[gentle music]
- Jessica Lee Stovall: Hello, good afternoon!
It is so wonderful to be here.
My name is Jessica Lee Stovall,
and I'm an assistant professor of African American studies
here at UW-Madison.
And I'm honored to be able to introduce
Dr. Gloria Whiting this afternoon.
I'm so inspired as I looked at the posters
in the Wisconsin Historical Society.
And I'm inspired by this endeavor
of uncovering the stories of these Freedom Seekers.
In my own book project on Black teachers,
I went on physical pilgrimages to share space with people
who have thought about how Freedom Seekers
like Harriet Tubman have resisted
and reimagined spaces through the Underground Railroad.
And by being in the physical spaces as Harriet Tubman walked,
I was able to better articulate the overt
and subversive ways that Freedom Seekers
willed Black freedom.
To reflect on this connection
between Harriet Tubman and Black teachers,
I begin each chapter of my book
with a vignette of these pilgrimages
to illuminate the parallels between Tubman's decision-making
around striving for liberation,
and how Black teachers have constructed free worlds
within schools both past and present.
Over the course of a year and a half,
I hopped on airplanes to be present
in the spaces she was:
her birthplace in Cambridge, Maryland,
her grave site in Auburn, New York,
and even St. Catharines, Canada, where she spent eight years
after the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850.
The Harriet Tubman pilgrimages brought me
experiential knowledge, and this knowledge
often was emotional as I anchored myself
in sacred historical memory in the archives.
So, centering Freedom Seekers in my own work
highlights the strategy, courage, intellect,
and collective actions of Black people.
And centering this work of Freedom Seekers today
connects the past to the present,
illuminating the ongoing struggles
in our quest for liberation.
Thus you can see why I'm so inspired.
And the second that Dr. Whiting asked me
to give this introduction,
I knew that I wanted to be a part of this incredible project.
And so, I want to now transition
to thinking about Dr. Whiting's work,
who is the reason why we are all here gathered today.
So, Gloria Whiting
is the E. Gordon Fox Associate Professor of History
here at UW-Madison.
She graduated from Rice University
and has a master's degree and PhD in history
from Harvard University.
She has--
Her work is focused on ordinary people in early America,
especially women and people of color.
And she has published articles in leading historical journals
such as The Journal of American History,
the William and Mary Quarterly, and Slavery and Abolition.
Her article "Race, Slavery,
and the Problem of Numbers in Early New England"
received the 2021 William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Prize
for best article in American legal history
by an early career scholar.
In 2024, Gloria published her first book,
titled Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery
and Family in Early New England.
This deeply researched and beautifully written book
illuminates the lives of enslaved people
in 17th and 18th-century Massachusetts,
revealing much that we had not known
about their families and communities.
Belonging has been shortlisted
for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize
and the Stone Book Award, and has won numerous prizes,
including the American Historical Association Prize
for Best First Book on American History,
the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Prize
from the Massachusetts Historical Society,
the John Winthrop Prize
from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts,
and the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize
from the Western Association of Women's Historians.
Gloria has received several prizes and recognition
of the quality of her teaching,
including the University Housing Honored Instructors Award,
which she has won four times, the history department's
Dorothy and Hsin-Nung Yao Teaching Award,
and the Tri Delta sorority's Outstanding Instructor Award.
This afternoon, Gloria will be speaking to us
about the Freedom Seekers Project here at UW-Madison.
And without further ado, we want to welcome Dr. Whiting.
[audience applauds]
- Gloria Whiting: I wanted to thank Professor Stovall first
for such a generous introduction.
And Professor Stovall plans to watch this keynote
when PBS broadcasts it-- Thank you, PBS--
because at the moment, she has to run to a prior engagement.
It's a fundraising event for a Freedom School
that she is working to open for the benefit of Madison youth.
So, as I begin this presentation
on people who sought freedom in the 18th century,
the fact that Professor Stovall is organizing a Freedom School
in 2026
is an important reminder that the pursuit of freedom
for those suffering from racism and prejudice is a theme
echoing through the centuries of American history.
The story did not end in the Revolutionary era.
Before I go any further, I want to pause
to thank the supporters and partners of the symposium
and the Freedom Seekers Project at its heart.
Thank you also to the undergraduate interns
who have worked on this project,
and I want to give a special thanks to Clarissa Brown,
Anika Feinsilver, Sara Ortenzio,
Mia Pyle, and Rhea Yenubari, who just presented their work
at the poster exhibition in the lobby.
And a big thanks to the other members
of the Freedom Seekers team,
Antonio Bly, Simon Newman, and Billy Smith.
Likewise, the scholars who make up
the Freedom Seekers Advisory Board.
And I wanted to conclude by offering my gratitude
to Isaac Lee and Jesse Gant,
our fabulous graduate project assistants.
It's very humbling to have the,
really, to be the beneficiary of the support
of so many folks and organizations.
But now, what I'm here to do tonight,
is something pretty simple.
I'm here to tell you stories.
Along the way, I will share about a project
that I've been working on for the last five years titled
"Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation
in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond."
This is a story about slavery, independence,
and the American Revolution, and, of course, about stories.
I've called this talk the keynote
of the Freedom Seekers Symposium here at UW.
I've called it a storytelling lecture.
And I should be honest with you at the outset,
that I have never given such a lecture.
I've never even heard such a lecture.
So, this is a little bit new,
but I thought this would be the perfect format for tonight.
So, I will tell you four stories.
The people at the heart of these stories have much in common.
All of African descent, they were enslaved
in North America during the 18th century.
And at great personal risk, they fled from their enslavers.
They were, to use the term that our project uses,
Freedom Seekers.
Of course, as you'll see,
these people were also quite different from one another,
and their bold stands for freedom
led to widely divergent outcomes.
Some stories you might find inspiring,
others heartbreaking.
All, I expect, will make you uncomfortable,
at least at points.
But that is something that good history
and good storytelling are wont to do.
So, I will open our time today with a story about Pompey Fleet.
It is a story that traces its origins
to a fragment in the archive,
a newspaper advertisement two paragraphs long.
I started with this advertisement,
which describes a man who, in Boston in 1774,
broke out of jail.
The jail here is called the Bridewell.
From this advertisement,
I worked to build the story of a life.
And I'm going to share with you that story.
When Pompey Fleet was born in the year 1745,
his mother, Venus, could scarcely have imagined
the course that her child would chart in life.
Pompey would grow up to escape slavery.
And then, thanks to his British allegiance
in the American Revolution,
to escape North America altogether.
Ultimately, Pompey would return to the continent
from which his ancestors hailed: Africa.
Along the way, he would become an accomplished craftsman.
But this part, Venus might have expected.
Pompey's father, a man who went by the name Peter Fleet,
was a gifted woodcut artist
who helped run the printing enterprise of Thomas Fleet,
the man who held the family in bondage.
Peter would train Pompey
and his younger brother, Caesar, in a bustling shop
located just steps from Boston's statehouse.
The boys were, in the words of one onlooker,
brought up to "work at press and case."
That is, they were brought up to use printing equipment.
And they became highly capable as print hands.
So capable, in fact,
that when their father and enslaver died
one after another, in midsummer 1758,
the shop was able to chug along without interruption.
Pompey was just 13 at the time, Caesar 10.
Pompey came of age in that print shop.
Stooped and ink-smeared,
he worked from the gray of dawn to evening candlelight,
setting type, inking it,
and pressing sheets of paper onto it.
Days bled into each other, one to the next,
like the ink on a page, but not Mondays.
Tasked with delivering the past week's news
to "all the readers in town,"
Pompey experienced on Mondays the freedom of the streets
rather than the confinement of the shop.
The young printer traversed every inch of Boston
with his papers in tow, making his way
from Captain Greenough's shipyard in the town's north end
to Windmill Point on the town's southern tip.
Not surprisingly,
Pompey became acquainted with Bostonians of all sorts.
As his enslavers put it,
"The man came to be well known around town."
Taking advantage of his Monday independence,
Pompey began to cultivate a relationship
with a woman named Chloe Short.
Over time, their relationship became serious.
In 1773, 15 years after his father's passing,
Pompey, who was still enslaved, and Chloe, who was free,
filed with Boston's town clerk an intention to marry.
But an actual marriage did not follow the intention.
At least, there's no record that one did.
Pompey's enslavers, Thomas's sons,
appear to have thought little of Chloe.
Did they try to stand in the way of the union?
Possibly.
Something, at any rate,
brought Pompey into intense conflict with the Fleets
around the time his relationship with Chloe was blossoming,
and his enslavers responded harshly.
They committed the man to Boston's Bridewell,
a prison-like institution in town.
Pompey, though, was not so easily subdued.
He managed to escape from the Bridewell,
and his enslavers, incensed,
advertised for him in their newspaper.
"Lately broke out of the Bridewell," they wrote,
"a sturdy, well-set Negro Fellow,
about 27 years of Age,
well known in Town by the Name of Pomp Fleet."
Even though Pompey was "well known,"
the printers described him carefully
in an effort to ensure his capture.
"Pompey stood about 5 feet 6 inches high,
"and he had had the smallpox,
"the marks of which appear very distinct in his face,
being much darker than the other parts of his skin," they wrote.
Pompey was also well dressed.
Not only did he possess "white breeches and stockings,"
according to the advertisement,
but he had a black set of the same,
and he carried with him a "good dark brown coat."
The printers' physical description of Pompey
is most revealing, though, in the evidence it provides
of the man's pride and sense of self-importance.
Pompey's enslavers reported
that he "often has his Wool dressed in the Macaroni Taste."
Some Black men in the 18th century combed their hair up,
bunching it high over their forehead.
And Pompey fused this inclination
with an of-the-moment trend.
The Macaroni style emerged in North America in the 1770s,
when wealthy English colonists began to imitate
the exaggerated pompadours of Italians,
building the foretop of their toupees ever higher.
Pompey must have been highly fashion-conscious
to incorporate the practice so speedily
and to execute it with such flair.
Perhaps the frustrated printers
shortened Pompey's name to "Pomp"
in their account of his escape in order to poke fun of the man,
his new style,
and the spectacle of fashion that he had become.
No matter.
Pompey was doubtless growing comfortable with their censure.
He had chosen a partner they scorned.
They referred to her as a "wench whom he calls his wife."
Then he had committed an infraction
they deemed worthy of incarceration.
And finally, he had tested their patience
and displayed his own cunning by breaking out of the Bridewell.
Pompey's defiance, though, had only begun.
If the Fleets' repossessed the audacious man
after his 1774 escape, it was not for long.
Pompey joined the British forces
at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War,
and he evacuated Boston with them in March of 1776.
Together, they went to New York City,
which was, at this point, a bastion of British power
and Royalist sentiment.
In New York, Pompey printed against the American cause
under the supervision
of Loyalist pressman Alexander Robertson.
In the end, Pompey's British allegiance won him his liberty.
When the British left New York in 1783,
they brought with them some 3,000 Black people,
most of whom, like Pompey,
had deserted rebellious American enslavers
to join the British ranks.
Pompey sailed alongside Alexander
to Port Roseway, Nova Scotia, on a ship with Black Loyalists
from plantations as far as Georgia and South Carolina.
Pompey continued his work as a printer in Nova Scotia.
But his employer died just a year after their arrival,
and eventually, tired of low wages
and discriminatory legislation,
Pompey made preparations to leave.
In 1792, he took to the sea once again,
this time headed for Sierra Leone,
a West African colony founded in large part by Black Loyalists.
But Pompey did not go empty-handed.
He must have found room on the ship
for the cumbersome equipment of a printer,
for soon after his arrival,
Sierra Leone boasted a press that was in constant operation.
Transporting these tools
and the knowledge required to make good use of them
was truly an accomplishment.
This was the first printing press in Africa
south of the Sahara Desert.
Pompey had taken his trade
from Boston to New York, to Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone,
printing from slavery to freedom
in a world upturned by revolution.
As Pompey's story shows,
the American Revolution offered opportunities
to people who sought to escape slavery.
By embracing the British cause,
Pompey managed to put thousands of miles
between himself and his erstwhile enslavers.
Of course, Pompey's story is unusual
due to the man's literacy,
his remarkable skill at printing, and frankly,
the extent to which his life can today be reconstructed.
However, Pompey's decision to abscond
during the chaos of the American War for Independence
was not unusual.
Estimates vary, but some scholars believe
that fully a fifth of enslaved people
in British colonies in North America
attempted to escape bondage during the revolution.
That is, Freedom Seekers fled their enslavers' estates
in very large numbers.
As the groundbreaking Black historian Benjamin Quarles
argued nearly 50 years ago,
"The Revolutionary War can be termed
"a Black Declaration of Independence
"in the sense that it spurred Black Americans
to seek freedom and equality."
And perhaps I should pause here to note
that Quarles earned his PhD from UW-Madison
in the year 1940,
which means there is a long history of work
on slavery and the revolution on this campus.
Quarles was right
about the revolution spurring Black Americans to seek liberty.
But we need to be careful.
The revolution did not inaugurate
Black American struggles against slavery.
The desire for freedom on the part of the enslaved
did not originate during this era.
Many in bondage were willing to take great risks
to secure their liberty
long before the American War for Independence.
Another story can help us appreciate this.
"Penelope."
Did Penelope's heart pound as she took shelter
in the forest on the outskirts of town?
Did she gasp for air as she tore through the nearby farmland?
Or did her feet make nary a patter on the town dock
as she crept under cover of darkness to a waiting vessel?
No one knows how Penelope went about making her escape
from Nathanael Cary,
the Charlestown sea captain who enslaved her.
But some sleuthing can help us understand certain aspects
of Penelope's flight.
Clues from the archive shed light
on what prompted Penelope to run when she did,
why the woman felt particularly justified
in seizing her freedom,
and what resulted from her stand for liberty.
Penelope's story, first, is a story--
to begin with, is a story of firsts.
The woman was likely brought to Massachusetts
on the first ship to deliver a sizable cargo of Africans
to the colony.
And when she fled years later, in 1704,
the notice her enslaver posted in attempt to reclaim her
was the first newspaper advertisement printed
in England's American colonies for the purpose
of capturing a bondsperson of African descent--
at least the earliest such advertisement that survives.
That means that it was Penelope's escape
that prompted her enslaver to post a notice
that inaugurated a genre in the Americas.
Tens of thousands of like advertisements
would follow the one describing Penelope.
These advertisements announced far and wide
the flight of people from slavery,
but only rarely is it possible to learn what resulted
from bondspeople's brave bids for freedom.
It was not typical, after all,
for enslavers to follow up in print
by celebrating captures or deploring fruitless searches.
In Penelope's case, however,
other sources help us fill out the story.
Records filed by the local court
show that Nathanael's advertisement was successful.
Penelope was caught.
But they also show that the woman was resolute
in her determination to gain liberty.
In December of 1705,
a year and a half after she had first sought to free herself
from her enslaver's clutches,
Penelope took a second stand for freedom.
She marched to the courthouse
and lodged a complaint against her enslaver
for wrongly enslaving her.
In the process of suing Nathanael,
Penelope told her story,
or at least she told parts of it.
Penelope's story was preserved on scraps of paper
stuffed into tin boxes, stored for generations
in the local courthouse.
On those crumbling fragments, if we listen carefully,
we can hear echoes from as far back as 1691,
when the woman was in her early 20s.
Penelope, by this time,
had developed an intimate relationship with a free man
of African descent named Thomas Sungo,
who was determined both to marry her and to liberate her.
Thomas had allies in this quest.
A white neighbor later recalled going to Nathanael's house
to "assist" Thomas in a contract he was making with Nathanael
"concerning his Negro woman named Penelope."
Thomas agreed in this contract
to apprentice himself to Nathanael for four years.
Nathanael, in turn, would allow Thomas to marry Penelope,
and he would set the woman free at the end of Thomas's term.
Any children Penelope bore
during the four years of the contract
would be required to labor for Nathanael for a time.
And that time is actually not specified
in the records that exist.
But it is clear in those records
that those children would not become chattel slaves.
So, the agreement had some benefits,
but it also had downsides.
For instance, as Thomas's neighbor put it,
Thomas "would have no advantage
"with respect to the freedom of his intended wife
if he should serve three years and three-quarters."
When Thomas pointed this out to Nathanael, though,
the enslaver stated that he was not willing to consider
any other terms.
Persuaded that there was no alternative,
Thomas complied with Nathanael's demands.
And so, Thomas relinquished his independence,
moved into Nathanael's household as a bound laborer,
and married Penelope.
This was an extraordinary stroke of good fortune
for the young woman.
As a result of the contract,
Penelope could look to a future in which
she and her husband would be unencumbered by enslavers
and able to raise children in liberty.
But then, Thomas died.
Did Thomas die three and three-quarters years
into his contract with Nathanael,
as he and his neighbor had feared?
No record notes the time of Thomas's passing,
but we know that he was gone before Penelope sued for freedom
in 1705, because the court referred to the woman
as "the widow of Thomas Sungo of Charlestowne."
We also know that Penelope declared herself ready to prove
that the conditions of her freedom were complied with.
This suggests that Thomas indeed served out his four years.
Significantly, Nathanael did not dispute
Penelope's account in court.
But the story does not quite add up.
If Thomas had labored for the required four years,
Penelope should have been freed
when those four years came to a close back in 1695.
Why would she have waited until 1704 to leave?
A fragment in the archives might provide the answer.
In April of 1704, a "Negro child" bound by a man named--
A man identified as Mr. Cary passed away.
The child's name is not noted in the record,
nor is the child's parentage.
But both the April 1704 death
and the obligation to a man with Nathanael's last name
fit Penelope's story.
Penelope did not desert Nathanael's household
until June 1704,
two months after the child claimed by Mr. Cary passed away.
Perhaps the woman chose to labor in Nathanael's household
while her offspring came of age in bondage,
trading her freedom for proximity
to the one she cared about,
just as her husband had done for her years before.
Whatever Penelope's motivation for delaying her departure
from Nathanael's household,
by 1705, the woman was arguing for her freedom
before a jury of her townsmen.
This she did with impressive success.
The woman's neighbors, some of whom were enslavers themselves,
found that Penelope "is and ought to be a free woman."
Nathanael, as the losing party,
was required to cover Penelope's legal costs.
It was a sweet victory, but a fleeting one.
Nathanael did not accept the ruling.
He appealed to the colony's high court,
which decreed that Penelope's suit had been filed
in the wrong lower court.
The original decision was reversed.
This devastating reversal provides us
with our final glimpse of Penelope's life.
What happened next?
Did Penelope run again when the courts failed her?
Did she manage to work out an arrangement
with her hardheaded enslaver?
Or did she live out her life,
widowed and perhaps childless, in bondage?
The records do not say.
Penelope's story is one
of nearly 100 stories featured on the Freedom Seekers website,
and our collection of stories is rapidly growing.
These stories are really...
We call them stories,
but they're really short and engaging histories of people
who seized their freedom during the Revolutionary era
and the time before and after.
These stories display tremendous diversity.
Just consider, for instance,
how starkly Penelope's story diverges from Pompey Fleets'.
However, they all have the same starting point:
the newspaper advertisements posted by enslavers
that describe those who fled bondage
and offered rewards for their reenslavement.
These advertisements,
which exist in the archives in tens of thousands,
are troubling historical sources,
as they reduce fully-formed lives
to a few dozen words formulated by aggrieved enslavers.
They never contain as much information
as researchers might wish,
and their tone is invariably disrespectful.
But the Freedom Seekers Project works
to transcend the limitations of these advertisements.
Importantly, Freedom Seekers is the first project
to create a collection of the stories
behind runaway advertisements,
rather than just a collection of the advertisements themselves.
And the project shows that deep archival research
can contextualize and flesh out
these difficult historical sources.
For instance, my story of Pompey
used over 20 supplemental sources
to build on that original advertisement.
And my story of Penelope used nearly that many.
Such archival work,
together with measured acts of historical imagination,
can provide new insight into the experiences of those
who had the courage to challenge both their own enslavement
and the system of slavery itself.
"Letitia."
The days were shortening in 1733
and the chill of winter tightening its grip on Boston
when Letitia found a visitor on the stoop.
Letitia at the time might have been seven,
the age at which children
began to be considered useful in New England.
Or perhaps she was a bit older, ten or so.
A girl of African ancestry,
she was enslaved by James Gordon,
a wealthy merchant in town.
As for the visitor at the door, she was a free white woman,
a neighbor named Mary Butler.
Mary showed up that winter not once, not twice,
but several times.
And each time, she brought with her the same request.
The wife of a saddler named Samuel Butler
and a new mother of twins, Mary came for Letitia.
Again and again, she asked James's wife
to "let her have her Negro girl, Letitia," to serve her.
Letitia likely began to dread
hearing the women parlay over her future by the hearth.
But the Gordons, for their part,
persistently denied Mary's requests.
Perhaps Letitia's labor was needed in their household.
Or maybe Letitia made it clear to her enslaver
that she did not wish to go.
Months passed.
The snow melted, the ground thawed,
and Mrs. Gordon's kitchen garden,
likely tended by Letitia,
began to bear the season's first peas and lettuces.
Only then did the Gordons relent.
In June of 1734, Letitia bade farewell to Prince and Affey,
companions of African descent,
who worked alongside her in the Gordon home,
and she went to serve the Butlers.
Within two years, however, Letitia was back,
as the Gordons and the Butlers could not agree
on how much money ought to be paid for her labor.
Then, a year and a half after that,
James sent Letitia away again,
this time, according to the bill of sale, for good.
Letitia was sold to a Boston shopkeeper named John Wass.
She was still referred to as a girl
in the document that deeded her to John.
But now, she was an older one,
perhaps between 12 and 15 years of age,
and she had become valuable
as values were reckoned in slave-trading societies.
James pocketed £120 from the transaction,
a sum that exceeded
the average price paid for grown men in the region.
Was Letitia especially physically attractive?
Unusually hardworking?
Literate and capable of helping to run John's shop?
Perhaps she had developed a robust suite of domestic skills
while working for the saddler's wife.
Whatever the reason, John was willing to pay dearly
to bring Letitia to his household.
John's household, however,
was not one in which Letitia wished to live.
Eventually, Letitia left.
Hers was not an escape shrouded in mystery.
John knew precisely where she had gone.
Consider the advertisement he posted in April 1739
in attempt to reclaim her.
Besides stating Letitia's name
and describing her as "a Negro girl,"
it mentioned only one other bit of information about her:
that she was "bought of Mr. James Gordon."
The elaborate descriptions which fill Freedom Seeker notices,
of clothing, appearances, mannerisms, skills,
origins, and linguistic capabilities,
these are missing entirely.
John needed to do just one thing
in order to ensure Letitia's capture.
Associate the girl with James,
for Letitia had returned to the Gordons.
Determined to punish the Gordons for the girl's escape,
the angry shopkeeper soon filed a lawsuit against James.
John claimed that he had "lost" Letitia
and James had "found" her,
speaking about the girl as if she were an object
that had been misplaced or perhaps an ignorant beast,
a cow that had strayed from the herd,
or a sheep that had lost its way.
But Letitia, for her part, knew exactly where she was.
She had lived in Boston for at least the past six years,
and she was intimately familiar with the neighborhood.
Letitia had not gotten lost.
She had made a conscious decision to leave,
to walk three-quarters of a mile,
from one Boston home to another.
Why had Letitia abandoned her present enslaver
for her former one?
Depositions filed in court reveal that the girl was sick--
grievously so--
and that she attributed her ailments
to mistreatment in the Wass household.
A neighbor recalled in graphic detail
the extent of Letitia's suffering.
"She set down in our kitchen without saying anything
for a considerable time," this neighbor wrote,
"being choked with a violent fit of coughing."
Letitia vomited as well.
This too was described as "violent,"
and she had lost her appetite almost entirely.
As the neighbor put it,
Letitia had "scarce any stomach at her victuals."
She was described by another as "much emaciated,
"with a violent cough,
a girl in a state of genuine consumption."
When a neighbor asked Letitia how long she had suffered
from her racking cough,
the girl answered, "A good while,"
and she explained that she had "been ill"
ever since her mistress cut off her wool.
Letitia, apparently, was the victim
of the forcible bodily manipulation
that enslaved people suffered in many times and places.
John's wife had shorn the girl's hair,
clearly against her will.
And this maltreatment, as Letitia saw it,
had consequences that went beyond physical appearance.
The shearing had made Letitia dangerously ill.
When the ailing girl showed up on the Gordons' stoop,
her former enslavers summoned a doctor in hopes of treating her.
Letitia, though, remained trapped
by the fact of John's ownership.
The doctor refused even to dispense advice
because he did not have the permission
of the girl's "proper master."
And though the Gordons made an effort
to hide Letitia in their home,
secreting her in an upper chamber,
Letitia was forced back to the Wass home
before the end of April.
A heartbreaking deposition recalled that the girl
was "afraid" to go in upon her return,
and that her old comrade Prince had to beg John
on Letitia's behalf not to beat her for absconding.
Head shorn, lungs bloodied, and body wasted,
Letitia did not live long in the Wass household.
By July, her lifeless body lay in an area burial ground.
If anyone memorialized the place of her interment,
Prince perhaps, or Affey, or maybe the Gordons,
their marker does not survive.
Leticia's story is a story that I wrote through tears,
but it did not begin that way.
"How hopeful," I thought,
when I found the Freedom Seeker advertisement.
"And how brave!
"This girl marched away from her enslaver's household.
"She must have had good reason to do so.
"Did she accomplish her aims?
Did she ultimately manage to escape slavery?"
And then, I found the stack of depositions
filed away by the court,
the testimonies of neighbors to Letitia's wasting,
the statements about her fear of her enslaver,
the declaration by the local doctor
that he would not so much as dispense advice to help the girl
without the permission of her cruel enslaver,
the confirmation of Letitia's death.
The contours of Letitia's short life slowly became clear to me
in a cold, soundless archive in Massachusetts.
The work was emotionally taxing, and it was lonely,
as I have found, frankly, much of my historical work,
including the process of writing my book, to be.
But the Freedom Seekers Project as a whole
is the antithesis of solitary.
The undertaking is an exceptionally collaborative one.
Working with my project team and website design professionals,
I built a website
with tools for searching the collection of stories,
including an interactive map.
As the collection of stories at the heart of this project grows,
we have published essays
authored by nearly 50 different contributors.
These range from undergraduate students to senior scholars.
And teaching is at the heart of our undertaking,
and that is often done as a team.
The Freedom Seekers Project has run an internship
through the history department for the past five semesters,
which has allowed UW students to master
the difficult historical work
of piecing together these untold stories.
And students beyond UW have benefited
from the Freedom Seekers Project as well.
The team has made instructional materials available
free of charge on its website, which have been used
by professors in college classes nationwide,
from the University of Pennsylvania
to Appalachian State to Johns Hopkins
to the University of California, Berkeley, and beyond.
In this semiquincentennial year,
our bank of stories is rapidly expanding.
The website, which links to freely available
runaway advertisements on the Internet,
invites professors, graduate students, undergraduates,
and knowledgeable members of the public
to interpret these advertisements
and use them as the foundation
for stories of their own creation.
Perhaps one of you might try your hand at this.
Because the Freedom Seekers Project
is a community-sourced undertaking
with collaboration at its heart,
I wanted to share one story tonight, the last one,
authored not by myself, but by a collaborator.
This final story, about Solomon, was researched
and written by my colleague Simon Newman,
though I have altered it just a little bit
for the purpose of this presentation.
"Solomon."
Solomon was as driven
by a determination to live in freedom
as were Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.
But he was not necessarily inspired
by their rhetoric about liberty.
Born and raised in Africa,
Solomon had been in North America only a short time
when his relentless drive to be free made itself manifest.
In his first two years in North America,
Solomon escaped twice.
But we know little about these escapes.
Solomon escaped for the third time in June 1773.
By the time his enslaver, Thomas Cockey,
advertised for him in 1774,
Solomon had been living on his own for about a year.
As this was Solomon's third escape
in only three years out of Africa,
it is little wonder that Thomas described the young man
as "a cunningly crafty rogue" who belied his "innocent look."
In his early 20s, Solomon was a "saltwater man,"
meaning that he worked aboard oceangoing ships
operating out of Baltimore.
Of a middling size, with a large head,
he spoke "pretty good English,"
especially considering his short time in the Americas.
At the time Thomas posted this advertisement,
Solomon apparently was living in New Castle in Delaware,
where he resided for a year or even longer.
He also spent some time in nearby Philadelphia.
And in July 1774, just a month after Thomas advertised for him,
Solomon made his way to Somerset County, Maryland.
After this, he was taken up and imprisoned.
The advertisement, it seems, accomplished its purpose.
By November 1774,
Thomas had reclaimed the Freedom Seeker
and brought him back to Baltimore.
Thomas took precautions to make sure
that the young man would not escape again.
He had an iron collar fitted around Solomon's neck.
He placed fetters around his ankles,
and he attached a chain to one of those fetters.
These were not just any restraints.
They were, as Thomas put it himself, all double riveted.
Despite their structural integrity, the shackles failed.
For in July of 1775, Solomon escaped for the fourth time.
On this occasion,
he fled with a white servant named Richard Dawson.
Thomas believed that the two men would "make for Boston,"
which was at this time under siege by the British.
Thomas expected Solomon and Richard
to join the British soldiers because, he stated,
"They have often been talking about them."
Like Solomon, Richard had an iron collar around his neck,
and Thomas thought it "likely they may get off their irons,
"get other clothes, change their names,
and deny their master, as the Negro has always done."
The advertisement following Solomon's fourth escape
was reprinted at least six times
between May 16 and September 18, 1775,
in both Maryland and in Pennsylvania newspapers.
On October 5, Solomon was taken into custody
by Ralph Foster in Prince George County, Maryland.
Ralph advertised that he had possession
"of a Negro man who says his name is Solomon
and that he belongs to Thomas Cockey."
Ralph made it known that the enslaver could reclaim Solomon
upon paying charges.
But this would not be Solomon's last escape,
nor would it mark the end of his adventures in freedom.
In the fall of 1776, he fled for a fifth time.
When another enslaved man named Tooley escaped from Thomas
in late September of 1778,
the enslaver advertised for Tooley in the Maryland Journal,
but also described Solomon, who had been absent for two years.
During this lengthy period of liberty,
Thomas would later reveal, Solomon had been at Fort Pitt
and many other places about the country.
Fort Pitt was an American base for defensive operations
against violent resistance
by the Indigenous allies of the British.
There, American colonel Daniel Brodhead
organized several operations along the Allegheny River,
occasionally fighting against the Seneca
and other Indigenous warriors
and sacking and burning empty Indigenous settlements.
Did Solomon take place in these or related operations?
What else might he have been doing
during this long period of freedom,
when he had made his way
to "many other places around the country?"
We cannot know, but what seems clear
is that Solomon's determination to be free had little to do
with the American patriots' contemporaneous struggles
for individual and national liberty.
The man appears to have been indifferent
as to which side to take in the revolutionary conflict.
He plotted joining the British in Boston,
then joined the Americans in Fort Pitt.
Solomon apparently took advantage
of the chaos of these years and the needs of both British
and American commanders for young and able fighting men
or for manual or skilled workers, such as seafarers.
After his time in Fort Pitt, Solomon again was recaptured,
which we know because two years later, in 1780,
Solomon escaped from Thomas for at least the sixth time,
despite the fact that he had again been fitted
with an iron collar around his neck.
On this occasion,
Thomas made Solomon's African identity clear,
describing him as a "Guinea Negro man,"
and somewhat wearily, the enslaver reiterated
that despite his harmless look, Solomon was a "sly villain."
Having previously escaped with a white servant,
on this occasion, Solomon was partnered with Eben,
another "Guinea Negro man" who also had escaped from Thomas.
At this point, Solomon fades from the historical record.
There appear to be no other mentions of him.
The American Revolution was not so much a causal factor
as a backdrop for this determined young African man
to try repeatedly to free himself,
siding with whomever might offer him liberty.
Not even shackles, chains, or collars held the man back,
as twice he escaped while wearing
these highly visible markers of enslaved status,
contriving to have them removed and to remain at liberty.
Had Solomon been recaptured and returned to Thomas,
it seems likely
that such a resolute Freedom Seeker would have escaped again,
and likely as well that Thomas would have advertised for him,
as he had done so many times already.
Perhaps this final bid for freedom was successful.
Solomon's story suggests that people in bondage
took full advantage of the upheaval of revolution
to make a break for freedom,
and they were willing to collaborate
with whichever side served their purposes,
whether patriot or Loyalist.
But Solomon's path was not Pompey Fleet's path
or the path followed by Will,
nor that of Titus or Bina or Pero or George Samba
or Bet or Prime or Tom or Cuff Dix
or Caesar or Daniel Anderson.
If you peruse our project website,
you will find many dozens of stories
about bondspeople who confronted the realities of revolution,
each of whom charted a somewhat different course
than the others.
For all, though, freedom was the North Star.
The Freedom Seekers Project makes abundantly clear
that white patriots were by no means alone in their struggle
to achieve what Thomas Jefferson immortalized
in the Declaration of Independence
as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Countless people of color fled slavery,
seeking freedom during the American Revolution.
These brave stands for liberty
were at once personal and political.
They resulted not only in freedom for individuals,
but also in challenges to the system of racial bondage
that was foundational to the Americas.
Through their daring demands for liberty,
fugitives helped spur an unprecedented
Revolutionary-era challenge to slavery and racial inequality.
Still, the stand against slavery long predated the revolution,
as we can see in Penelope's 1704 flight
or in the vision of Letitia, deathly ill,
stumbling across Boston in 1739.
And these snippets of sources,
which number in the tens of thousands in early newspapers,
though originally posted to capture fugitive bondspeople,
they allow us to capture something else altogether.
A bold and inspiring vision of the unrelenting efforts
on the part of enslaved people over generations
to declare their independence.
Thank you.
[audience applauds]