Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

Because it seems we sure didn’t used to.

Reading lately about the underground railroad (great stuff!) and other things dealing with the antebellum South, and I got to wondering…  when enslaved persons ran away, how did people recognize them?

For instance:

advertisement for runaway slave (click to enlarge)

This says, in part- $150 REWARD

Ranaway from the subscriber, on the night of Monday the 11th July, a negro man named TOM, about 30 years of age, heavy in the chest, several of his jaw teeth out; and upon his body are several old marks of the whip, one of them straight down his back. He took with him a quantity of clothing and several hats.

And here’s one for a woman:

advertisement for emily (click to enlarge)

Says, in part:

100 Dollars REWARD!

Ranaway from the subscriber on the 27th of July, my Black Woman named EMILY, seventeen years of age, well grown, black color, has a whining voice. She took with her one dark calico and one blue and white dress, a red corded gingham bonnet, a striped shawl and slippers.

So what I’m wondering is… would you recognize your own mother or father, brother or sister from these descriptions? How in the world did the kidnappers (perfect strangers, mostly)  find black people – sometimes halfway across the country, living in communities with many other black people – from descriptions like this?

I doubt I would. Yet slave holders and kidnappers trusted and depended on advertisements like this (very rarely were there sketches appended, so far as I know) and sometimes people who had been living free for years were kidnapped and returned into bondage because someone recognized them from the descriptions. Or thought they did, at least.

I hope Tom and Emily made it into Canada or somewhere else safe. If they (at their separate times) made it across the Ohio river into Ohio, from Kentucky, at least they had a small chance.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 8:44 pm and is filed under random, repairing the past, stuff, telling our stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.