First-person accounts
In Their Own Words
Almost everything we know about the people who left in 1783 was written by clerks, officers, and enslavers. A few of them left their own words.
Boston King
· South Carolina to New York, Birchtown, and Sierra LeoneBoston King escaped slavery in South Carolina, reached the British, and was in New York in 1783. He sailed to Nova Scotia, lived at Birchtown, and in 1792 went to Sierra Leone. He published his memoir in 1798. His account of New York in 1783 is the voice of the people the treaty’s Article VII was written about.
“…a report prevailed at New-York, that all slaves, in number 2,000, were to be delivered up to their masters…”
“…seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New-York, or even dragging them out of their beds.”
“…each of us received a certificate from the commanding officer at New-York, which dispelled all our fears, and filled us with joy and gratitude.”
King’s ship landed at “Burch Town” in August. In 1792 he wrote: “January 16, we sailed to Africa,” and “March 6, we arrived safe at Sierra Leone.”
Why it matters here
The certificate King describes is the same “General Birch’s certificate” the register records for several of the twenty-nine, including Samuel Penilack of Millstone and Jack Richards of Trenton. His route, New York to Birchtown to Sierra Leone, is the route on the Voyages map.
Source: “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher,” The Methodist Magazine (London, 1798).
Judith Jackson
· Norfolk, Virginia, to New York and BirchtownJudith Jackson escaped slavery in Norfolk, Virginia, in May 1779, during a British raid, taking her six-year-old child. In New York she worked for wages for officers of the Royal Artillery, washing and ironing, and for a time served Lord Dunmore. In August 1783 a Virginia Loyalist who claimed to have bought her forced her and her child off a ship bound for Nova Scotia. On September 18, 1783, she petitioned Sir Guy Carleton. Her petition survives in the Carleton Papers.
“I would not go with him.”
“…stole my child and Sent it to Virginia…”
“…all my cloaths which his Majesty gave me…”
Carleton’s office ruled for the claimant. Judith Jackson sailed for Nova Scotia anyway, on November 30, 1783, without her child. In 1784 she headed a household at Birchtown.
Why it matters here
Her case shows the treaty’s Article VII at work in New York, and its limit: the British protected people who had left Patriot enslavers, but not people claimed by Loyalists.
The register’s own phrases
The register was written by clerks, but some entries keep words that must have come from the people standing in front of them: Phillis Sparrow came in “by proclamation”; James Perrow was “left free”; Richard Sloane was “born free at Rocky Hill.” See the People.