- Collection Overview
- Collection Description & Creator Information
- Access & Use
- Collection History
- Find Related Materials
Declaração de venda, 1860
Collection Overview
Collection Description & Creator Information
- Description:
Consists of a closed collection of documents related to slavery, the trade of enslaved persons, and the colonial plantation economy, particularly in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil in the 18th and 19th centuries. This miscellaneous collection provides a way of locating small accessions of slavery-related material acquired by the Library from various sources.
The majority of the collection consists of bills of sale, plantation inventories, and other records created by European colonists documenting the sale and valuation of enslaved men, women, and children in the United States, including New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi; the Three Mile River Estate in Westmoreland, Jamaica; the Mount Charles (Middleton) Plantation in Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, which was owned by Sir Henry Clinton (1738?-1795); and the plantation estate of John Lavicount in Antigua. Also present is a document containing statistics on enslaved populations for each state copied from the United States Census of 1790, as well as a 1820 deed of freedom for a formerly enslaved man in Brazil.
There are also several indentures for domestic apprenticeship or enslavement of African American and multiracial children in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, which date from the 1790s through the 1820s, including for two children apprenticed to United States Representative Killian K. Van Rensselaer (1763-1845) of New York.
Materials related to ships involved in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans include a price list taken from the log of the English merchant ship Daniel and Henry, which was employed along the Gold Coast of West Africa (1700); an account book for the French privateer ship Républicaine (1798-1799); and a sales agreement and invoice for the cargo of the American ship Favourite (1804).
Additional letters and documents pertain to efforts to extend slavery throughout the Americas, including copied documents regarding the status of enslaved and free people of color following the British capture of Martinique from French colonial rule in 1794; a letter between French generals working to suppress revolutionary efforts during the Haitian Revolution; and a letter between United States politicians regarding congressional debates over the expansion of slavery into the California and New Mexico territories in the late 1840s.
The Documents on Slavery in Brazil file group consists of 77 miscellaneous legal and other documents, as well as one book, dating from 1758 to 1888, pertaining to the history of the history of slavery in Brazil as a Portuguese colony and later as the Empire of Brazil, until the abolition of slavery in 1887. Titles and description are transcribed exactly as they are on the dealer's inventory received with the materials. The folder numbers correspond with the item number in the dealer's inventory.
This collection was formerly referred to as the "Miscellaneous Slavery Collection." No additions will be made to this collection. Accessions relating to this topic will be added to the General Manuscripts Miscellaneous Collection (C0140).
Collection History
- Archival Appraisal Information:
No material was removed from the collection during 2017-2019 processing.
Access & Use
- Access Restrictions:
Open for research.
- Conditions for Reproduction and Use:
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. No further photoduplication of copies of material in the collection can be made when Princeton University Library does not own the original. Inquiries regarding publishing material from the collection should be directed to RBSC Public Services staff through the Ask Us! form. The library has no information on the status of literary rights in the collection and researchers are responsible for determining any questions of copyright.
- Credit this material:
Declaração de venda; Princeton University Library Collection on Slavery in the Americas, C1210, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
- Location:
-
Firestone LibraryOne Washington RoadPrinceton, NJ 08544, USA
- Storage Note:
- Firestone Library (mss): Box P-000117