kind, on learning that Dorsey was remanded to perpetual slavery, Mr. Grubb came forward and purchased his freedom for $600.

Source: Carlisle Herald & Expositor, 27 August 1845.

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

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