The record
Archive
Whole documents, every page, as the archives hold them. Each one links to its transcription where one is published.
Exhibition images, as on the boards
The boards show a line or two from each document. Here are the documents themselves, page by page, with where each one is kept. All fifteen pages of the Treaty of Paris are here. More documents are being added.
Yorktown, October 1781
The first roundup: Washington’s headquarters and Virginia’s agent David Ross decide what to do with the Black people found in the captured town.
General Orders, October 9, 1781
2 images
David Ross, memorandum on slaves at Yorktown
3 images
Washington to David Ross
2 images
David Ross to Washington, with his proposal
3 images
General Orders and After Orders, October 25, 1781
3 imagesThe instruction of 1782
Congress tells its peace negotiators to press for the return of people carried off, and sends the instruction to the states.
The claimants write to the governor, 1782 to 1784
Letters to Governor Benjamin Harrison of Virginia from owners and agents trying to recover people who had gone to the British.
William Dandridge Jr., petition to the governor and council
3 images
Thomas Newton Jr., Norfolk, to the governor
2 images
Benjamin Grymes Jr., Eagle’s Nest, to the governor
3 images
Maurice Morgann, Headquarters New York, to the governor
6 images
Hugh Walker to the governor, with a blank certificate
4 images
Thomas Cocke’s sworn return of loss
2 imagesThe Treaty of Paris, 1783
The definitive treaty, signed September 3, 1783, with Article VII.
The British register, 1783
The volume the clerks titled “Book of Negroes,” listing every Black passenger who sailed from New York.
Rockingham and Rocky Hill, 1783 to 1784
Letters written to and from Washington while he stayed at Rockingham, and the tax list taken there the next summer.
Lafayette to Washington, Chavaniac
4 images
Lafayette to Washington, Nancy
7 images
Washington, at Rocky Hill, to the President of Congress
3 images
Matthias Ogden to Washington, Elizabethtown
2 images
Matthias Ogden to Elias Boudinot, President of Congress
2 images
Washington to Rochambeau, Princeton (draft)
2 images