Slaveryto
freedom
Harrisburg on the eve of Civil War
Study Areas
Slave Merchants Franklin & Armfield Advertisement
Alexandria, March 1, 1833
200 Negroes Wanted.
We wish to purchase two hundred Negroes of both sexes, from 12 to 25 years of age, field hands, also mechanics of every description.
Persons having such to dispose of would do well to give us a call, as we are determined to give higher prices for slaves than any purchaser who is now, or may hereafter come into this market.
All communications promptly attended to. We can at all times be found at our residence, west end Duke street, Alexandria, D. C.
Franklin & Armfield.
March 1.
Source: The Globe (Washington, D.C.), 1 March 1833.
Notes: The slave trading firm of Isaac Franklin and John Armfield was established in 1828. This advertisement represents the firm after several years developing its reputation as a buyer of enslaved persons. The Duke Street office, mentioned in the advertisement, is still standing in Alexandria, Virginia, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. (Link to more information for this building)
Later Franklin & Armfield Advertisements
Notes: This set of ads illustrates the development of the firm's business into the dominant slave buyer and dealer in the Washington DC, and Virginia area. The top ad, from 1833, lists agents in nearby towns and cities that funneled enslaved persons from the farms and towns of Maryland and Virginia to Franklin and Armfield in Alexandria. Those agents, in 1833, were:
In the middle is their standard ad for 1834, but note that the quantity of enslaved persons sought has increased significantly from 150 to 400, representing the dramatic growth in demand for enslaved persons to ship to plantations in the lower South. That demand only increased through the remainder of the decade.
The bottom ad, from 1836, shows the firm's desire to buy 500 enslaved persons for southern cotton and sugar plantations.
Sources for the above ads: Alexandria Gazette, 23 August 1833, 29 October 1834, 7 October 1836.
Sale to George Kephart, 1837
Notes: Franklin and Armfield sold out to George Kephart sometime after 1836. In March of 1837 Kephart, who had been the Fredericktown, Maryland agent for Franklin and Armfield, advertised that he was now doing business and purchasing slaves from their old Duke Street location. Kephart placed regular advertisements to purchase local enslaved persons to send South through the 1840s. He told people in 1852 he was quitting the slave trading business, but he remained the owner of the Duke Street establishment and in 1858 helped establish Price, Birch and Company, the last slave trading firm to occupy the Duke Street location. It was finally captured by Union Army forces in 1861, ending all trafficking of human beings from that location.
Sources for the above items: Alexandria Gazette, 14 March 1837, 20 June 1839, 8 March 1845, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Civil War Photographs, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-B8184-3287.].
The Year of Jubilee
Vol. 1: Men of God and Vol. 2: Men of Muscle
by George F. Nagle
Both volumes of the Afrolumens book are now available to read directly from this site.
