Manuscript document recording the purchase of "a negro girl called Nancy aged about Eighteen years" for ten years with a promise to manumit the woman at the end of this period. Dated George Town [Mary

£2,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A stark document recording the sale (and gradual manumission) of the 18-year old “negro girl” Nancy for a period of ten years. The agreement is signed in Georgetown in Maryland and is between Thomas Turner (born c. 1760) of Prince George’s County, Maryland and Samuel Judson Coolidge (1770-1849) of the same country. The text reads: “This day purchased and Red^d^ of Samuel J Coolidge of Prince George’s County a negro girl called Nancy aged about eighteen years to serve for Ten years, and I do hereby promise to manumit the said negro Nancy at the expiration of Ten years from the day of the article hereof” By the end of the 18th-century gradual manumission (a fixed term of servitude) was increasingly being offered to slaves, partly to reconcile slave labour with the supposed libertarian rights of the American Revolution but also due to factors such as the decrease in the profitability of tobacco farming. Aside from the horrific considerations of what the previous 18 years of the young woman Nancy’s life must have been like up to this point it also raises various questions about life after manumission and the status of freed slaves in society. Maryland State Archives record a number of other manumission documents signed by Samuel Judson Coolidge (1770-1849) including one for a 5-year old child named Fanny in 1808 ( https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000830/html/am830--33.html ) and a man named Bill, described as “raised by Samuel Judson Coolidge”, i

• Binding: Hardcover

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