James

While we cannot track the human sold to Hugo Freer, there are cases in which we can follow the life story of an enslaved person, not through documents written in their own hand, but through the receipts, wills, and letters of their enslaver.

While uploading the digitized documents to NY Heritage, our project manager, Donna Dixon, made such a connection between two documents. On June 9, 1783, a fifteen-year-old boy named James was sold to Jonathan Deyo by Henry Eltinge and Dirrick Wynkoop Jr.

Donna found James again in a bearer’s note from Daniel Van Wagenen eight years later.

Sir be Pleased to Let my father have four Bushels of
Rye and five Bushels of corn and likewise that corn of
your negro James and twelve Pound of the flax Soding
you will oblige me Very much and this will
be your receit [sic] in full from me

Danl. Van Wagenen

At the time, Donna posited that this showed that even though James was enslaved, there was an acknowledgment of his skills as a farmer whose corn was sought in particular.

Further research shows that ninety years earlier, New York’s colonial legislature had passed “An Act for Regulating of Slaves,” in which it was decided that it was illegal to trade with an enslaved person without the permission of their enslaver. The consequence for any freed person trading was paying triple the value of the traded item and five pounds to the enslaver. The same act made it legal for enslavers to punish their enslaved at their own discretion, “not exceeding life or member.”

While this document does show that the corn James grew had value enough that it was requested by persons outside the household in which he was enslaved, and therefore James’ valued skill, it also demonstrates the determination of enslavers to keep the enslaved from any opportunity to create their own agency and potentially the path to their freedom.