Mar 10, 2011 - Sale 2239

Sale 2239 - Lot 124

Price Realized: $ 5,520
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 5,000
TELLS A TERRIBLE STORY (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Runaway Slave Broadside. $100 Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, living in Augusta, Ky; on the 24th inst., a Negro man named JAKE, about 35 years old, very black. Also, a Negro woman Jane 35 Also, at the same time a yellow girl Mary Ann 10. Letterpress, 7-3/4x10-1/8 inches; paper toned; some wrinkling. Kentucky, 1850s

Additional Details

A very sad story told in nine lines of type. A man, his wife and daughter, all make a run for freedom. Both the man, Jake, and his wife Jane, are described as being "very black." The daughter is described as "a yellow girl," a term usually used to describe someone of mixed blood, a light-skinned girl, with ginger colored hair, a "mulatta." Jane has lost one of her front teeth, and Mary Ann has a scar on her right breast "occasioned by a scald." It is not so much what is said in a runaway slave poster as what is not said that tells us so much about the institution of slavery.