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Group 3 BHS

At the BHS, we looked at two documents that advertised slave runaways. 1. The first document that we looked at was a typescript journal of a John Baxter of Flatlands, Long Island -the document was a big green book and the pages of it looked somewhat delicate, which indicates that it was old -it was from the time periods of 1805- May 1817 -it was published in Brooklyn, NY 1955 -the farm that he owned was located in Flatlands, Long Island -in page 21 of the journal; from July-Sept of 1807 we read events that go on in the man's life and at the barn he owned -he states that a slave ran off- of the name Abraham Wyckoff -in page 133 of the journal;  from April-June of 1815, Mr. Baxter's "negro ran away" as he states on May 19th - on May Mr. Baxter went to the town to publish an add for his runaway slave, with a reward of $80 on May 22 2.The second document  that we looked at was a runaway slave add in a newspaper -A.H Inskeep was the one who put up the add - it was for a mulatto named George of about 22 years of age -he was described as tall and slender -it cautioned all persons not to harbor or employ said boy -it was estimated that the boy ran away June 2-3   Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

The “runaway slave” gave a detailed description of how slaves who escaped slavery were advertised in the media. It gave us an idea of the reasons why a slave owner may or may not advertise when his slaves runaway.

The book gave the age range of slaves likely to escape as in between the late twenties to early thirties and are usually male. It is so because women are quite indecisive when it comes to risk taking and because the act is physical they might prefer to opt for life of slavery rather take this risk since they consequences of being caught totally out weigh the life of slavery. This age and gender of these runaways tells us that slaves at this stage of their lives are much more likely to be angered by what goes on in their lives and are strong enough to through the hardship of escape.

Most of the escapees were considered black; a striking seventy percent in the early period. I believe this was so because obviously most of the slaves were black. I guess the rape of slaves by their owners and their allies were not that common at the early stages so the number of “mixed breeds” were significantly low compared to the blacks. Also the appearance of the slave was quite striking when they escaped. Even though most slaves were believed to own one clothing, most of them had a lot of clothing during the escape. Some of them stole the clothing from their owners whilst others stole materials and manufactured them. With this slaves were able to disguise themselves wearing different clothes as the owners advertise using the clothing they believed they wore at the time of escape. Another thing is that, slaves with scars on the outer parts of their bodies were less likely to escape as they are easily identified with the scar. The very few who escaped uses their  clothes to cover the scars so they are not recognized.