Ernest Gibbons, Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project (photo Courtesy Newport Daily News)
A Letter to the Rhode Island Community by Ernest B. Gibbons, Jr. of the Media Committee, NMPPMP:
If Not Now, When? If Not Here, Where?
The answers to those two questions were the genesis of The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project conceived and created by like-minded residents of Aquidneck Island. Its mission has been to “remember, honor and commemorate the contributions of those Africans who perished in the Middle Passage journey and acknowledge those survivors who helped to build Newport and the Nation, both economically and culturally.”
Our country is still fraught with the difficult legacy of slavery. In 2018, a City Council resolution authorized the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project to build a memorial park, Liberty Square. Liberty Square posts a sign commemorating this site and states the following :
The Newport Slave Trade Memorial – Future Site Recognizing the Historic role of Newport In The Slave Trade Remembering the Contributions And Legacies Newport Middle Passage Port Marker With Support from The City of Newport
NMPPMP is a diverse alliance of people from different backgrounds who love Newport and wish to engage and educate our community on the impact Africans and African Americans made in our City. The organization has in the last four years organized and established events in the form of lecture series, power points and videos to order to inform the public of the history as well as a recognition of the many contributions Africans and African Americans have made in the development of this city and this nation.
A memorial in Liberty Square will promote acknowledgement of the past and, without question, will inform and enlighten the public with a visible memory. Future generations will not have to ask as many questions.
The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project, in alliance with local organizations has promoted and hosted a number of on-going series of educational assemblies with speakers who discuss the history and the impact of slavery in our area and the nation.
For example, we have hosted lectures entitled A Rhode Island Diaspora: The Breadth and Depth of Rhode Island Slavery; African American Travel—Green Book Listings in Newport; and WW I African American Servicemen from Newport. In addition, we have held exhibits of African sculpture, film showings, and presentations on Marronage communities.
This year, a power point lecture was presented to the Portsmouth community by Victoria Johnson, sponsored by the American Association of University Women, depicting an imagined story of a young boy, Scipio, who was captured from his village, and then crossed the Middle Passage to arrive in Newport to be sold. (What did he see?) This same lecture was also shared with students of the Newport Community College of Rhode Island and The Met School.
The Coronavirus has definitely put a damper on meeting in groups to present information vital to our project. Unfortunately, future community meetings have been delayed due to the importance of adhering to the present Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) precautions and the Nation’s fight to combat this virus. We, the Middle Passage Port Marker Organization, will continue to honor and respect the challenge of this outbreak. In Newport County, we are One in our endeavor to conquer this threat. Going forward, we are going to have Zoom lectures in order to continue to communicate informative material presented historians and knowledgeable orators. Our first Zoom lecture was presented by Marjory O’Toole, author of “If Jane Should Want to Be Sold.”
We have hired an architect to craft a world class memorial in Newport. Mr. Julian Bonder designed the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France, a national park that examines the 18th century slave trade to modern-day trafficking for sex and labor. Presently, Mr. Bonder is Professor at the School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation (SAAHP) and heads the Graduate Architecture Student Design Studio at Roger Williams University, Bristol RI. In February, we held a stakeholder meeting at the Redwood Library where Mr. Bonder revealed a Feasibility Study. He discussed his plan to bring drawings, physical models, and basic massing studies to the community.
Later this year, we wish to involve the community by holding gatherings to give their opinions and input in the design process.
In furtherance of those goals, the Committee has taken steps to further its goals including:
Been designated as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization;
Developed and held outreach programs including exhibitions, lectures and activities with local public schools, universities and churches
Received grants from State and local foundations
Conducted a direct-mail campaign targeting family and friend resources
Received unanimous approval of the Newport City Council to build a memorial at Liberty Square (corner of Marlborough and Farewell Streets)
Listed as a slave port in national, state and local records
Applied and accepted by UNESCO (United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as a “Slave Route” venue, an added honor recognition for our “City By The Sea.”
This above outline of our efforts and successes will enable us to convey our message to our community. With your help, we will leave our mark for generations.
Get your free ticket to attend an online discussion of a shared history of slavery by Marjory Gomez O’Toole of the Little Compton Historical Society. She is author of, “If Jane Should Want to be Sold: Stories of Enslavement, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island”.
In 1746, Thomas Church in his last will and testament allowed the sale of his slave, “if my Negro woman Jane after my decease should want to be sold.” Many lives intertwined between the Newport slave trade, and the people of color in both Newport and Little Compton. Ms. O’Toole will explore the various lives and stories of those involved.
Sponsored by the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project.
Abial Cook rents his enslaved men Aaron & Moses to Captain Thomas Lathrop for a whaling voyage, 1773. Renting of enslaved labor that was not otherwise productively engaged for a period was common in Rhode Island. [Courtesy Little Compton Historical Society]
Ms. O’Toole will share the stories of Hannah, Jane, Sampson Shaw, Henry Manton, Moselle Gray and other local people of color impacted by New England’s 200-year-long practice of slavery, forced indenture and partial freedom. The stories will illuminate the strong ties between Little Compton and Newport and focus on the very personal nature of bondage in the North. Ms. O’Toole’s research has focused on primary source documents and has returned the voices of 200 enslaved people of Native American and African American descent to the area’s local history.
Jane, an imagined portrait by Dora Atwater Millikin, 2016
Little Compton had many connections to Newport and even to the slave south. Willard Gray of Little Compton inherited slaves from Arnold Gray of North Carolina upon Arnold’s death. However, Willard freed one slave, Moselle Gray, who was brought north to live with the white family in their home. She attended school in Little Compton, and eventually moved to Newport. Moselle’s descendants in Newport, the Masseys, have provided oral histories of their ancestor, and photos of her as a child.
Moselle Gray, born c. 1860, was enslaved in the South, freed and brought North to Little Compton, and lived her adult life in Newport. Learn how Moselle navigated life as the only black girl in Little Compton and how her large Newport-based family honors her memory today. [Courtesy Marjorie O’Toole]
The Newport Daily News described Ms. O’Toole’s research into the history of unfree people of Rhode Island:
“One of the stories that affected O’Toole the most, however, was the experience of a nameless slave in Westport, Massachusetts, whose Quaker mistress had him stripped, hung by his hands, and beaten to death. While there were laws regulating treatment of slaves, these were widely ignored. The woman was reprimanded by her Quaker congregation; but on expressing repentance for her actions a year later, she was received back into the church.
“O’Toole has found that there was historically a deliberate effort to soften this distasteful aspect of New England’s past, beginning with northern slaveholders themselves, who even in their own day attempted to ‘downplay the negative aspects of slavery’ by portraying slaveholders as generous and kind and slaves as satisfied with their lot.”
Marjory Gomez O’Toole, MA Public Humanities, Brown University, has been the Executive Director of the Little Compton Historical Society for 15 years and is the author of “If Jane Should Want to Be Sold: Stories of Enslavement, Indenture, and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island.”
Catherine Zipf sponsored by Newport Middle Passage
Catherine Zipf described to a rapt audience of over seventy her research into the dozen or so “Tourist Homes” advertised in the “Negro Green Book” of the mid-1900’s. The presentation was sponsored by Newport Middle Passage as part of it’s summer lecture series.
Particularly after World War II, during the “Great Migration,” when many black Americans sought work in northern states, Newport’s torpedo station provided many government-related jobs. Many relied on guides like the “Green Book” to find services from lodging to beauty salons as they visited or migrated.
26 Brinley Street – From Negro GreenBook, 1913.
The property at 26 Brinley St., advertised as the Glover Hotel by Thomas Glover and his wife Susan from 1913-1931 and again from 1938-1939. In its earliest years, this was the only hotel in Newport aside from the Biltmore, and the only one accommodating African-Americans. Later up to eight “Tourist Homes” were advertised to those seeking non-segregated accommodations.
1938 Negro Motorist Green Book (Courtesy New York Public Library)
The rare original copies of the Negro Motorist Green Book have been digitized and made available to the public at the New York Public Library website. The 1938 edition lists “Glover, Brindley & Center Sts.” as the only entry in Newport. The building at this address can also be seen in the Sanborn Map of 1921, which has been digitized by Brown University. The owner is listed as “T. Glover”.
26 Brinley St – Sanborn Map of 1921 (Courtesy of Brown University)
The Negro Motorist’s Green Book enabled African-Americans to travel during the pre-Civil Rights era by offering information on safe places to eat, stay, and vacation.
Dr. Catherine Zipf
Dr. Catherine Zipf will identify and discuss Newport’s “GreenBook” sites with an eye towards augmenting our understanding of how African Americans overcame the legacy of slavery.
The 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act, signed into law January 8, 2018 by the United States Congress, established a 15-member commission to coordinate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies. The Commission’s purpose is to plan, develop, and carry out programs and activities throughout the United States
Joanne Pope Melish, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of History Emerita, University of Kentucky Peter Fay, R.I. Public Historian Thurs. May 9, 2019, 6 PM, Salve Regina Univ., O’Hare Academic Center, Room 260
Slave population by town – 1755 (Copyright Peter Fay)
In eighteenth-century Rhode Island a Newport blacksmith, a Warwick sailor, a Scituate iron miner, a Glocester farmhand and a Providence spinner of yarn were all connected by a common thread. This commonality set them apart from most other residents. Their uniqueness was not their skills, the products of their labor, their hopes, nor their dreams. All inhabitants shared these. Rather they shared, unwillingly, participation in an economic web in the business of slavery engulfing much of the Rhode Island economy of the 18th century. These were all enslaved workers.
Caesar Sambo of Warwick manned a privateering ship in Britain’s battle against foreign powers in the French and Indian war – yet did so as an enslaved sailor. Sharper Gorton dug iron ore in Scituate, supplying Moses Brown’s furnace in order to forge cannons to break the bond of Britain’s possession. But Sharper was himself a possession of his master. Yockway Fenner of Glocester was a farmhand, yet was also a wanted man, having escaped his master during the War of Independence. And a decade after America finally won freedom from Britain, Ephraim Bowen of Providence, instead of freeing his wool-spinning ‘maid’, sought to sell her anew into slavery.
From every town across Rhode Island commodities were produced, investments made, and humans traded in an economy tied deeply to the booming slave economies in the south and the West Indies. Rhode Island, initially dependent upon maritime commerce, supplied those slave societies. Meat, lumber, livestock, grain, manufactured goods, and newly enslaved Africans were sent by sea to the vast plantations. Yet at the same time, Rhode Island turned the system of slavery inward as well, until every town practiced slavery, and produced slave-crafted commodities for two centuries.
Hear the stories of these Rhode Island individuals and their lives of labor, and struggles for freedom at this public event, “A Rhode Island Diaspora: The Breadth and Depth of RI Slavery”.
Newport Mayor Harry Winthrop and Victoria Johnson, chairwoman of the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Committee, unveiled a sign at the future site of the Newport Slave Trade Memorial in Liberty Square, Farewell and Marlborough streets.
Mayor Harry Winthrop and Victoria Johnson of Newport Middle Passage Project. At left are City Council members Lynne Underwood Ceglie, Susan Taylor and Marco Camacho. At right are Project members Benedict Leca, Patricia Petit and Peter Fay.
At left are City Council members Lynne Underwood Ceglie, Susan Taylor and Marco Camacho. The planned historical monument will honor and memorialize Africans who lost their lives on slave ships as well as the survivors and their descendants. The local project is part of a national effort to research and identify all 48 port sites in the present United States that were ports of entry for Africans during the 300-plus years of the trans-Atlantic human trade. Local communities have been encouraged to hold remembrance ceremonies at each port and place some type of marker. City officials, community leaders, committee members and many others gathered Thursday to commemorate the future site of the Newport Slave Trade Memorial in Liberty Square.
At a recent Newport Middle Passage Project event, Dr. Akeia Benard noted that in Newport, as in most cities, ‘history is written by the victors’. This truism is evidenced in public space and institutional culture that projects to visitors the world view of the wealthiest elite of society, enshrining it in monuments, historic buildings and even tourism. In this idolatry of the detritus of wealth, Newport is no better nor worse than any other American city. But beneath the visible veneer of venerated colonial and gilded age society, and the monuments to heroes of the many wars of conquest, lurks a far different story than any other American city – an untold “rest of the story”. How does one reclaim this story, and shed light on the memories of those lost and never acknowledged? How does one “un-erase” the lives and heritage of those forgotten – whether they be unconsciously forgotten or willfully suppressed?
While there are many stories to tell, we may at least begin with the most forgotten of the forgotten.
There were those who both perished and survived the voyages of bondage and the hardships thereafter – we have a small number of their stories and will recount them. And later, we have the stories of the carpenters, masons, weavers, sailors, painters, pastry chefs like Duchess Quamino, musicians like Newport Gardiner, sachems like Quanapen, abolitionists like Isaac Rice. These more documented legacies broaden and deepen our understanding of today’s Newport.
But to begin, let us start at the beginning:
The 934 slave ships launched from Rhode Island in the 18th and early 19th century.
The 106,544 slaves carried on Rhode Island ships from their homeland in Africa to the Americas.[1]
We know Newport was not simply a participant in, but dominated, the American slave trade. Rev. Samuel Hopkins said in 1787, “This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended… at the expense of the blood, the liberty and happiness of the poor Africans.”[2]
But we also know that this “wheel of commerce” was not forced upon us from Europe or Africa, but rather was born in Rhode Island. In 1676 the first victims of the Rhode Island slave trade were two shiploads of Native American war captives sent to Newport and sold into slavery by Rhode Island founder Roger Williams and the town fathers of Providence. These founders listed some of their captives names in town records, recorded for posterity:
“Awauscug and the woman and children”
“Kwashinnit, his wife and three children, his father in law”
“The old man Mamanawant Titus, his father in Law and the old Crooked Woman”
These captives were sent to Newport on a ship captained by Roger Williams Jr. and then purchased by wealthy merchants:
“Three Indians sold to Peter Easton.”
“Two Indians paid with eighty pounds of wool.”
“John Nixen bought seven Indians for one Suit of clothes, linen cloth, shirts and drawers.”[3]
While enslavement of Native Americans institutionalized the practice of slavery in Rhode Island, within only a few years the importation of African slaves from the West Indies, and ultimately directly from Africa, grew from a trickle to a torrent.
Gov. Samuel Cranston answered inquiries from the British Board of Trade on slave trading in Rhode Island: “In 1696, arrived 47 Negroes, fourteen of which we disposed of in this colony [of Newport] for between 30 and 35 pounds sterling per head.”[4]
Then followed decades of advertisements in local newspapers for sales of Africans shipped directly to Newport:
1729: Newport Merchant Godfrey Malbone, owner of the brigatine Charming Betty, announced, “Just arrived from the Coast of Guinea, a parcel of fine young Negro Slaves, to be sold for ready money or credit upon security, on reasonable terms by Godfrey Malbone, Merchant at his Wharf in Newport, where the said Slaves may be seen”.
1740: “Just imported, directly from Guinea, a fine parcel of Gold Cost Slaves, men, Women, Boys and Girls, to be sold by Godfrey Malbone, Esq.”
1743: The Snow Jolly Bachelor, a ship owned by Peter Faneuil, builder of Faneuil Hall in Boston, and the target of controversy today in Boston left Newport and later returned with 22 men, women and children from Sierra Leone appraised August 31 at the Admiralty Court in the Colony House, Newport: “a boy Joba £75 sterling, a woman Burrah £100, girls Yalah, Morandah £85, men Pattoe £100, and Fassiah £50. They were purchased by the merchants Samuel Vernon, John Tweedy, Mr. Isaacs, Mr. Chaning, Mr. Brinley, Col. Cranston, Sailes Carr, Mr. Harte and others.[5]
1750: “From Africa, a Parcel of likely Negro Men, Women, Boys and Girls, to be sold by Channing and Chaloner, cheap for ready money or short credit.”
1758: “To be sold reasonably by Thomas & Samuel Freebody… Negro Men, Women, Boys and Girls”
1763: “Arrived from the coast of Africa, the Brig Royal Charlotte… extremely fine, healthy, well limb’d Gold Coast Slaves, Men, Women, Boys and Girls – to be seen at Taylor’s Wharf – apply to Samuel and William Vernon.”
1766: “To be sold at Public Vendue… at the Wharf of Mr. Aaron Lopez… a likely young Negro Girl, lately come from the Coast of Africa.”
By 1776, Rhode Island merchants chose to separate from Britain, calling its treatment of the American colony, “slavery”. But unsurprisingly, the freedom and independence sought by the American ruling class never intended to end the slave trade, but rather to expand it. The peak of the Newport slave trade was in fact thirty years after Independence.[6]
In 1779, Rose Gozeman fled to British lines, escaping her owner, John Easton.
So while the War of Independence raged and Newport merchants famously followed their own self-interests, splitting allegiances equally between Tories and Rebels, their slaves followed their own self-interests. Rose Gozeman fled slavery in Newport during the revolution, escaping to the so-called “British occupiers of Newport” for her freedom. She journeyed with them to New York and later to Nova Scotia. The British recorded her as “24 years, stout wench… Formerly slave to John Easton… left him about 4 years ago”. And her child, Fanney Gozeman, “5 months old… Born free within British lines”. She won freedom for her child by fleeing, yet her owner still pursued her. Sometimes escaping Newport and America was the only path to freedom.[7]
Later, the descendants of the enslaved of Newport, such as George W. Easton, turned the tables on slavery during the Civil War joining the 11th Regiment, U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery to fight the southern slave-owning secessionists. George was the grandchild of Cato Easton, whose family is thought to have been enslaved by the white Easton family – the same intertwined family, founders of Newport, who in the 1600s had purchased the three Indians from Roger Williams, in the 1700s sought their slave Rose Gozeman who escaped to freedom, and in 1824 were the last in Rhode Island to free their slave. As the descendant of slaves George W. Easton prepared with his 11th Colored Regiment to ship out to the battlefield in 1864, he attended a sending-off ceremony addressed by the well-known African-American George Downing. Downing would later go on to desegregate Rhode Island schools.[8]
1824 – Jeremiah Easton finally freed four decades after “Gradual Abolition”.
Without these people, many of whose memories have been “erased”, there would be no Newport. Without their memory Newport would be greatly diminished. It is time to bring back this heritage and their memory starting today.
[1] David Eltis. “Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”. Accessed Aug. 25, 2018. www.slavevoyages.org .
[2] Anonymous (known to be Rev. Samuel Hopkins) , “Letter to the Editor”, Providence Gazette and Country Journal, October 6, 1787, p. 1.
[3] Horatio Rogers and Edward Field, The early records of the town of Providence, Volume XIV (Providence: Snow & Farnham City Printers, 1899), 152-158. Peter Easton was Attorney General of Rhode Island in 1676 – see John Osborne Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (Albany: J. Munsell’s Sons, 1887). 292. Also, Margaret Ellen Newell, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press, 2015), 170-172.
[4] John Russell Bartlett, Records of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England, Vol. IV, “Answer to the Board of Trade from Governor Cranston, April 17, 1708” (Providence : A.C. Greene, 1859), 54.
[5] Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America: Volume III: New England and the Middle Colonies (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930), 64-65.
[6] “The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”, Voyages embarking from Rhode Island.
[7] Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester: Papers, National Archives, Kew (PRO 30/55/100) 10427, p. 150.
[8] For George W. Easton and George Downing, see William H. Chenery, The Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (Colored) in the War to Preserve the Union, 1861-1865 (Providence, Snow & Farnham, 1898) 38, 177. For his father Alexander and grandfather Cato, see “United States Census, 1810, 1850, 1860.” Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 26 June 2018. Citing NARA microfilm publication M432. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. and “Rhode Island Deaths and Burials, 1802-1950,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F861-447 : 10 February 2018), Cato Easton in entry for Alexander Easton, 24 May 1872; citing Newport, Newport, Rhode Island, reference p 158; FHL microfilm 2,188,896. For Jeremiah Easton, Daniel C. Littlefield, Revolutionary Citizens: African Americans 1776-1804 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 65.
Newport Middle Passage Project invites Dr. Akeia Benard, Curator of Social History at New Bedford Whaling Museum, to Newport to discuss her research on the lives and culture of African-Americans in colonial Newport, and their later journey from bondage to freedom. She will be speaking at Newport Historical Society, 82 Touro Street on Wednesday, August 22nd at 6 pm.
Through research that combines oral history, analysis of documents, and archaeological excavation/analysis of artifacts and material culture, a database has been created of approximately 1,000 names of African Americans who lived in Newport between 1774 and 1826, thus attempting to understand the earliest African American community in Newport.
A noted example of life in early Newport is Occramar Marycoo, also known as Newport Gardner. Captured in Ghana as a teenager and purchased by merchant and slave trader Caleb Gardner, Newport Gardner eventually purchased his own freedom. Later as secretary of the African Union Society of Newport, he contributed to the mutual aid and advancement of his community, leaving a long historical trail of documents illustrating life of African-Americans in Newport.
Newport Gardner’s notes from the African Union Society dated December 4, 1794 (courtesy of Newport Historical Society)
At the end of his life, Newport Gardner chose to return to Africa aboard the brig Vine in 1826:
One aged black was among the number, who seemed to be filled with almost youthful enthusiasm for the cause. “I go,” he exclaimed, “to set an example to the youth of my race. I go to encourage the young. They can never be elevated here. I have tried it sixty years; it is in vain. Could I by my example lead them to set sail, and I die the next day, I should be satisfied.”
Christine Mitchell, interpreter at Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, S.C.
Christine Mitchell is a historic interpreter at the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. She will reveal her research on the buying and selling of people of African descent in South Carolina and display many original documents found during her research. Many describe the relationship between Rhode Islanders and the southern slave markets. Peter Fay of the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project will introduce her, noting Rhode Island’s large role in the Charleston slave trade.
Ms. Mitchell is also affiliated with the Slave Dwelling Project (http://slavedwellingproject.org/). Mitchell moved from Atlanta to Charleston in 2012 to be near family, and is a third-generation descendant of slaves who lived in the community. “To be here, and to help educate people who are coming here from all over the world, I am giving honor to the ones that never had a voice,” she says.
Rhode Island Ties to Charleston, S.C.
Beginning in the 1720’s, Rhode Island dominated the American slave trade, carrying over 110,000 Africans across the Atlantic to the British Islands in the Caribbean, and to the mainland, mostly South Carolina and Georgia. After the War of Independence, Rhode Island slavers reached their peak, rushing to cash in on the trade before it was outlawed in 1808.
While no longer landing the enslaved in Rhode Island (except for some illegal landings in Bristol), Rhode Island slavers in Newport, Bristol, Providence, and Warren deepened their ties to the southern slavocracy, both in trading slaves, investing in southern ports, and extending family ties to southern plantations. Every sector of the state’s economy supported, supplied, or benefited from the slave trade.
In his historic study, The Notorious Triangle, Jay Coughtry revealed that almost half of all Rhode Island slave ships delivered their U.S. slaves to Charleston.1)The Notorious Triangle, Jay Coughtry, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1981, p.167.
Newport Brig “Industry”, lands in Charleston; slaves are sold locally by Bristol, R.I. native Nathaniel Russell
As part of this trade, Rhode Islanders also placed family members in Charleston to extend their role to all aspects of the business of slave sales. Nathaniel Russell of Bristol, Rhode Island, became the largest purveyor of slaves in Charleston, managing sales to local buyers. Henry DeWolf of Bristol, the nephew of the largest slave trader in America, James DeWolf, also moved to Charleston to cash in on the local slave sale business. According on one historian,
“In 1806 Henry DeWolf formed a partnership with Charles Christian, primarily to enter the lucrative business of supplying slaves to the Charleston, South Carolina, market. Between 1803 and 1807 Bristol firms delivered almost four thousand slaves, and DeWolf and Christian, acting as the family commission agents, handled more than $600,000 worth of business.”2)Debtors and Creditors in America: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607-1900, Peter J. Coleman, Beard Books, Washington D.C., 1999, p.100.
Firm of Christian & DeWolf advertising sale of 100 “Gold Coast Slaves”, City Gazette And Daily Advertiser. (Charleston, South Carolina), May 5, 1807
Debtors and Creditors in America: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607-1900, Peter J. Coleman, Beard Books, Washington D.C., 1999, p.100.
