Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 14

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Bill of sale for an enslaved man, sold by the recently elected first Mayor of Hartford. Manuscript Document Signed by grantor Thomas Seymour and witnesses William Seymour and John Ledyard, and with docketing on verso signed by Henry Seymour. One page, 12 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches; dampstaining, minor wear at intersection of folds. Hartford, CT, 22 January 1785
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Additional Details

The sale for the price of £100 of "my Negro man named Jack, about twenty-four years old, a servant for life . . . I purchased him as such of Capt. Seth Collins of said Hartford."

The sale was from Thomas Seymour of Hartford to merchant Henry Seymour of New York; docketing on verso shows that Henry Seymour then "gave Mr. Rufus King bill sale of the boy." Thomas Seymour (1735-1829) was Hartford's first mayor after its 1784 incorporation, serving through 1812. The recipient was probably his son Henry Seymour (1764-1846), who in turn was the father of Connecticut governor Thomas Hart Seymour--in short, these men were Connecticut royalty. Rufus King may have been the founding father who would be elected to the first United States Senate by New York in 1789.