Escaping slaves often just wanted to be with families

There are no reliable statistics that show the primary reason that led slaves to try to escape their bondage but in the thousands of notices of slaves who managed to get away there was the general belief that those who escaped were going to find family members.

Some slave owners professed an intention to not separate families and, in fact, would not sell a husband apart from a wife. This proved to be false good will, however. As soon as a family was sold to a new owner, they were often parceled out in a second sale.

Economics, not empathy, was what drove slave owners. They did not see the slaves as humans but purely chattel.

When a Black man named John (last name unavailable) escaped from slave owner Eli C. Bishop of South Carolina it was undoubtedly to reunite with his wife and child (names unavailable).

John went straight to another plantation where he took away a woman or a young child who were also enslaved by Bishop but who were in the process of being sold.

While there is no evidence that John was technically married, he would never have risked getting caught by stopping at a location known as Russel Place near Camden, S.C. to take the woman and child with him if there had not been a connection.

The two were there on a trial basis before the sale was made final to a woman known only as Mrs. Stinson.

The fear of permanent separation had to be driving him.

John would not have been difficult to spot. Most of the enslaved were of normal height for the time, somewhat under six feet tall. John was about 6-6. He had a scar on his face near his eye that he said was caused by the kick of a horse.

Bishop believed the three were heading toward Baltimore, which is where he bought them at a slave auction. He was offering a $50 reward for their capture.

The notice appeared in the Sept. 3, 1850 edition of the Camden (S.C.) Weekly Journal.

On to this week’s stories.

EIGHT SPANISH DOLLARS was the reward being offered in 1792 by slave owner Catharina Hillegas of Philadelphia for the capture of an unnamed, “Negro Wench” who escaped in 1792

The Black woman was described as about 22 years old and had lost one of her eyes.