African Americana

4pp., folio, 12 x 19 1/4 in. Disbound (toned, minor creases). Contains several advertisements regarding enslaved people, including notices for sale, want ads, and runaway slave ads. 

The front page includes a "Wanted to Purchase" notice for "a Black Girl about the age of 9 or 10 years." Also on the front page are sale ads, one for "a valuable Negro woman, an excellent flax and cotton spinner," who was "well qualified and has been a manager of a dairy for several years." Below is listed for rent a "stout healthy Negro man, accustomed to plantation work." Both people go unnamed. 

On the third and final page are two advertisements, each running twice, placed by enslavers seeking the return of self-emancipated formerly enslaved people. The first, placed by William Chilton, offers fifty dollars for "a stout black man" named Sampson. Additionally, twenty dollars is offered by the jailor John Fewel for the return of Baccus who "escaped from the Jail of Prince William County." It is especially noted in a postscript that "All masters of vessels is forewarned from carrying away the said slave under the penalty of law."