York County, Pennsylvania Enslavement Data

Jailer's Notices of Captured Slaves

Published jailer notices provide information on local, state and out of state African Americans arrested and committed to the county jail as suspected escaped slaves. Enslavers of such persons, seeing the notices in regional newspapers, were expected to come to the jail, provide proof of ownership, and pay the costs associated with keeping, feeding, advertising, and filling out paperwork on the captured esapee.

Such notices provide valuable clues regarding the escape routes used by freedom seekers. They also illustrate the dangers faced by free Blacks traveling in areas where they were not known and arrested as suspected escaped slaves. Persons arrested and jailed under suspicion of being escaped slaves often faced months in prison due to delays by jailers in publishing notices, the allowance of weeks or months for potential enslavers to claim them, and the wait for court dates if no enslaver appeared to pay fees. In worst case instances, free Blacks who were unable to prove their free status could be sold back into enslavement by the county to recoup fees and costs.

• Name: Jacob Johnston
  Date of item: 05 August 1776
  Location: York
  Item: Notice of imprisonment of suspected escaped slave who claims he is free.
  Details/Text: "York Goal, August 5, 1776
  LAST week was committed to my custody, a dark coloured Mulattoe, about 5 feet 9 inches high, strong and well made, aged 24 years in December last; he says he is a freeman, that his name is Jacob Johnston, his mother's name was Dorcus Perkins, at Accomack, in Virginia, that she was a white woman, that Mr. Thomas Kirkly, in Kent, and Doctor Ridgley, in Dover, know him to be a freeman, that he laboured in that county about three months in the spring 1775, from thence he moved to Conestogoe, worked with John and Joseph Miller, from thence to William Read in this county, where he was taken up, &c.
  Also Thomas Casbon, who saith he ran from Lee Masters, at LittlePipe-Creek Furnace, Maryland.
  Their masters, if they have any, are hereby desired to come and take them away, in four weeks from the date hereof, or they will be disposed of to pay their fees, MICHAEL GRAYBILL, Goaler."
  Notes:
  Source: The Pennsylvania Gazette, 21 August 1776.