Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 351

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(SLAVE TRADE.) Receipt for 37 enslaved people sold to a trader in present-day Liberia for transport to America. Manuscript document. One page, 6¼ x 10 inches, blank on verso; two clean folds. St. Paul's River [Liberia], 1 July 1813
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Additional Details

In this document, the proprietor of a slave-trading post on the West African coast purchases a large quantity of slaves. It reads in full:

"Received from Mr. Robert Bostick of St. Paul's factory, payment for 9 men and 1 woman slaves, viz. tobacco 1 hh'd; rum 2 puncheons. Two women, four girls, and twenty one boys not rec'd payment for, but intended for Mr. Bostick when he had a vessel ready to receive them for Mr. Mason in America." It was signed with an "x" by "Mrs. Boy" and is dated "Boy Factory, St. Paul's River, Menserado, 1 July 1813."

The buyer was an Englishman named Robert Bostock (1784-1837, here "Bostick"), who was convicted 21 days later by the British government for trading in slaves from his trading post, St. Paul's Factory. This document may have been presented in evidence for that case. The sale took place at "Boy Factory" on the Saint Paul River in present-day Liberia, just north of what is now Monrovia. Liberia would soon be formed in 1822 as a colony for free American people of color.

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