?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Letter offering to capture an escaped enslaved New Yorker--for a bounty. Autograph Letter Signed from John Foster to Anthony J. Blanchard of Salem, NY. 2 pages, 12 1/4 x 7 3/4 inches, plus integral address leaf with manuscript "12" postal marking; minor toning and foxing, slight wear at folds, seal tear on address leaf. Lansingburgh, NY, 25 February 1815
As recounted in this letter, an enslaved man named Harry escaped from the home of Herman Knickerbocker (1779-1855) of Schaghticoke Manor just north of Troy, NY (operated as the Knickerbocker Mansion today). Knickerbocker, a lawyer who had served a term in Congress and was presently a major in the local militia, then sold the rights to his absent man to Anthony James Blanchard (1768-1853) of Salem, NY, further to the north. Harry escaped to a remote rural part of southwestern Massachusetts, where he worked as a farm laborer. Slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts, while it remained in effect in New York through 1827. Harry remained in Massachusetts until John Foster, an old New York acquaintance of his old master Knickerbocker, recognized him while traveling. Foster knew there was money to be made, so he tracked down Harry's legal owner:
"Not long since I informed Maj. Knickerbock that I knew where a Black man was that he formerly owned, by the name of Harry, about twenty five or six years old, and that I believed I could get him if I could get suitable compensation for the undertaking. He informed me that you now owned him, and he presumed you would be glad to give any reasonable compensation to have him returned. I saw him in the month of December last, about 70 miles S.E. of this in a bye-place in Massachusetts. He was at work on a farm, hired out. If you will offer a sufficient sum in case I can get and return him to you, to induce me to take a sleigh and horses and man with me, to make it an object to undertake the enterprize, I will improve the present sleighing and make the attempt to get him. Your immediate answer is requested as the sleighing cannot be expected to last long."
We don't know whether Harry was ever captured and returned to his new owner. Anthony J. Blanchard is listed with 3 enslaved people at his residence in both the 1800 and 1810 censuses; only one other household in his small upstate New York town held more either year.
