slaveryto
freedom
Study Areas
June 30, 1813: Grace, enslaved by Levi Houston in Kentucky, escapes while in Pittsburgh.
RANAWAY from the subscriber, on the 4th of May last, from Pittsburgh, a Negro Woman named GRACE, about 26 years of age, scarred on each arm from the elbows, and on the backs of her hands, occasioned by a burn. A reward of Thirty Dollars, will be paid if she is apprehended within 30 miles of Pittsburgh, and if a greater distance from that place Fifty Dollars will be given, on delivering her to the subscriber living in Bracken county, Ken. or into the jail of Pittsburgh, Penn.
LEVI HOUSTON.
June 30, 1813.
Notes: Levi Houston was born in Snow Hill Maryland and moved to Kentucky after the Revolutionary War. It appears that Grace was accompanying Houston on a trip to or through Pittsburgh in early May 1813 when she escaped. For some reason, Houston waited until the end of June to post an advertisement offering a reward for her capture. The advertisement above ran in this same newspaper through early August.
Sources: Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, 13 July 1813
Covering the history of African Americans in central Pennsylvania from the colonial
era through the Civil War.
Support the Afrolumens Project. Read the books:
The Year of Jubilee, Volume One: Men of God, Volume Two: Men of Muscle