Shaun Wallace on In Pursuit of Freedom

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In this blog post, Bristol lecturer Shaun Wallace reflects on his forthcoming book In Pursuit of Freedom: Fugitive Slaves and Advertised Escape in the Early Republic.

Explaining the origins and motivations behind my first manuscript I find myself gravitating toward the same inspiration I accredit to my decision to study and teach American slavery—the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). As a second year student at the University of Stirling in 2008, my introduction to racial slavery was through Douglass’s eloquent and powerful antebellum autobiography. I was drawn to its themes of agency and resistance and to the life of Douglass, the self-taught author who learned to read and write and used his literateness to challenge, and eventually escape, the system that enslaved him. I analysed literateness within narrative accounts of enslavement written by formerly enslaved people for my undergraduate dissertation, explored the relationship between literacy and escape for my MRes thesis, and resistance as captured in fugitive slave advertisements for my PhD project.

Yet, for every question answered, another seemed to appear. How did bondpersons pursuit of literacy fuse with their understanding of freedom? What other motivations led enslaved persons to escape? Douglass was Maryland’s most famous fugitive but who were the others—The women, men, and children who never left written testimonies but were advertised as escapees by enslavers? How did demographic, geographical, and temporal factors shape fugitivity patterns—Did bondpersons who escaped from the Chesapeake region in the upper South share the same profile as escapees from slavery in the deeper South?I designed the Fugitive Slave Database (FSdb) to address these questions. One of the largest digital archives of American fugitive slave advertisements from the turn of the nineteenth century, I built it to preserve fugitivity notices in their complete and original form, bring them into a corpus of historical evidence, and create datasets for analysis. A total of 5,567 fugitivity notices published in Georgia and Maryland (and smaller samples from South Carolina and Virginia) were collected and over 9,000 records extrapolated from them, generating new and original information for 2,350 enslaved women, men, and children advertised as escapees by some 2,000 men and women who enslaved them.

My forthcoming manuscript, In Pursuit of Freedom: Fugitive Slaves and Advertised Escape in the Early Republic (publication with the University of Georgia Press: early 2025) centres around the experiences of the enslaved women and men captured in fugitive slave advertisements, emerging as a major contribution to historiographical understandings of slavery in the United States from the turn of the nineteenth century.

Directing attention to a time (the early republic) and to places (Georgia and Maryland) that have not received sustained consideration by scholars of enslaved fugitivity, my book enriches scholarly understanding of the methods adopted by enslavers when enslaved men and women escaped, providing new insights into the attitude of enslavers as well as the role of printers and print in the surveillance of Black bodies.  In Pursuit of Freedom furnishes scholarship with first empirically-based profile of fugitives and fugitivity in Georgia and Maryland at the turn of the nineteenth century. It deploys quantitative and qualitative methods to unearth the stories that enslaved women and men did not write themselves but that can be recovered, reconstructed, and reimagined through careful attention to a vast archive of fugitive slave advertisements that became a standard feature of American newspapers during the eighteenth century.

My new book encourages slavery scholars to interpret fugitive slave advertisements in new and original ways. Pioneering innovative digital humanities methodologies to conceptualize and theorize bondpersons pursuit of freedom as a lifelong struggle, it sheds light on a profoundly personal process of becoming and self-actualization in the lives of enslaved women and men as they distanced themselves physically and psychologically from bondage. Fugitivity, the book argues, marked an important, if uncertain stride, in what has been until now a fugitive process—Not the end but rather a moment in the lives of freedom seekers alluded to in fugitive slave advertisements. Interpreting notices for escapees for what they were truly were—the desperate actions of enslavers to interfere and meddle in a process they could never control—we can ensure that the agency, decision-making, and personhood of the women and men in pursuit of freedom is never again generalized, masked, silenced, or undermined.

 

It’s Time to Think About Ability as well as Disability

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To properly understand what ability means we need to look beyond the human, too.

In this blog post, Dr Andy Flack reflects on his recent open access article in History and Theory – co-authored with fellow Bristol lecturer Dr Alice Would – exploring the history of ability ‘through an animal lens.’

How did you get into thinking about this area?

This article emerged out of my recent AHRC Leadership Fellowship, which brought together environmental history, disability studies and sensory studies for the first time. We looked at animals that live in the dark, and the naturalists (mainly British and north American) that looked for them, and asked how supposedly ‘strange’ and ‘abnormal’ senses were understood between around 1800 and the present day. During our research, this began to raise the question of what naturalists meant when they thought animals were either well-equipped or not to live in their dark worlds. And more than that, we noticed that naturalists and environmentalists had lots to say about environmental change and its impact on the way animals were able to continue living in their worlds. In effect, it seemed that animals were being ‘disabled’ by human changes. As we thought more about this, we realised that to understand that character of this ‘disability’, we had to better understand what people in the past thought it meant to be ‘able’ in the world.

Tell me more about ability beyond the human context?

By looking at a range of dark-dwellers, from bats and hedgehogs to star-nosed moles and deep sea fish and cave-dwellers, we found that the historical idea of ‘ability’ changed over time. Mirroring a medical understanding of the human body, for much of the period naturalists identified ability in the sensory structures of animal bodies, such as the tactile nose of the star-nosed mole, the neurology of the barn owl and the echolocating organs of the bat. Across the period, there emerged an understanding that ability resided in the ways in which specialized bodies interacted with the wider environment, and that environment change could – sometimes fatally – disrupt that ‘harmony’. Early in the twentieth century, it was sometimes seen as the fault of the animal itself in its failure to adapt to modernity. Later, however, there was a sense that for an animal to remain ‘able’, it was the responsibility of people to adapt the environments that we have made so that species can live well together. This has profound implications, because ability today is less often understood as something that resides within some kind of ‘specialised’ body, and more as something that is produced when environments are effectively adapted to the diverse needs of all.

What’s next?

We hope that our article will inspire historians to return to many of the ‘big ideas’ that structure how we think – and have thought – about the world but which often go ‘under the radar of our perception’. We also hope that historians look for the roots of ‘ability’ beyond our context, to test and nuance our findings. Looking well beyond human contexts could offer exciting and urgent ways to do this because we live in a world that is changing fast, and where the adaptation of all beings is going to be imperative. Indeed, we hope that we have shown that to understand either ability or disability, we need to understand both.

Summer Reading: Kate Skinner on Women Talking

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In this blog post, Professor Kate Skinner reflects on a book she read this summer – Women Talking – and draws connections to her current research in gender and legal history. 

Content warning: This post contains descriptions of rape and sexual and gender-based violence.

TLDR 1: The law matters in dealing with sexual and gender-based violence.

TLDR 2: If you don’t want to read the book, you can watch the film instead.

Early this summer, I read Women Talking by Miriam Toews (Faber & Faber, 2018). The story revolves around an imaginary debate between women in a Mennonite settlement in the aftermath of a shocking discovery: a group of eight men within their small, agricultural, religious community had repeatedly sprayed powerful animal tranquiliser over women and girls as they slept and raped them in their ensuing stupor.

Over a period of four years, the women and girls in the story had awoken with painful injuries and fragments of disturbing dreams. They were repeatedly told by the community’s male elders that this was the work of demons upon their wild female imaginations, until one woman stayed awake long enough to catch a perpetrator climbing through her window in the dead of night, animal tranquiliser in hand. The police had been called, and the rapists taken into custody. The women then learn that the elders are selling off assets to raise bail money so they can bring the men home and effect a ‘reconciliation’ with their victims. The women must decide what to do.

The story is narrated by August Epp, a schoolteacher. Born into the same community, to parents who were ex-communicated and left, Epp had attempted to live abroad for a while. He had been uneasily reaccepted after these unsuccessful acts of rebellion, for the community emphasised that Mennonites should marry other Mennonites, remain in their communities, and limit their contact with the rest of the world. When such contact had to be made, it was mediated by male elders. Herein lay a crucial element of their power.

Epp’s school was for boys only. Most of the women in the story could not write, but they wanted their reasoning and their decisions to be recorded, so they asked Epp to join them at their meetings in a hayloft. There, he writes down the arguments that the women made in relation to three options: ‘Do Nothing’, ‘Stay and Fight’, and ‘Leave’. The arguments, often religious and articulated through agricultural metaphors, are interwoven with glimpses of individual characters, whose experiences shape their perspectives upon Mennonite values, and how those values might be interpreted or adapted to respond to this desperate situation.

The reader thus encounters Salome, who had attacked one of the perpetrators with a scythe upon realising what they had done. It was this action that led the male elders to call the police to the community: the perpetrators were deemed in need of protection from the women’s rage. We also meet Miep, Salome’s three-year-old daughter, who needs medical treatment for infection and injuries sustained through rape. We meet Nettie, who refuses to speak to adults but takes care of children, and Greta, whose teeth were knocked out by her night-time attacker when she momentarily regained consciousness and tried to scream. The women in the story write a manifesto to guide their future lives and depart from the settlement.

The dialogue in Women Talking was imagined, but it was crafted in response to events that were real. They occurred between 2005 and 2009 in Manitoba Colony, a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia. The perpetrators were ultimately convicted and sentenced to prison terms.

Later in the summer of 2024, I was reminded of this story upon seeing a BBC headline: ‘Woman describes horror of learning husband drugged her so others could rape her.’ In this case, a French woman, Gisèle, was repeatedly drugged by her husband, Dominique Pélicot, over approximately a decade. He invited dozens of men into her home whilst she slept and photographed and filmed them as they raped her.

The use of tranquiliser to facilitate repeated rape was a common feature of the two stories, as was the violation of a woman’s privacy, dignity, and bodily autonomy by the perpetrators of this grotesque violence. There were of course many differences. One of them was in how perpetrators were caught.

In the more recent French case, Dominique Pélicot was reported by a stranger for ‘upskirting’ (taking photos up women’s skirts without their consent). This is a criminal offence in France. Once he had been reported, he became the subject of a police investigation. The police thereby gained access to his computer equipment, and images and videos of multiple rapes were discovered.

The law alone cannot prevent many forms of sexual and gender-based violence. The law is a limited tool with which to address the structural causes of this violence. Laws may be robustly or poorly written, and effectively or inadequately applied by police, prosecutors, and judges who are trained, committed, and resourced to varying degrees.

But the law definitely matters. Laws that criminalise actions such as ‘upskirting’ – and indeed the production and circulation of ‘deepfakes’ – are laws that criminalise the violation of privacy, dignity, and bodily autonomy. Without them, the police have fewer tools with which to investigate the online worlds in which perpetrators of sexual violence increasingly operate.

Kate Skinner is currently researching in the field of gender and legal history.

Women Talking has since been made into a film.

Internship on British South Asian history: Nazma Ali

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In this special blog post, we hear from Bristol student Nazma Ali on her recent Widening Participation Internship. This internship focussed on the histories of British South Asians from the 1830s to the present, working with Professor Sumita Mukherjee and Dr Aleena Din as part of the Remaking Britain project.

Hi Nazma! Can you tell us a bit more about the internship?

During my recent internship, I contributed to the development of a digital resource titled ‘Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830s to the Present.’ Throughout this six-week internship, I worked alongside Professor Sumita Mukerjee and Dr Aleena Din from the University of Bristol’s Department of History. This resource serves both academic researchers and general audiences interested in the experiences and contributions of British South Asians. This group has been less focused on by researchers and I was excited to see a whole internship project based on just South Asian history!

During this project, I had the opportunity of working in the British Library Archives and the Feminist Archive South collection, based in the university’s special collections. I handled diverse materials ranging from nineteenth century manuscripts to pamphlets on youth resistance movements of the 1970s. What I particularly enjoyed was writing entries. I synthesized large amounts of primary and secondary research to produce short essays for the website. I explored the self-organization of South Asians against the National Front and specialized in the resistance of Bangladeshi communities against fascist intimidation in London’s East End.

I would say the work of Bangladeshi women in this movement interested me the most. Anowara Jahan was a committee member of the Commission for Racial Equality, a board member of East London’s Bengali Teachers and worked extremely hard to mobilize Bengali women in local communities. She defied patriarchy control which restricted women to the domestic sphere whilst defying Britain’s racist laws that repressed Asian women. I believe highlighting the works of such individuals is central to the study of history. As someone of Bangladeshi heritage, bringing light to the contributions of my community was my motivation.

I have used resources similar to ‘Remaking Britain’ during my history degree, so it was interesting to see how such websites are produced. I also had the independence to decide what topics I wanted to focus on which was refreshing. I am grateful that this internship provided insight into academic research. I better understood the several opportunities that come with being a researcher. I think this internship project would be an amazing experience for anyone interested in race and gender history.

Finally, I built meaningful relationships with my supervisors. They continuously helped me with my entries. They organized weekly meetings so I could stay up to date and they allowed me to explore my interest in the history of British Bangladeshis. I thoroughly enjoyed this internship, and I am excited to see what impact this resource has!

What drew you to this topic?

Whilst I’ve learnt a lot in my first year of doing History, I noticed that my area of interest was not as well represented in the curriculum. South Asian women’s rights and resistance are my two main interests which I was excited to know this project covered.

About the Author

Nazma Ali has just finished her first year as a Bristol History student, and completed this internship over the summer. Through working on this project, she hopes to bring more light to the resilience of British South Asians.

A Picture on a Wall

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For LGBTQ+ History Month, Professor Ronald Hutton reflects on the life and legacy of Dr John Leslie (1947-1994), a former colleague and historian at the University of Bristol. 

Against one of the walls of my university office sits an oil painting. It is in the German Expressionist style and shows a man in his early thirties, with short, light brown hair and clean-cut features, conventionally dressed in a brown tweed jacket, matching tie and white collared shirt. This is Dr John Leslie, who was a member of the History Department when I arrived in it at the opening of the 1980s. He was an expert on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and taught the history of modern central and eastern Europe. He was also one of the members of the department at that time – amounting to four out of fourteen – who were gay. All were men in their thirties and forties, with bachelor lifestyles, who contributed much to the convivial atmosphere of the department at the time, marked by constant reciprocal wining and dining. None of them ever referred to their sexual orientation and nobody in the department ever mentioned it or asked them about it. It was instead inferred from acquaintance with them and/or confirmed by less discreet members of Bristol’s gay community. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement in the department that silence on the matter made life easy for everybody: that it was something that could be completely accepted as long as there was no evidence that there was anything to accept. It was rumoured that at one point somebody had been injudicious enough to ask our head of department, an old dear who had fought in Burma in World War Two, what he thought of having so many reputed homosexuals in his department. He was said to have replied that once a person has served east of Suez, these things lose their capacity to shock, and that this was all he would say on the matter. I had a feeling that things had been this way in the university for decades, and perhaps in polite and professional British society for much longer.

John however had an additional reason for keeping his closet door firmly closed against the world. His parents and wider family were devout evangelical Christians, and he retained a vague, residual and guilty attachment to that faith: his friends teased him with having been a church mouse. That family, to which he remained affectionately attached, would have been horrified to learn of his sexual alignment, and this need for secrecy kept him aloof from even the local gay community. Instead he enjoyed holiday adventures abroad: another wholly traditional British way of dealing with the issue. In the mid-1980s he was diagnosed as HIV positive. In this predicament, he could confide in nobody around him, and plunged into a prolonged depression. His baffled friends rallied round: I took him to films and on picnics in an effort to bolster him. After a time he did stablise,and appeared to return to his usual bouncy self. Perhaps he had realised that he still felt fit, and had a small chance of survival, and probably some years still ahead of him. He remained more withdrawn than before, but then the close and familial social life of the department had in any case dissolved in the harsher instititional environment of the 1980s. I myself married, and submerged in the pleasures, and then problems, of domesticity and parenthood. By imperceptible stages, John and I grew amicably apart.

In the early 1990s he suddenly developed AIDS. He resigned precipitately from the university, claiming that he could not bear the changes in British higher education: even now he would not admit the truth. He completely disappeared from our view, having retired into a Bristol hospice, alone and unvisited, where he died a short time later. He spent much of his declining time there listening to classical music, which he loved, on headphones. It was at his funeral, in a local church, that his real story came out, mostly through the hospice chaplain who had tended him during his final weeks. His family wanted nothing to do with his personal possessions, and the university cleared his office. It offered his portrait, painted in Vienna and of which he had once been so proud, to anybody who would take it. John had abandoned it with the other trappings of the office, perhaps because it reminded him of a different time, when long life and academic success still seemed to beckon. Nobody else was interested, and so I volunteered to take it, in memory of my lost friend. I have kept it in my own office ever since, which has been more than thirty years. When people who notice it ask after the identity of the person in it, I tell them John’s story, so that he can be remembered and honoured; and I tell it now, because Richard Stone walked into my office, asked the question, and on hearing the answer persuaded me to mark LGBTQ+ history month by sharing it more widely in the department. Perhaps in the process it is also possible to reflect on the mercifully changing nature of British society and culture, and be grateful for the passing of a traditional world that we may have lost forever.

If you would like to see the painting of John, Professor Hutton invites you to visit his office, 1.44, 13 Woodland Road. 

PhDone! Dr Alice Kinghorn

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Dr Alice Kinghorn completed their undergrad degree at the University of York, followed by an MA at the University of York, before joining Bristol for their PhD. Alice’s PhD examined Anglican missionary societies’ involvement in transatlantic slavery in the early nineteenth century, focusing specifically on Christian support networks behind these societies. Alice, who already has several articles published, successfully defended their PhD in December 2023. To keep up with their latest research, follow @KinghornAlice.

What was your doctoral research about?

My thesis examines the Church of England’s role in transatlantic slavery through the work of Anglican missionaries. I looked at two Anglican missionary societies: the Church Missionary Society (the CMS) and the Incorporated Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West India Islands (The Conversion Society). Firstly, I looked at the financial support of both societies by cross-referencing donors and subscribers with UCL’s Legacies of British Slavery Database. This demonstrated the extent to which the West India Interest supported both societies. Secondly, I assessed how Anglican missionaries worked in the Caribbean, including schooling systems. The motivations of the missionary societies and their funders revealed important aspects of both the Church of England’s attitudes towards colonial slavery, determining that Anglican missionaries ultimately worked to delay emancipation. Additionally, I looked at interactions between missionaries and enslaved people which revealed new ideas about enslaved people’s religious experiences in the British Caribbean. I argued that while Anglican missionaries were integral to plans to delay emancipation, enslaved people’s decisions shaped the extent to which their objectives were achieved.  

What was the most exciting, or perhaps challenging, element of your research?

I started my PhD in September 2020, and so archive access was really difficult in my first year. The main archive for my research (Lambeth Palace Library) was closed until October 2021. However, this actually ended up shaping my research as I was limited to the sources I could find online. These were mostly annual reports for missionary societies, and so I developed the idea to research the societies’ financial support during this time. When the archives opened again, I was able to complete the qualitative research for my thesis (mostly through missionary correspondence).

The most exciting element of my research has been the travel opportunities during my time at Bristol. I undertook research at the Archives of Antigua and Barbuda, and presented at conferences in France and Chicago. Whilst I was unable to travel to archives at all in my first year, I certainly made up for it later on. 

Do you have any tips for someone preparing for their viva?

I was nervous for my viva – not because I didn’t think I knew my thesis, but because I didn’t really know what to expect. My supervisors were incredibly helpful by explaining what the format of the viva would look like, and by giving me some questions to think about beforehand. They also reiterated that the viva is an enjoyable experience as your examiners have taken the time to closely read and evaluate your work.

I would say think about why you undertook your research in the first place, its originality, its significance within your field more widely, and any future plans you have for publication/research. I also looked at scholarship that had been published since I submitted, and came prepared to discuss parts of my research that I might have done differently on reflection. I ended up really enjoying my viva! 

What do you have planned next? Are there ways to follow what you do?

I have a few projects lined up that continue research into the Church of England and transatlantic slavery, both in research and public engagement. I am hoping to turn my PhD into a monograph and to publish two more articles this year, with the view of applying for postdocs in the next academic year. 

What would you say to someone who’s considering pursuing a PhD?

If you do decide to pursue a PhD, try to get as involved in as many research groups/research opportunities as you can (if you feel like you have the time/capacity). I built up support networks this way, both in terms of research and friendship, that were invaluable to my research experience. My research profile wasn’t confined to my thesis, and I gained experience in public engagement, publishing, and working with stakeholders.

Celia Newsome: Unveiling the Hidden Side of Slavery

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Content Warning: This post contains distressing detail on violence and sexual assault.

In the latest of our posts for Black History Month, Taisha Richards, a student of African American history in the Antebellum South, explores the story of Cecila Newsome, an enslaved woman who violently resisted her exploitation and abuse. 

Image from The American anti-slavery almanac (Boston : N. Southard & D.K. Hitchcock; 1838), https://archive.org/details/americanantislav1839chil (Public domain)

Investigations into the experiences of enslaved African American women during the Antebellum period help us to better understand the nature of violence and oppression, as well as resistance. For example, my research into Celia Newsome is representative. After being purchased at the age of fourteen, Celia was raped by her slaveholder on their way to his plantation. Celia unwillingly became his concubine and house slave who he monitored and controlled every aspect of her life. She was sexually exploited for the next five years until she killed her slaveholder after he ignored her pleas to stop assaulting her. This act of resistance resulted in Celia being tried, convicted and executed at the age of nineteen. Celia’s experiences are pivotal to my research because she helps us to better understand the experiences of other enslaved women. She provides an insight into the hidden side of slavery, including sexual exploitation from a young age, being blamed by a slaveholder’s family for the sexual abuse, baring children for slaveholders, and having no legal recourse for exploitation as the law protected their perpetrators. Celia’s story also exemplified that slavery worked on many fronts to subjugate enslaved women by trying to take away their autonomy; however, enslaved women resisted in many ways regardless of the consequences. Celia is important as she was one of many enslaved women who paid the ultimate price with her life because she refused to continue to be sexually exploited.

We asked Taisha, why is this history important to you?

Slavery in Antebellum America has always interested me. My research focuses on the forms of exploitation enslaved women endured, specifically sexual exploitation and how in the midst of being exploited they resisted utilising different forms of agency. Problematic stereotypes like the Jezebel allowed enslaved women to be sexually exploited as they were represented as over sexualised, absolving slaveholders of blame or consequences. I wanted to know about the experiences of enslaved women in their own words

About the Author

Taisha Richards studies African American history and the experiences of enslaved people in the Antebellum South with a particular interest in the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and law. Taisha can be found online @TaishaRich

Annie Jiagge: International Jurist

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In this next post by Kate Skinner, Professor of African History at the University of Bristol, we celebrate the life and work of Annie Jiagge, an international jurist, for Black History Month 2023.

Born in 1918, Annie Jiagge (née Baëta) was one of a small but growing number of girls in the Gold Coast (Ghana) to attend school, pass the standard VII certificate, and train as a teacher. With the financial support of her mother, however, Annie soon travelled to London, where she studied at the London School of Economics and Lincoln’s Inn. She returned to the Gold Coast as a qualified lawyer in 1950, working first as a barrister and then as a magistrate.

Annie Jiagge, by kind permission of the World Council of Churches, Wikimedia.

Ghana became independent from British colonial rule in 1957. By 1961, President Kwame Nkrumah had appointed Annie Jiagge as a high court judge – one of very first women in the Commonwealth to achieve such a position. Following her appointment to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Annie Jiagge drafted a working document which later became the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. The declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1967.

The International Women’s Year of 1975 gave additional impetus to proposals to develop the declaration into a binding international convention. Work proceeded through the first few years of the United Nations Decade for Women. In 1979, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Ghana, along with 63 other states from all around the world, signed the CEDAW in July 1980, at the Copenhagen Conference that marked the mid-way point of the Decade for Women.

The CEDAW proved crucial in defining discrimination, and in setting out obligations on states-parties to enact laws and formulate policies to eliminate discrimination against women. It has spurred mobilisations for gender equality in many countries all around the world for more than forty years.

You can learn more about the remarkable life of Annie Jiagge in the United Nations-sponsored film Fear Woman, and the recent documentary When Women Speak. Both are free-to-view online.

We asked Kate, what drew you to Jiagge?

“Like millions of women around the world, I benefit every day from the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The convention has prompted women in many countries to mobilise against discrimination, and whilst there is still considerable work to be done, important victories have also been won. I am grateful to Annie Jiagge for her role in the initial development of the convention.”

About the Author

Prof Kate Skinner joined the History Department at the University of Bristol in February 2023. She is currently researching the political history of reforms to laws on inheritance, divorce, child maintenance, adoption, and abortion in postcolonial Ghana.

Ona Judge: Enslaved Fugitive, Black Founder

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In the latest of our series for Black History Month 2023, Will Comben, a PhD student in the Department of History, shares the history of Ona Judge – an enslaved Black woman in early America who defied George Washington to live out her life in freedom.

Ona Judge, like many enslaved Black women in early America, sought freedom. Enslaved by George Washington, her story lays bare the paradox at the heart of the early American republic: a project conceived in liberty, but committed to slavery.

Judge grew up in Washington’s Virginia home, Mount Vernon. In 1789, she was taken by Washington to New York, and then to Philadelphia as part of the President’s enslaved household staff. Judge likely yearned for freedom from a young age, but her experience in northern cities brought her dream within sight. Philadelphia, in particular, had a large free Black population and a vibrant abolitionist community. On learning of the Washingtons’ plan to gift her to their grand-daughter, Judge resolved to escape. With the help of abolitionist neighbours, she boarded a ship to New Hampshire, where – despite the Washingtons’ relentless attempts to re-enslave her – she built a life of freedom.

Newspaper notice for Ona Judge in the Philadelphia Gazette.

The Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily Advertiser, May 24, 1796, p. 1. Reproduced by the Library of Congress, https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2019/10/runaway-fugitive-slave-ads-in-newspapers/

Judge’s story, told to abolitionist newspaper The Granite Freeman, and subsequently republished in The Liberator, has endured mainly because she was enslaved by George Washington. But Judge was just one of thousands of Black women who pursued freedom in early America. Traces of their stories can be found in contemporary newspaper advertisements (such as that for Judge shown below). Her ingenuity, careful planning and resilience were typical of female freedom-seekers.

It is incumbent on historians to recover and disseminate stories of Black women, who some might regard as ‘founding mothers’ – people who, more authentically than their enslavers, embodied the principles articulated so poetically in the Declaration of Independence.

What drew you to the story of Ona?

My research on enslaved Black women’s fugitivity has revealed the nature and extent of their agency, but also their historical marginalization. Judge, powerfully, told her story in her own words and she remains an important source for historians.

Will is a SWWDTP-funded PhD student in the Department of History (will.comben@bristol.ac.uk)

Christianna Jacques: An Apprentice from Nevis in Bristol

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In our continuing series for Black History Month 2023, Christine Eickelmann shares the history of Christianna Jacques – an enslaved Black woman from Nevis who built a life in Bristol

Bristol University’s Special Collections provide a unique and important resource into the experiences of enslaved people. One of the many stories to be found in this collection, is the life of Christianna Jacques (Lewis, Ellis). She was born on 30 June 1780 on Mountravers, John Pinney’s sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Nevis. She was the first child of an enslaved woman, Mulatto Polly (aka Polly Pinney, Mary Scarborough); her father, evidence suggests, was Gwyn Vaughan Jacques, a white man. Christianna’s seven siblings were fathered by another white man, the planter John Scarborough.

In 1790, at her mother’s request, John Pinney took Christianna to Bristol. At first she was in the Pinneys’ service, working with, among others, Fanny Coker and Pero Jones, two black servants also from Nevis until aged 16 she began a three-year apprenticeship, probably as a seamstress. Mulatto Polly financed her training and sent money for her upkeep. It appears that during her schooling, Christianna did not live in the Pinney household.

Christianna Jacques lived for some time in John Pinney’s house in Great George Street, Bristol, now the Georgian House Museum. Image: Christine Eickelmann/David Small

On 20 April 1803 Christianna Jacques married a 21-year-old joiner, John Lewis, in Portsea, Hampshire, and sometime afterwards lived in Chatham, Kent. Both Portsea and Chatham were closely connected with seafaring; her husband may have worked on the ships.

From Chatham, she travelled to Bristol to meet her mother, who, by then, had been freed, as had Christianna’s siblings. Mother and daughter met up at least once more during Mulatto Polly’s several trips to England.

By then a widow, Christianna married Eli Ellis on 28 June 1813, also in Portsea. He was a jeweller who later ran his business from Goose Lane in Worcester. The couple had two sons, who were both baptised in the Methodist chapel. Her first-born, Eli Joseph, died aged two in January 1817, and it is likely that Christianna died following the birth of her second, unnamed child. Aged 38, she was buried on 2 December 1818 in Worcester.

For more information about Christianna Jacques, Fanny Coker and Pero Jones, see biographies number 445, 334 and 265 https://seis.bristol.ac.uk/~emceee/mountravers~part2chapter4.pdf

What inspired your research? The Pinney Papers in Bristol University’s Special Collections inspired my research into the entire population of Mountravers plantation in Nevis. Christianna Jacques was one of hundreds of enslaved people.

Author: Christine Eickelmann is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of History (Historical Studies).