‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Runaways and Literacy in Colonial America, 1730–1776
A N T O N I O T . B LY
Appalachian State University
For half a century or more, historians have turned to runaway notices to make known the complexity of African American life during the colonial era. Although some, for example, have made use of them
to illustrate instances of slave discontent or their understanding of the
politics of the day, others have used notices to reveal slave efforts to keep
their families together or retain African customs and ways. Surprisingly,
absent in that body of scholarship is a discussion of slave literacy, which is
the focus of ‘‘Pretends he can read.’’ Breaking with tradition, which has
presumed that slaves were denied access to books and literacy, except for
a rare few such as Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and Lucy Terry,
this essay demonstrates otherwise, as it shows increasing rates of literacy
among runaways throughout eighteenth-century British North America.
abstract
June 1766, three months after colonials successfully protested the Stamp Act,
Charles, a thirty-year-old ‘‘Negro Man slave’’ who ‘‘speaks very good English,’’ ran away from his master, one William Alston of Halifax County,
North Carolina. Judging from the short notice printed in the newspaper two
months later, it is uncertain whether the ‘‘Virginia-born’’ bond servant knew
anything about the escalating tensions between Great Britain and its North
American subjects. It is also unclear whether the passionate rhetoric of the
I wish to thank Robert A. Gross, Grey Gundaker, Rhys Isaac, James Whittenburg, as well as Billy G. Smith and the other readers and of course the editorial
staff, particularly Ann Twombly, of Early American Studies whose readings of this
essay (in its various forms) proved invaluable. I would also like to thank Sara BonHarper, whose advice, assistance, and archaeological work at Monticello has added
to my understanding of slave literacy and ultimately this work.
Early American Studies (Fall 2008)
Copyright 2008 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies. All rights reserved.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
day, which likened the members of Parliament to callous, despotic patricians,
inspired the man’s flight. As Benjamin Throop made clear in a Thanksgiving
sermon printed that year, the enforcement of the Stamp Act (before the act
was repealed) threatened to reduce the colonies to ‘‘the greatest slavery and
bondage.’’1
If not prompted by the recent turn of events, Charles may have run away
that Friday for more practical reasons. To be sure, June proved the harshest
time of the planting season. That month, Lathan A. Windley and Philip D.
Morgan’s studies have observed, ‘‘saw more runaways than any other,’’ as
slaves turned their attention to the arduous task of hoeing rice fields. Whatever the case, one thing did seem certain. The ‘‘5 feet 7 inches and a half
high, but sparely made’’ man was determined to pass for free. To that end,
William Alston cautioned the readers of Purdie and Dixon’s Virginia Gazette,
Charles changed his name to ‘‘Benjamin Corbin,’’ kept close to his person a
forged indenture, and pretended that he could read (figure 1).2
For the past five to six decades, notices for fugitive slaves like Charles have
become a rich resource for African American Studies. ‘‘Although the slaves
advertised as running away,’’ as Windley explained it, ‘‘constituted a relatively
small part of the total slave population, they did represent a cross-section of
the different types within these colonies.’’ In Peter Wood’s judgment, they
represent ‘‘little more than the top of ill-defined iceberg.’’ Gerald W. Mullin
agreed, observing in his study of absconded slaves in eighteenth-century Virginia that they were far from being the happy and dutiful servants U. B.
Philips portrayed in his American Negro Slavery. During the American Revolution, some did absorb the rhetoric of the day, take matters into their own
hands, and run away to realize their own natural right to freedom from tyr1. Benjamin Throop, ‘‘A Thanksgiving Sermon, Upon the Occasion, of the Glorious News of the Repeal of the Stamp Act; preached in New-Concord, in Norwich,
June 26, 1766 (New London, Conn.: Timothy Green, 1766), 13. For a fuller account of colonial Americans’ symbolic appropriation of slavery during the American
Revolution, see F. Nwabueze Okoye, ‘‘Chattel Slavery as the Nightmare of the
American Revolutionaries,’’ William and Mary Quarterly (hereafter WMQ) 37, 1
(January 1980): 3–28.
2. Virginia Gazette (Purdie & Dixon), August 15, 1766; Philip D. Morgan, Slave
Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 151; Lathan A. Windley,
A Profile of Runaway Slaves in Virginia and South Carolina from 1730 through 1787
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), 112–14, 174; Peter Wood, Black Majority:
Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1975), 240.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Figure 1. Charles’s runaway notice. Virginia Gazette, August 22, 1766, 4.
See column 1, runaway advertisement 1.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
anny. Others were patriots in their own right. Like the Sons of Liberty, they
seized the moment and not only drove a royal governor to declare ‘‘all able
bodied Negroes’’ free but also forced an otherwise reluctant Virginia colony
into declaring independence from England. (Suffice it to say, most slaves did
not need the rhetoric of 1776 to be committed to the idea of freedom, nor
did they wait for the Revolution.) Unlike Charles, who carried with him only
the clothes he wore, which was ‘‘a pair of old leather breeches, a brown kersey
jacket without sleeves, and an osnabrug [sic] shirt,’’ numerous fugitive slaves
were also fashion savvy. Like their owners, they realized that clothes communicated status. To dress the part and pass for free, many took with them
additional articles of clothing. Ultimately, long before Frederick Douglass
and others published their life stories, these short biographies revealed the
tales of courageous slaves who dreamed of freedom and ran to realize those
dreams, inscribing unwittingly in print the efforts of numerous slaves who
struggled to live life on their own terms.3
3. Windley, Profile of Runaway Slaves, xvii; U. B. Philips, American Negro Slavery
(New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1918), 342; John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore, By His Excellency the Right Honorable John Earl of Dunmore, His Majesty’s Lieutenant and Governor General of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia,
and Vice Admiral of the same: A Proclamation, November 7, 1775 (broadside). For
a reaction to U. B. Philips’s dutiful-slave thesis, see Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and
Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 83–124. For a fuller account of the scholarship about runaway
notices, see L. P. Jackson, ‘‘Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen in the American
Revolution,’’ Journal of Negro History (hereafter JNH) 27, 3 (July 1942): 247–87;
Lorenzo J. Greene, ‘‘The New England Negro as Seen in Advertisements for Runaway Slaves,’’ JNH 29, 2 (April 1944): 125–46; Daniel E. Meaders, ‘‘South Carolina
Fugitives as Viewed through Local Colonial Newspapers with Emphasis on Runaway Notices, 1732–1801,’’ JNH 60 (1975): 288–319; Herbert G. Gutman, The
Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York: Vintage Books, 1977);
Michael P. Johnson, ‘‘Runaway Slaves and the Slave Communities in South Carolina, 1799 to 1830,’’ WMQ 38 (1981): 418–41; Philip D. Morgan, ‘‘Colonial South
Carolina Runaways: Their Significance for Slave Culture,’’ Slavery and Abolition 6,
3 (December 1985): 57–78; Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, Blacks Who
Stole Themselves (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Michael
Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in
the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1998); Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown, eds., ‘‘Pretends to Be
Free’’: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and
New Jersey (New York: Garland, 1994); Windley, Profile of Runaway Slaves; W.
Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1997); Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’: African
American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca: Cornell
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Less well known are those fugitive slaves who could read and/or write.
Surprisingly, absent in recent scholarship is a discussion of slave literacy.
While many scholars have made extensive use of runaway notices to illustrate
instances of slaves’ discontent, their understanding of the political matters of
the day, their efforts to keep their families together and retain their African
culture, none has used them to explore slaves achieving literacy and how that
achievement changed over time and space during the eighteenth century.
Instead, historians have presumed (misrepresenting, unwittingly or not, temporal and spatial specificity) that most, if not all, slaves of that period were
denied access to books and literacy—except for a very rare few, such as Phillis
Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and Lucy Terry.4 Consequently, perhaps more
University Press, 1998); John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway
Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Woody
Holton, Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); David
Waldstreicher, ‘‘Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,’’ WMQ 56 (April
1999): 243–72; Billy G. Smith, ‘‘Resisting Inequality: Black Women Who Stole
Themselves in Eighteenth-Century America,’’ in Carla Gardina Pestana and
Sharon V. Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (Hanover, N.H.: University
Press of New England, 1999), 134–59; and Kirsten Denise Sword, ‘‘Wayward
Wives, Runaway Slaves and the Limits of Patriarchal Authority in Early America’’
(Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002).
4. Save for Lorenzo J. Greene, whose survey of colonial New England runaways
revealed that only 1.6 percent could read or write, no scholar—to my knowledge—
has used runaway notices to explore slave literacy in the colonial period. Recently,
however, in her exhaustive account of reading and writing in early America, E.
Jennifer Monaghan observed that slaves ‘‘in rare cases’’ had access to books and
literacy. She notes cursorily runaway advertisements as a potentially useful source of
slave literacy. Greene and Monaghan notwithstanding, scholars on the whole have
presumed that most slaves were illiterate. That is certainly the view of Kenneth
Lockridge, whose seminal study of literacy in colonial America did not take into
account slaves’ reading and writing. That is also true of Robert E. Desrochers’s
study of slaves-for-sale advertisements in colonial New England that did not consider or make any reference to slaves’ reading and writing. Lorenzo Greene, ‘‘The
New England Negro as Seen in Advertisements for Runaway Slaves,’’ JNH 29, 2
(April 1944): 138–39; E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 239, 243, 436n9;
Kenneth Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Inquiry into the Social
Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974),
93–94; and, Robert E. Desrochers Jr., ‘‘Slave-for-Sale Advertisements and Slavery
in Massachusetts, 1704–1781,’’ WMQ 59, 3 (July 2002): 623–64.
Though varied, studies of slave literacy in the nineteenth century have proven
more fruitful. Between 1825 and 1861 Carter G. Woodson estimated, 10 percent of
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striking than Charles’s endeavor to pass for free was his attempt to convince
others that he could read, which he clearly thought an essential part of his
plan.
Indeed, besides demonstrating slaves’ resourcefulness, runaway notices
show slaves mastering letters. In the context of Kenneth Lockridge’s classic
study, advertisements registering instances of slaves reading or reading and
writing represent (albeit indirectly) signatures that can be used to establish
fugitive slave literacy rates specifically—and possibly, in a very broad sense,
slave literacy rates in general. In other words, if runaway advertisements do
in fact represent the tip of an iceberg or a cross section of the enslaved population, as modern scholarship suggests, then it is also possible that the degree
to which they were literate may be representative of the larger group as well.
Starting with Virginia—England’s largest colony, the birthplace of the African American experience in North America, and likewise the place where
Charles’s story began—the number of literate absconded slaves grew over
time and space. Between 1736 and 1776 approximately 1,000 runaway notices appeared in the Virginia Gazette. Of that number, 55 runaways (more
than 5 percent of the whole) were described as being literate. Starting in
1736, when William Parks established the first newspaper in the colony, the
number of literate slaves represented in the notices for absconders grew over
time. And so did the overall number of runaways in the colony. In the first
three years of the paper’s publication, 44 slaves were reported as having absconded. None, however, was noted as being literate. But in the decade following the 1730s, 1 of 33, or 3 percent of the runaways, was identified as
‘‘adult Negroes had the rudiments of education.’’ Similarly, in his survey of runaway
advertisements in Kentucky from 1792 to 1865, Ivan E. McDougle determined that
20.3 percent (71 of 350 slave fugitives) were advertised as being able to read. Of
those 71, 37 slaves (52.1 percent) could also write. According to Harvey J. Graff,
above 50 percent of (free) black Canadians were literate, a figure that corresponds
roughly with the average literacy rate for free blacks in the United States recorded
in the 1850 census. More recently, Janet D. Cornelius’s studies of slave education
in the antebellum South determined that somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of
enslaved African Americans were literate. Carter G. Woodson, The Education of the
Negro prior to 1861 (1919; rept., Brooklyn: A & B Publishers Group, 1997), 139;
Ivan E. McDougle, ‘‘Slavery in Kentucky,’’ JNH 3, 3 (July 1918): 289; Harvey J.
Graff, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century
City (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 68; Janet D. Cornelius, ‘‘ ‘We Slipped and
Learned to Read’: Slave Accounts of the Literacy Process, 1830–1865,’’ Phylon 44,
3 (1983): 186; and Cornelius, ‘‘When I Can Read My Title Clear’’: Literacy, Slavery,
and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1991), 8–9.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Table 1
Literacy Rates among Virginia Runaways
Period
1736–39
1740–49
1750–59
1760–69
1770–76
No. of ads
examined
No. of literate
runaways
Percent
literate
44
33
72
233
648
–
1
3
16
35
–
3.0
4.2
6.9
5.4
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
being able to read and/or write. By the 1750s that number was growing.
Around the same time the colony’s slave population nearly doubled, and 3 of
72 runaways were noted as being literate. In the decade that saw the Landon
Carters of colonial Virginia amassing greater fortunes in tobacco, wheat, and
slaves, expanding their already large landholdings, and solidifying further
their positions as social and political grandees in their counties, 4 percent of
enslaved Virginians who disappeared from their owners’ estates had solved
the mystery of letters.5 In the 1760s that number increased by almost three
percentage points, as 16 runaways of 233 were noted as being able to read
and/or write. In the decade in which the growing tensions between the Old
and New Lights gathered to a head, almost 7 percent of the runaways in
Virginia were literate and reading the word to and among themselves. But by
the time the colony declared independence, that percentage had dropped off
by 1 1/2 percentage points. In hard numbers, 35 of 648 runaways between
1770 and 1776 had achieved literacy (table 1).
Notices farther south told a different story. In the low country estates of
South Carolina, where slaves labored in rice and indigo fields, literacy did not
thrive. Compared to the tobacco aristocrats of the Chesapeake, the rice lords
of the colonial Deep South ruled over a slave population one-half the size of
5. By all contemporary and modern accounts, early Africans and African Americans initially perceived print as a form of magic. Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 127–69. Also see Grey Gundaker, ‘‘Give Me a Sign: African Americans, Print, and Practice, 1790–1840,’’ in Robert A. Gross and Mary
Kelly, eds., An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation
(forthcoming).
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Table 2
Estimated Enslaved Population in Colonial America
Colonies
Period
Va.
S.C.
Mass.
Pa.
N.Y.
1700s
1710s
1720s
1730s
1740s
1750s
1760s
1770s
16,390
23,118
26,559
30,000
60,000
101,452
140,570
187,605
2,444
4,100
12,000
20,000
30,000
39,000
57,334
75,178
800
1,310
2,150
2,780
3,035
4,075
4,566
4,754
430
1,575
2,000
1,241
2,055
2,872
4,409
5,761
2,256
2,811
5,740
6,956
8,996
11,014
16,340
19,112
Source: [United States Bureau of the Census], The Statistical History of the United
States, from Colonial Times to the Present; Historical Statistics of the United States,
Colonial Times to 1970 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 1168.
Virginia’s (table 2). The newspapers of that colony, however, give a different
impression. Over the four and a half decades before independence, the South
Carolina Gazette, the sole newspaper in the colony, carried three to four times
as many notices for runaways as its counterpart, the Virginia Gazette, ran. In
the 1730s the Charles Town–based paper carried notices for 275 runaways,
compared to a mere 44 in the Williamsburg paper. Not one of the South
Carolina fugitives was described as literate. In the four decades that followed,
at no time was there ever a literacy rate among runaways of as much as 1
percent (table 3).
This was not the case north of the Chesapeake. In Boston there were more
literate runaway slaves than in the Chesapeake. Though Boston had a smaller
slave population compared to its southern counterparts, its newspapers reported almost twice as many runaways between the 1730s and the 1750s as
appeared in the several versions of Williamsburg’s Virginia Gazette. In the
1730s, 67 runaways appeared in the Boston press, compared to only 44 in
Virginia. Two of the Boston absconders were literate. In the following decade
that number grew along with the ranks of runaways. Four of 111 runaways
in the 1740s, approximately 4 percent, were literate, marking the beginning
of a sustained rise in slave literacy. The proportion of literate slaves among
runaways nearly doubled to 7 percent in the 1750s, and then grew to 9 percent in the 1760s, when New Englanders began to sound liberty’s bell. The
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Table 3
Literacy Rates among South Carolina Runaways
Period
1730–39
1740–49
1750–59
1760–69
1770–76
No. of ads
examined
No. of literate
runaways
Percent
literate
275
353
559
831
633
–
1
1
6
5
–
.28
.18
.72
.79
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
Table 4
Literacy Rates among New England Runaways
Period
1730–39
1740–49
1750–59
1760–69
1770–76
No. of ads
examined
No. of literate
runaways
Percent
literate
67
111
103
104
115
2
4
7
9
11
3.0
3.6
6.8
8.7
9.6
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
figure peaked at close to 10 percent in the decade that saw not only the birth
of independence but also the historic publication of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems
on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
In context, Wheatley was clearly not the phoenix of her race, as Henry
Lewis Gates Jr. and other literary scholars have claimed. As the notices from
Boston show, she was one of many literate blacks. Put another way, the
African-born poet personified the African American literary tradition; slaves
like Charles represented the African American literacy tradition (table 4).6
Figures among runaways west of New England reveal higher numbers of
literate slaves compared to the Chesapeake as well. Like Boston, Pennsylvania
6. Gates, The Signifying Monkey, 127–69. For a fuller account of the African
American literacy tradition, see my ‘‘Breaking with Tradition: Slave Literacy in
Early Virginia, 1680–1780’’ (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 2006).
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Table 5
Literacy Rates among Runaways in Pennsylvania
Period
1730–39
1740–49
1750–59
1760–69
1770–76
No. of ads
examined
No. of literate
runaways
Percent
literate
25
64
82
246
152
1
2
3
20
15
4.0
3.1
3.7
8.1
9.9
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
did not have as large a slave population as the southern colony. Even so, from
the 1730s to the 1760s, the number of runaways there almost equaled the
total in Virginia. Initially, Pennsylvania’s runaways were no more likely to be
literate than Virginia’s. In both colonies, the proportion hovered between 3
and 4 percent in the 1740s and 1750s. The 1760s marked a turning point,
when Pennsylvania diverged from Virginia, as the numbers of runaways and
of literate slaves rose. Some 8 percent of Pennsylvania’s runaways (20 of 246)
were described as literate in the 1760s, compared to 7 percent of Virginia’s.
By the time the colonies declared independence, the number of Pennsylvania
runaways decreased. But the percentage of literate runaways continued to
grow, from 8 to 10 percent (table 5).
Similar figures were recorded for runaways in the colony of New York. In
the 1730s 17 notices appeared in the New-York Gazette. Of that number, 3
runaways were identified as being literate. In the ensuing decade, at the start
of which New York was thrown into an uproar by the detection of a slave
conspiracy, 2 of 44 runaways were noted as being able to read.7 In the 1750s
that figure doubled. Of the 91 slaves who ran away, 5 could read and write.
During the 1760s only 3 runaways were reported as being literate. Between
1770 and 1776, 6 of 70 runaway slaves who appeared in the papers in New
York could read or write (table 6).
Not surprisingly, runaways in societies with slaves were more likely to be
7. Thomas J Davis, ‘‘The New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741 as Black Protest,’’
JNH 56, 1 (January 1971): 17–30; Leopold S. Launitz-Schurer Jr., ‘‘Slave Resistance
in Colonial New York: An Interpretation of Daniel Horsmanden’s New York Conspiracy,’’ Phylon 41, 2 (1980): 137–52.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Table 6
Literacy Rates among Runaways in New York
Period
1730–39
1740–49
1750–59
1760–69
1770–76
No. of ads
examined
No. of literate
runaways
Percent
literate
17
44
91
122
70
3
2
5
3
6
17.6a
4.5
5.5
2.5
8.6
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
a. This figure may overstate the literacy rate because some issues of the New-York
Gazette are missing.
literate than their counterparts in full-blown slave societies. As Ira Berlin has
shown, the institution of slavery varied over time and from one region of the
mainland to next. In the northern colonies, for example, slavery represented
a significant yet marginal part of society, and slaves performed a multitude of
tasks from farm labor to specialized occupations like ironwork or carpentry.
They were also disproportionately urban, and most worked alongside and
with whites. As a result, enslaved Bostonians, Philadelphians, and New Yorkers were quick to adopt Euro-American ways of life. In the southern colonies,
however, slavery drove the economy. In the Chesapeake tobacco was king,
and rice ruled the lowlands of the Carolinas and Georgia. Compared to the
economies that developed in the north, the cultivation of tobacco and rice
demanded larger numbers of slaves, as well as more complex structures of
labor organization. In Virginia slaves toiled on plantations. In the Carolinas,
by contrast, they worked in larger work gangs, and each slave was assigned a
specific task.
Despite these differences, enslaved Virginians adopted European ways as
well. Like their brethren farther north, they worked in close proximity to
their masters. Most of them were country-born (Creole) and quite familiar
with the language and customs of their owners. This was not so farther south,
where geography and the nature of farming life seem to have conspired together, requiring the frequent importation of Africans into the Carolina low
country to sustain its fragile slave population. There, African Americans lived,
for the most part, in greater isolation from whites, and as a result of that
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
isolation they managed to retain a greater degree of their African ways and
traditions.8
Like the institution of slavery, slaves’ access to letters varied. As early as
the 1710s, as the studies of Carter G. Woodson, John C. Van Horne, and E.
Jennifer Monaghan have observed, slaves received biblical literacy instruction
from their masters, who thought it their duty to impart religion by letters.9
Bond servants such as Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon were taught in
the homes of their owners, but other slaves were taught by catechists employed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. If
not by the S.P.G., others gained knowledge of letters under the auspices of
the Associates of the Late Dr. Thomas Bray, a philanthropic Bible society
that held fast to the Apostle Timothy’s injunction to ‘‘give attendance to
reading, to exhortation, to doctrine’’ until Christ returned. Indeed, in that
commission they established a series of charity schools that provided Chris8. Ira Berlin, ‘‘Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on
British Mainland North America,’’ American Historical Review (hereafter AHR) 85,
1 (February 1980): 44–78. For a fuller account of how the institution of slavery
changed over time and space, see Donald R. Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1990); William D. Piersen, From Africa to America: African American
History from the Colonial Era to the Early Republic, 1526–1790 (New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1996); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1998); Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003); and Philip D. Morgan,
Slave Counterpoint. For a fuller account of how geography and region informed the
survival of African customs, see Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
Interestingly, none of these studies has addressed slaves achieving literacy over
time and space. Instead, most appear to have conceded to the very temporary and
spatial basis they have redefined. Allan Kulikoff, whose study of the Chesapeake
has become a cornerstone of many of the aforementioned works, appears to have
spoken for many when he observed: ‘‘White training of slaves, however, was limited
to those jobs that did not require literacy. Slaves understood the power of literacy,
and many probably wanted to read and write, but whites used their monopoly of
reading and writing to help control black behavior.’’ Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves:
The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 396.
9. Woodson, Education of the Negro, 139; Monaghan, Learning to Read and
Write, 241–301. Significantly, both these studies of slave literacy are primarily qualitative in nature. By comparison, my work ventures to complement them by emphasizing a quantitative analysis.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
tian instruction to slaves through reading. Not surprisingly, their efforts met
with varying degrees of success. In Philadelphia their doors were open for
well over seventeen years, fourteen in Williamsburg and New York, thirteen
in Newport, and six years in Charleston.10 Significantly, other slaveholders
who allowed their servants to be instructed did so for less pious reasons.
Thomas Jefferson, as Lucia Stanton has explained, permitted several of his
‘‘people’’ to be taught, as such lessons were deemed essential to the Virginia
grandee’s personal sense of happiness. The same was true of Peyton Randolph, who relied on his trusted body servant, Johnny, who had been known
to run errands on his master’s behalf. Whatever their rationale, many slave
owners were not as open to the idea of teaching slaves writing (or penmanship), which represented a specialized skill that for a time had been reserved
primarily for well-situated white men. By Monaghan’s exhaustive account,
this divide between the two literacy skills (which, by the way, had been the
common practice of literacy instruction in general) became increasingly rigid
for the enslaved as incidents of rebellion flared up throughout British North
America. Hence, while reading could be taught to the enslaved, writing could
not.11
And yet, unbeknown to their owners, enslaved African Americans were
more than likely seizing moments to learn and sharing with one another
knowledge of letters. Consider an extant three-page letter written by a Virginia slave to the bishop of London in 1723, weeks after Edmund Gibson
had been appointed the chaplain of the trans-Atlantic colonies.12 According
10. 1 Tim. 4:13 (KJV); John C. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery: The American Correspondence of the Associates of Dr. Bray, 1717–1777
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 1–38. By Van Horne’s account, the
Philadelphia school reopened after the American Revolution and continued instructing slaves up until the 1780s. Like Woodson’s and Monaghan’s, Van Horne’s
study is largely qualitative.
11. Lucia Stanton, ‘‘ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Thomas Jefferson
and His Slaves,’’ in Peter Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville: University
Press of Virginia, 1993), 147–80, esp. 168; Julie Richter, ‘‘ ‘The Speaker’s’ Men and
Women: Randolph Slaves in Williamsburg’’ Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter 20
(2000): 47–51; Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write, 241–301. For a fuller account of how race and gender functioned as social divides that restricted access to
letters, see E. Jennifer Monaghan, ‘‘Reading for the Enslaved, Writing for the Free:
Reflections on Liberty and Literacy,’’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
108 (1998): 309–41, and her ‘‘Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New
England,’’ American Quarterly 40 (March 1988): 18–41.
12. Anonymous slave to Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1723, Fulham Papers, Lambeth Palace Library (Williamsburg: College of William and Mary, Swem Library,
World Microfilms), 17:167–68. A copy of the letter and a transcript can be found
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
to Thomas N. Ingersoll, who discovered the letter while examining the bishop’s manuscript papers, the author may have had help from other slaves in
composing the correspondence, written between August 4 and September 8.
Taking into account ‘‘the singular and plural forms of the first person’’ the
author employed, Ingersoll observed, the letter was probably the work of a
group of slaves.13
Apparently, the bishop of London’s commission inspired the slave to write.
News of Gibson’s appointment probably filled the streets in Virginia, as well
as the alleys of the colony’s urban centers. By word of mouth, reports had
probably made their way far into the backcountry of the Piedmont, farther
west into the Appalachian Mountains, and into the equally sparsely populated
south and eastern shore countrysides. If not in that manner, news of the
bishop’s appointment could certainly have been heard echoing about the
tabby-plastered walls of the local parish, where clerks and sextons talked and
where parsons were sure to keep their congregations, which included slaves,
apprised.
However the writer may have learned of the bishop’s appointment, the
letter, anonymously written, entreated the service of the ‘‘Lord arch Bishop
of Lonnd’’ on behalf of other enslaved Virginians. To a lesser extent, it also
beseeched ‘‘Lord King George’’ for assistance. The intention of the petition
was twofold. In the first part of the letter, the writer lamented the deplorable
condition of the mulattoes and Negro slaves in the colony. By this ‘‘poore’’
slave’s account, slaves in Virginia were exploited much like ‘‘the Egyptians
was with the Chilldann of Issarall.’’ According to the writer, those who
owned slaves ‘‘doo Look no more up on us then if wee ware dogs.’’ Such
being his lot, the slave writer then begged ‘‘The Right Raverrand father in
god’’ and the king of England to intervene on the slaves’ behalf. ‘‘Releese us,’’
he asked in a plea at once bold and deferential, ‘‘out of this Cruell Bondegg.’’14
In the second part of the appeal, the writer, who identified himself as but
a ‘‘poore partishinner’’ of the Church of England, beseeched the bishop to
take responsibility for instructing Virginia’s slaves in Christianity. ‘‘Wee . . .
do humblly beg the favour of your Lord Ship . . . [to] Settell one thing upon
us which is . . . that our childarn may be broatt up in the way of the Christian
faith.’’ That meant teaching them ‘‘the Lords prayer, the creed, and the ten
commandments,’’ the basic texts by which children were introduced to the
in Thomas N. Ingersoll, ‘‘ ‘Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg’: An Appeal from
Virginia in 1723,’’ WMQ 51, 4 (October 1994): 777–82.
13. Ingersoll, ‘‘ ‘Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg,’ ’’ 778.
14. Anonymous slave to Bishop Edmund Gibson, 17:167–68.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Anglican faith. But that was not sufficient for the bishop’s correspondent. He
also implored the Church official to put the slave children ‘‘to Scool and
Larnd to Reed through the Bybell.’’ In the eighteenth century, as Monaghan’s study has shown, the three R’s were reading, ’riting, and religion.15
Interestingly, that part of the appeal is striking because it underscores the
role slave women may have played in the composition of the anonymous
letter. Besides expressing their grave concerns about their mistreatment, the
authors of the letter convey what seems a parental interest about their children’s educational opportunities. Moreover, as the shifts from singular to plural voice point out, there was more than one author who addressed the bishop
of London in this regard. When addressing the diocese on behalf of other
slaves, the author used the singular pronoun to separate himself, whose plight
was no different from the others. The cruelty of these modern-day ‘‘Egypttions,’’ he reminded the bishop, allowed one brother to own another: ‘‘It is to
bee noted that one brother is a SLave [sic] to another and one Sister to an
other which is quite out of the way and as for me myself I am my brothers
SLave but my name is Secrett.’’ But when making the case for instructing
younger slaves, the voice of the writer shifts and becomes plural. In that shift,
the unknown writer spoke not only for himself or herself but also for the
others who helped put the letter together. ‘‘Sir wee your humble perticners
. . . [desire that our Children] may appeare Every Lord’s att Church before
the Curatt to bee Exammond for our desire is that godllines Shoulld abbound
among us.’’ In short, slave mothers and fathers desired more for their children
and perhaps indirectly more for themselves. More for them meant better
treatment and lessons for their sons and daughters in how to read the Bible.
From this letter it becomes clear that enslaved African Americans were
being taught. It appears that some were being taught by local church officials. Others taught one another. Afro-Virginians,16 as the anonymous 1723
letter told it, were working together in achieving literacy: throughout the
colony, they were sharing what they learned, teaching each other how to
read and write.
Undoubtedly, some of those lessons in letters went on in private and in
clandestine places, away from their owners’ watchful eyes. In spite of the
Church of England’s efforts in Virginia, not all slaves acquired literacy.
Though some slaveholders afforded slaves the opportunity, others did not.
15. Ibid.; Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write, 241–301.
16. My use of the term Afro-Virginian does not refer to politics, nomenclature,
or history. Rather, it denotes the complex cultural processes through which Africans
became Americans.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
In their judgment, instruction served only to make a slave saucy. With
knowledge of letters, slaves could indeed write themselves free. To dissuade
such efforts, some slaveholders threatened certain punishment if slaves continued in their endeavors to learn. The slave authors may have been writing
anonymously and in secret not to hide their literacy from their masters, but
rather to conceal their denunciation of their masters to the Anglican
Church official overseeing religious life in the colony. Whatever their reasons, they wrote in fear. The ‘‘poore’’ slave writers conceded that much
when, in the closing lines of the letter, they explained to the bishop their
reasons for anonymity: ‘‘Wee darer nott Subscribe any mans name to this
for feare of our masters for if they knew that wee have Sent home to your
honour wee Should goo neare to Swing upon the gallas tree.’’17
Also consider the notices of literate runaways in Virginia, specifically the
literacy skills they achieved. In the tobacco colony 31 percent of absconded
literate slaves were identified only as being able to read. In 1770, just three
days before Christmas, Edith, ‘‘a Virginia born Negro woman,’’ ran away
from her owner in Charles City County. Besides remarking on the woman’s
‘‘yellowish complexion, and two of her toes [that] grow together,’’ Nicholas
Holt warned the public that his bond servant ‘‘can read pretty well.’’ The
same had also been true of William Freedom’s slave woman Zophir, who
ran away from his residence in Norfolk three years later. Less than 10 percent (7.3 percent) of the advertisements noted only the literate runaway’s
ability to write that in all likelihood may also underscore a slave’s ability to
read and write and possibly his mastery of certain domestic and urban skills.
Such was the case of William Griffin’s manservant John, who by his master’s account ‘‘writes intelligently.’’18 Probably to the chagrin of their owners,
most literate runaways had managed, and overwhelmingly so, to master
both skills, inadvertently complicating current scholarship regarding slave
literacy. In the Chesapeake 62 percent of runaways with literacy skills knew
how to both read and write. Notices farther north and south recorded even
higher figures. While changing notions of patriarchy may in part explain
how some of these slave fugitives acquired literacy, it appears that slaves
concealed the other part of the story (table 7).19
17. Anonymous slave to Bishop Edmund Gibson, 17:168.
18. Virginia Gazette, (Rind), March 22, 1770; Virginia Gazette (Purdie &
Dixon), September 16, 1773; Virginia Gazette (Purdie & Dixon), November 10,
1774.
19. For a fuller account of changing notions of patriarchy in colonial America,
see Woodson, Education of the Negro, and Mullin, Africa in America. For more recent
regional studies of the subject, see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint; Anthony S. Parent,
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Table 7
Literacy Characteristics of Literate Runaways in Colonial America as
Reported by Their Owners, 1730–1776
Colony
Virginia
South Carolina
Massachusetts
Pennsylvania
New York
Read only
Write only
Read and write
30.9%
30.1
14.8
19.0
20.0
7.3%
—
5.7
7.1
10.0
61.8%
69.2
80.0
73.8
70.0
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
Additionally, more slaves could probably read than were reported. To
judge from the notices, for example, few slave women ran away. Fewer still
were recorded as being able to read and/or write. In the Chesapeake,
women accounted for a modest share (110 of 1030) of the notices printed
in the Gazette between 1736 and 1776. Of that number, only 4 could read
or read and write.
For most slave women in Virginia, running may not have been a viable
choice. Though familiar with the language and customs of their masters,
many chose to stay put. Family bound them to the quarters and to the
house. Presumably, as they were not as skilled as their menfolk, they also
had little to no chance to hire themselves out. And because of their sex,
female fugitives faced yet an additional obstacle when they attempted to
pass for free or endeavored to find work.
By Gerald Mullin’s account, most preferred truancy. In his judgment,
only a few ran off to leave the colony or to escape slavery permanently. In
many instances, their owners had some idea of their whereabouts. Onequarter of women fugitives in Virginia left to visit their husbands or children on nearby plantations. Another quarter, he noted, went to town to
pass for free. To support themselves in Williamsburg and in other urban
centers, fugitive women sold corn or potato hoecakes, eggs and chickens,
and a variety of baked goods—all of which support the fact that many may
have had help.
Billy G. Smith’s recent study has added greater nuance to this portrait
of women stealing away. Though their efforts varied, the threat of being
Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Berlin, Generations of Captivity.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
sold or of sexual exploitation compelled many slave women to abscond.
Whereas most men fugitives ran away alone, women fled in groups. More
often than their male counterparts, they also used the threat of flight as a
negotiating tool to wrest power from their owners, as well as to gain privileges. By Smith’s account, more slave women than men responded to the
opportunity of freedom provided by the American Revolution and its aftermath. In other ways, needless to say, women probably registered their literacy.20
The same was also true of women farther north and south. In South
Carolina nearly one-fifth of the notices (492 of 2651) were for women who
disappeared between the 1730s and 1776. Significantly, by the time the
planters there decided to sign the Declaration of Independence, only one
runaway woman had been noted as being literate. In Pennsylvania, women
made up a tenth of the runaways who appeared in Benjamin Franklin’s
Gazette. In that port colony, Mary Deklyn’s Rachel was one of three female
slave fugitives who could read. In 1775, when she ran away, her mistress
noted, the Negro woman ‘‘Took with her . . . a hymn book.’’ In Boston
women accounted for almost one-tenth of printed notices. Surprisingly,
none was literate. Not so in New York. There, Jenny, the wife of a ‘‘negro
preacher’’ by the name of Mark, who could also read, was the only one of
34 female fugitives who appeared in the New-York Gazette between 1730
and 1776. In the notice posted for the slave couple’s recovery, Thomas
Clarke and Major Provost described the ‘‘Wench’’ as ‘‘smart’’ and likely to
‘‘make a travelling Pass.’’ To judge from that account, though her husband
could read, Jenny could read and write (table 8).21
Surely, more women could probably read than those who appeared in
newspaper advertisements. More could also read and write. Though it is
impossible to discern, in exact numerical terms, how many had achieved
letters, it is nonetheless reasonable to assume, considering that they made
up half the slave population in full-blown slave societies like Virginia and
South Carolina for much of the eighteenth century, that a fair number of
them did learn. To be sure, in the tobacco colony, judging from extant
church registers, equal numbers of slave men and women attended churches
whose parsons, as early as the mid-1720s (if not before), considered literacy
20. G. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 103–5; Smith, ‘‘Resisting Inequality,’’
134–59.
21. Pennsylvania Gazette, August 23, 1775; New-York Gazette, January 12,
1775.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Table 8
Percentage of Female Slaves Advertised as Runaways in
Colonial America, 1730–1776
Colonies
Period
1730s
1740s
1750s
1760s
1770–76
Va.
S.C.
Pa.
Mass.
N.Y.
9%
–
10
12
11
21%
20
23
16
16
12%
10
10
7
12
11%
10
3
4
8
11%
9
10
9
8
Source: Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database.
instruction as part of their sacred commission.22 Be that as it may, notices
reveal only one part of the story, that part being what masters knew about
their slaves for certain.
The notices also overrepresented skilled slaves and domestics. As the case
had been with women, runaway notices reveal only part of the story. Between 1733 and 1775, as Philip D. Morgan’s study demonstrates, slave
domestics and artisans accounted for approximately one-tenth of all slaves
in the Virginia colony. By contrast, they represented 21.6 percent of all
absconding slaves in the advertisements.
Over time, skilled runaways were also more likely (and increasingly so)
to be literate. Four years after William Parks started the Virginia Gazette in
Williamsburg, three runaways were noted as being skilled. At age fortytwo, James Ball’s Will, who ‘‘carried with him, a white Fustian Jacket, a
looping Ax, and a Fiddle,’’ worked as a jack of several trades. As his master
told it, the Virginia native was ‘‘a Carpenter, Sawyer, Shoemaker, and
Cooper.’’ But Will could neither read nor write—at least that is the case
judging from the notice placed in the paper. Neither could the other two
skilled runaway slaves reported in the 1730s. By the following decade, that
changed. Six of 33 runaways were artisans. Eight worked as domestics and
one was semiskilled. Among that exceptional group was Peter, John Custis’s
house slave, who was also the only literate runaway recorded in the Wil22. Bly, ‘‘Breaking with Tradition,’’ 79–138. For other accounts of the connection between Protestantism and literacy, see Woodson, Education of the
Negro,11–30; Monaghan, Learning, 143–65; 241–72.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
liamsburg-based press in the 1740s. By the time religious dissenters began
to settle the colony’s frontier, that number became bigger in each succeeding
decade. Skilled slaves made up a little over one-fourth of those who ran
away in the 1750s, and 11 percent of them could read and write. In the
ensuing decade, 8 of the 64 skilled runaways reported (one-eighth) were
literate. In the 1770s, when Virginia declared independence, 123 of 648
runaways were noted as being smiths and carpenters, waiters and coachmen,
boatmen, farmers, and other such skilled hands. Almost one-tenth of those
123 could read and/or write.23
The shortcomings of runaway notices notwithstanding, recent archaeological findings may offer us a useful counterbalance. Much like printed
runaway advertisements, artifacts found in archaeological excavations provide evidence of slaves’ reading and writing. But, unlike the notices, which
tend to represent what masters knew about their slaves, the archaeological
discoveries may reveal what masters may not have known. For instance,
unlike runaway advertisements, archaeological findings suggest that slave
women were more than likely learning along with slave men. It also suggests
that both slave artisans and slave field hands were probably learning to read
and write as well.
In the past, scholarship on early African American history and African
American material culture has sought to reconstruct everyday life in the
slave quarters. From her analysis of faunal remains in York County, Virginia, slave quarters, for example, Ywone Edwards-Ingram concluded that
slaves were able to supplement their diets by hunting and trapping local
game. Other scholars have used slave archaeology to examine the social
relationships between masters and slaves and the processes of cultural interaction and exchange that occurred between Africans and Europeans. In
Uncommon Ground, Leland Ferguson discovered among slave quarter artifacts a wide assortment of ceramics, clay pots, and fragments of other items.
Judging from the variety of these artifacts, Ferguson determined that in
addition to supplementing their diets, slaves in Virginia and elsewhere
bartered with their masters for certain commodities. In that manner,
slaves acquired items like silverware, porcelain, and creamware dishes and
plates. Such trading challenges old assumptions that slaves, denied access
to luxuries and overawed by the authority of their well-fed, well-clad, and
well-housed masters, were unable to develop a sense of economy and independence. In Ferguson’s judgment, enslaved Virginians, as well as slaves
23. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 204–44; Virginia Gazette (Parks), April 28–
May 5, 1738.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
elsewhere, acquired property of their own through which many expressed
and enjoyed a certain modicum of social prestige among their fellow bond
servants.24
Sifting through the debris, archaeologists have discovered evidence not
only of slave foodways and forms of social stratification but also of West
African cultural retentions. Fragments of tobacco pipe stems and bowls,
unearthed in the root cellars or subterranean pits at the quarters at Carter’s
Grove in the James City County, home of Carter Burwell, the grandson of
Robert ‘‘King’’ Carter of Lancaster County, indicate that Virginia slaves
were consumers of the very tobacco they were forced to produce for white
masters engaged in trans-Atlantic trade. In the early part of the eighteenth
century, they too smoked tobacco, possibly as a way of coping with slavery.
But they also smoked tobacco because it was a custom with which many
were already familiar from their native African homelands (table 9).25
That is certainly the view of Lorena S. Walsh. In her From Calabar to
Carter’s Grove, Walsh suggested that in addition to producing and consuming tobacco, Africans in Virginia brought to the Chesapeake African techniques of growing the crop. Although historians have long recognized the
‘‘contributions of enslaved Africans to the development of rice culture in
the Carolinas,’’ Walsh observed that African contributions to the development of tobacco culture in the Chesapeake have received little to no attention. In her judgment, excavated tobacco stems and pipes demonstrate not
only slave consumption but also the likely presence of African methods of
24. Ywone Edwards-Ingram, ‘‘The Trash of Enslaved African Virginians,’’ CWI
20 (Winter 1999–2000): 9–12; Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology
and Early African America, 1650–1800 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1992). For a fuller treatment of slave archaeology see Patricia Samford, ‘‘The
Archaeology of African-American Slavery and Material Culture,’’ WMQ 53 (January 1996): 87–114; Theresa A. Singleton, ed., ‘‘I, Too, Am America’’: Archaeological
Studies of African-American Life (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999);
and Ann Smart Martin, ‘‘Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,’’ in her Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 173–94.
25. Carter’s Grove, Artifact Inventory; Lorena S. Walsh, From Calabar to Carter’s Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community (Charlottesville: University
Press of Virginia, 1997), 61–65, 195–99. For a fuller account of the artifacts found
at slave sites, see Matthew C. Emerson, ‘‘African Inspirations in a New World Art
and Artifact: Decorated Pipes from the Chesapeake,’’ in Singleton, ‘‘I, Too, Am
America,’’ 47–82, and L. Daniel Mouer, Mary Ellen N. Hodges, Stephen R. Potter,
et al., ‘‘Colonoware Pottery, Chesapeake Pipes, and ‘Uncritical Assumptions’ ’’ in
Singleton, ‘‘I, Too, Am America,’’ 83–115.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
Table 9
Archaeological Evidence of Tobacco Use at Slave Sites
Artifacts: tobacco pipes
Site name
Governor’s Land
44JC298
Carter’s Grove
Palace Lands
Fairfield Quarter
Richneck
Monticello
Building O
Building S
Building L
Building R
Building T
Poplar Forest
North Hill
Quarter
Mount Vernon
House for families
Stratford Hall
ST116
Occupancy
stems
bowls
unid.
1690–1720
1710–85
1740–80
1746–75
1750–70
92
56
75
964
404
122
83
58
996
750
12
–
1
170
44
1770–90
1770–1826
1780–1810
1793–1826
1793–1826
139
25
3
13
27
67
22
2
7
16
–
–
–
–
–
1770–80
1790–1810
20
95
45
60
–
9
212
401
3
30
49
–
1759–92
1770–1820
Sources: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Carter’s Grove Artifact Inventory
and the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery Database, www
.daacs.org.
producing tobacco. After all, both Gold Coast and Angolan Africans who
were transported to Virginia were quite familiar with tobacco farming.
When they arrived in the Chesapeake, they carried with them centuries of
experience. Consequently, fragments of tobacco pipes and stems represent
a complex artifact in which African and European husbandry realized common ground.26
Archaeological findings also reveal evidence of the enslaved mastering
letters. Pencil leads, pencil slates, writing slates, and, to a lesser extent, un26. Walsh, From Calabar to Carter’s Grove, 63–65.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
identified slates have been found at several sites excavated in the Tidewater
and Piedmont regions of the Chesapeake. In the Richneck Quarter in York
County, for example, three writing slates and three unidentified slates were
uncovered. Similarly, in the Palace Lands Quarter in York County, one
writing slate and eight unidentified slates were excavated. Archaeologists
have also unearthed one unidentified slate at the slave site at the Governor’s
Land estate in James City County. Identical artifacts were found at George
Washington’s Tidewater plantation. At his estate in Mount Vernon, one
unidentified slate was discovered in the first president’s slave quarters. Much
like runaway notices that appeared in the Virginia Gazette and in other
colonial newspapers, these artifacts demonstrate slave literacy. Indeed, as
this archaeological evidence shows, slaves were practicing letters in the
quarters and probably sharing the skill.
Particularly compelling are the artifacts unearthed at the slave quarter
sites at Thomas Jefferson’s estate at Monticello. There 237 unidentified
slates, 27 pencil leads, 2 pencil slates, and 18 writing slates were uncovered
in houses once occupied by Jefferson’s black bond servants. In Free Some
Day, Lucia Stanton took these writing slates in slave quarters as evidence of
enslaved Virginians’ reading and writing. In her view, evidence ‘‘unearthed
in archaeological excavations below Mulberry Row attests to the hunger for
education at Monticello. . . . The writers probably had only the hours of
darkness to practice [their] letters and found a piece of locally available
stone that saved [them] the purchase of pen and paper.’’27 Perhaps unknown
to Jefferson, who by Stanton’s account had no problem with a number of
his skilled slaves reading and writing, some of his plantation hands were
also literate and apparently teaching one another (figures 2 and 3).28
Evidence of slaves reading and writing has also been unearthed at Jefferson’s Poplar Forest estate. Poplar Forest was his retirement plantation in
Bedford County, Virginia. There, archaeologists have discovered four unidentified slates in the root cellars excavated at the North Hill site. At the
quarter site they unearthed even clearer evidence of slave literacy: fragments
of five writing slates. Barbara J. Heath took these artifacts as a clear indication of slaves reading and writing. By her account, the fragments of writing
slates ‘‘may have been part of an artisan’s tool kit or may have been used by
a resident of the site as he or she learned to read and write.’’ ‘‘Although
27. Lucia Stanton, Free Some Day: The African-American Families of Monticello
(Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 2000), 100.
28. Stanton, ‘‘ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness,’ ’’ 168; and Stanton, Free
Some Day, 97–101.
283
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
Figure 2. Writing slates excavated at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello slave quarters. Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery Database, www
.daacs.org.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Figure 3. A writing slate and slate pencil excavated at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello slave quarters. Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery
Database, www.daacs.org.
285
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
formal education was denied to slaves,’’ she noted, ‘‘John Hemming, who
did much of the carpentry at Poplar Forest, and Hannah, the cook, are
known to have been literate, because letters written in their hand survive.’’
In Heath’s judgment, ‘‘It is likely that others, particularly craftsmen and
women, needed some degree of literacy to perform their work effectively.
Bent over writing slates in the yards and doorways of the quarter, these men
and women might have shared their knowledge with others.’’29
Though not formally schooled, some slaves at Jefferson’s Monticello and
Poplar Forest estates, much like other slaves in other parts of the Chesapeake, learned how to read and write. Judging from the artifacts, it seems
likely that Jefferson afforded certain slaves the opportunity to achieve letters;
they then shared what they learned with other slaves. It also seems apparent,
however, that a number of Jefferson’s people did not wait for their master’s
approval when it came to learning how to read and write. Far from it: several
took it upon themselves to learn letters, and others passed on what they had
learned. While some used slates, others may have practiced their letters by
writing in the dirt, which may have proven to be a more effective surface
than slates; the fact that slaves were learning to read and write could easily
be concealed with a sweep of the dust. Presumably, one of every twentyfive field hands in the tobacco colony had some knowledge of letters, and
this is at best a conservative estimate in light of both Woodson’s and Monaghan’s studies.30 Whatever the case, besides demonstrating literacy from
the perspective of bond servants, the archaeological evidence appears to corroborate the figures recorded by runaway notices (table 10).
Alas, modern historians have overlooked runaway notices as a possible form
of slave signature, as well as the importance of literacy in slave efforts to live
life on their own terms. To judge from Charles’s story, which opened this
account, the printed or written word was particularly significant to many
enslaved African Americans because they were bound by it. As early as
29. Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 55.
30. For a fuller account of literacy rates in colonial Virginia, see Bly, ‘‘Breaking
with Tradition,’’ 19–78. Significantly, in their studies of slave education in early
America, both Woodson and Monaghan observed numerous avenues through
which African Americans achieved literacy. Besides demonstrating change over
time and space, Woodson and Monaghan noted revolt as a significant factor that in
most instances hindered slave efforts to learn how to read and write. Woodson,
Education of the Negro; Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
Table 10
Archaeological Evidence of Literacy at Slave Sites
Artifacts
Site name
Governor’s Land
44JC298
Carter’s Grove
Palace Lands
Fairfield Quarter
Richneck
Monticello
Site 8
Building O
Building S
Building L
Building R
Building T
Poplar Forest
North Hill
Quarter
Mount Vernon
House for families
Stratford Hall
ST116
Occupancy
pencil
(lead)
pencil
(slate)
writing
(slate)
slate
(unid.)
1690–1720
1710–85
1740–80
1746–75
1750–70
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1
–
–
–
1
–
3
1
–
8
11
3
1750–1807
1770–90
1770–1826
1780–1810
1793–1826
1793–1826
–
–
1
–
1
–
–
2
20
–
5
–
–
1
9
–
3
5
78
–
105
–
45
9
1770–80
1790–1810
–
–
–
–
–
5
4
–
1759–92
–
–
–
1
1770–1820
–
–
–
–
Sources: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Carter’s Grove Artifact Inventory, and
the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery Database, www.daacs.org.
1680s in places like the Virginia colony, the ‘‘generall assembly’’ declared it
unlawful ‘‘for any negro . . . to goe or depart from his master’s ground
without a certificate from his master, mistress or overseer, and such permission [should] not be granted but upon perticular and necessary occasions.’’
Without written consent, an apprehended slave received ‘‘twenty lashes on
the bare back well layd on, and soe sent home to his said master, mistris or
overseer.’’ Over time, slaves found without a pass or ticket were taken up
and held as fugitives. If taken up a second time without a pass, a slave could
suffer several forms of punishment. As a result, writing stood for the plant-
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
er’s power and the slave’s confinement, and the absence of writing carried
heavy burdens (figure 4).31
Understandably, for many slaves, the ability to read and write represented
a form of power and liberty, which probably explains why Charles pretended he could read. In all likelihood, he could in fact read. William Alston’s reference simply concealed the complex politics of slavery. Indeed,
some slaveholders, as David Waldstreicher explained, were reluctant to acknowledge that their fugitives had acquired skills. As a way of refusing
them status, they would indirectly note a runaway’s ability. Thus, numerous
notices included remarks that fugitives ‘‘passed,’’ ‘‘pretended,’’ or ‘‘professed’’
certain skills, of which literacy was but one.32
In any event, certainly with a knowledge of letters, enslaved African
Americans like Charles could pass for free. They could convince others that
they were their own property. As the runaway notices demonstrate, some
were able to do just that. Being able to read and write, they moved about
more easily, unencumbered to some extent by the fear of being captured
and returned to slavery. Intellectually, literacy prepared them for the road
toward freedom. Through reading, slaves were exposed to different ideas.
They also became more aware of the larger world around them. Consider
the story of Peter, another fugitive slave, which appeared in the Virginia
Gazette.
ran away, about the 10th of April last, from the Hon. John Custis, Esq; of Williamsburg, a Negro Man named Peter, of a middle Stature, about 30 Years of Age;
has a Scar in his Forehead, or somewhere about the upper Part of his Face, occasion’d by falling into the Fire when a Child, is Virginia-born; he went away with
Irons on his Legs, a Kersey Waistcoat, and a Cotton Pair of Breeches, laced on the
Sides for Conveniency of putting them on over his Irons; he has robb’d me, in Cash,
Household Linen, and other Goods to a considerable Value; and notwithstanding
he is Out-law’d will not be taken or return home; he can read, and I believe write.
Whoever apprehends and conveys him safe to me, shall have Two Pistoles Reward,
besides what the Law allows. john custis
In May 1745 John Custis paid William Parks five shillings to publish
this advertisement in his Williamsburg paper. The notice had only a single
31. William W. Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of all the
Laws of Virginia . . . (Richmond, Va.: Samuel Pleasants Jr., 1819–23) (hereafter
SAL), 2:481; Windley, Profile of Runaway Slaves, 4–10.
32. David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the
American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 9.
Figure 4. Slave pass, October 29, 1771. This pass, signed by Thomas Oliver, conducts two slaves, Bobb
and George, to travel from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Williamsburg. Special Collections, Rockefeller
Library, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
appearance in print. Nor did anything about the middling stature, Virginiaborn ‘‘Negro man’’ with a scar on his forehead appear in the county court
records that also registered instances of slaves running away. There is no
notice of Peter’s being captured in the neighboring Carolina colonies or in
Maryland. No news appeared of the Virginia runaway’s apprehension in
Boston, Philadelphia, or New York. To judge from the published account
concerning John Custis’s servant, Peter probably succeeded in his bid to
escape slavery.
Nonetheless, of this former slave we can discern something of a small
biography in that notice. As a child, Peter received a scar on his forehead
after falling into a fire. The accident suggests that the lad may have been
the child of one of Custis’s house servants, possibly the cook. Like other
domestics, he probably worked about his master’s house, initially performing minor tasks such as carrying a wooden pail of water for his mother.33
At thirty, Peter had grown rebellious. Though bred to be a house servant,
he adopted another line of work. For a time, truancy became this slave’s
choice of occupation. Not quite yet a real fugitive, Peter stayed in the vicinity of his master’s Williamsburg estate. He lurked about town and engaged
in mischief. And like other truants, he eventually returned to John Custis’s
house on Francis Street—weary or in want of familiar company, food, and
shelter.34
Judging from the notice, Custis accepted Peter’s unruly behavior. By all
accounts, he was a benevolent master. His slaves had little reason to run
away or to engage in roguery. Indeed, like other slaveholders, Custis
thought himself a modern-day patriarch of the Bible and treated his servants reasonably. Those who ran away were afforded time to return on their
own.35
33. The nature of Peter’s clothing suggests that he may have been a domestic.
For a fuller account of slave clothing, see Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal:
The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (Williamsburg: Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation and Yale University Press, 2002), and Baumgarten,
‘‘ ‘Clothes for the People’: Slave Clothing in Early Virginia,’’ Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts (November 1988): 27–70.
34. G. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 55–56. Also see Windley, Profile of Runaway
Slaves, chap. 1. As Windley’s study suggests, outlawing Peter—a last-ditch effort to
control the slave—underscores the fact that the domestic had more than likely run
away on other occasions.
35. To judge from other runaway notices he placed in the Gazette, Custis clearly
gave Peter time to return on his own volition, a practice that had become common
in the Chesapeake. As the table below illustrates, when slaves ran away, masters
were willing to wait a while, as much as two months, before placing a notice.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
The residents of Williamsburg were not as understanding of Custis’s
boisterous house slave. Quite the opposite: in the minds of many, Peter had
made a nuisance of himself. Evidently, during a previous escape from Custis
he had lingered in the vicinity, stealing and slaughtering livestock and committing ‘‘other injuries to the inhabitants of this her majesty’s colony.’’ In
retaliation, they had gone to the local justices and had him officially outlawed as a danger to the community (figure 5).36
In both York and James City counties, the word got out. Peter was a
wanted man—preferably dead. Should he be killed or injured in the attempt, Peter’s would-be captors were assured certain pardon and exoneration from blame. The hunt for the domestic was afoot.
To Custis’s good fortune, it was a successful hunt. Peter was returned to
his master unharmed. Back in his master’s possession, Peter was forced to
Placement Intervals for Advertising Runaway Slaves in Virginia (in months)
Periods
(N)
1730s (31)
1740s (27)
1750s (53)
1760s (133)
1770s (419)
⬍1
1
2
3–5
6–12
⬎12
n/a
53%
22
43
23
26
25%
26
26
20
22
9%
11
4
11
10
6%
7
6
14
16
3%
15
13
8
8
–
–
4
5
2
3%
19
4
20
16
Source: Lathan A. Windley, comp., Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary History
from the 1730s to 1790, 4 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983), 1:1–210.
Custis’s benevolent treatment of his slaves may have stemmed from a personal
relationship he had with one of his servants, Alice, who bore him a son named
John. Upon his father’s death, John, who preferred to be called Jack, was given his
freedom and a small plantation on the York River. Custis also made provisions in
his will that John receive an inheritance of 500 pounds sterling. For a fuller account
of Custis’s relationship with and treatment of his slaves, see E. T. Crowson, Life as
Revealed through Early American Court Records: Including the Story of Col. John Custis
of Arlington, Queen’s Creek, and Williamsburg (Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical
Press, 1981), 150–52; Josephine Zuppan, ‘‘The John Custis Letterbook, 1724–
1734’’ (Master’s thesis, College of William and Mary, 1978), 34–35.
36. It appears from the notice that the townspeople were responsible for outlawing Peter. According to G. Mullin’s and Windley’s studies, notices for outlaws usually did not encourage a slave’s preservation. Whites who apprehended a fugitive
slave were given more money for a dead than a living slave. As the notice indicates,
however, Custis wanted Peter returned alive. G. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion,
55–58; Windley, Profile of Runaway Slaves, 19–24. For the quote, see SAL,
3:460–61.
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Early American Studies • Fall 2008
Figure 5. Peter’s runaway notice, Virginia Gazette, May 9, 1745, 4.
See column 1, runaway advertisement 2.
Bly • ‘‘Pretends he can read’’
wear leg irons to reduce his mobility and to deter future escapes. And as
Custis, like other Virginia grandees, received many guests at his Williamsburg home, especially on Sabbath days, Peter’s clothes were altered to preclude alarm. For the sake of politeness, his shackles were disguised to hide
the brute facts of power in his master’s genteel household. Finally, it
seemed, Peter’s wayward behavior had come to an end. His days of truancy
were no more.
Peter, however, did not agree. After being returned, he made plans for
his next escape. Having grown up in his master’s house, he was familiar
with the slaveholder’s way of life. Obviously, the privilege of domestic work
failed to produce a contented slave. No; just the opposite: Peter grew obsessed with acquiring his freedom. In that determination, he made yet another bid to live on his own terms. Knowing where the Custis family kept
its valuables, he took what he needed and ran away again. But this time he
headed far from Williamsburg. This time, Peter became a real fugitive.
Within a month of Peter’s disappearance, John Custis posted an advertisement in the Virginia Gazette for the bond servant’s recovery. The reward
was two pistoles—twice the usual sum in such cases. Clearly, Peter was a
valuable as well as troublesome slave. To judge by the few facts in the notice,
his ability to read and probably write may have made him so.37
APPEND IX
In compiling the ‘‘Inter-Colonial Runaway Slave Database,’’ I relied on
both Lathan A. Windley’s exhaustive four-volume collection of runaway
notices in the Chesapeake (Maryland and Virginia) and the low country
(the Carolinas and Georgia) and Thomas Costa’s equally extensive online
database of runaways in Virginia. To determine the number of absconded
slaves in colonial Philadelphia, I made use of the online archives of Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette and Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz’s Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the
Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1790. For New York, I consulted Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown’s ‘‘Pretends to Be Free’’: Runaway Slave
Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey.
37. SAL, 3: 455–56; 5:553–54. A pistole was a Spanish gold coin, sometimes
called a doubloon. By the middle of the eighteenth century, a pistole was worth
almost a pound, or a little over 18 shillings. In Virginia those who captured runaways were given ‘‘200 pounds of tobacco, or twenty shillings . . . for apprehending
slaves ten miles or more from their master’s quarter. If above five miles and under
ten, a reward of 100 pounds of tobacco was paid by the owner.’’ Windley, Profile of
Runaway Slaves, 25–26.
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As for eighteenth-century Massachusetts, I searched several long-running
issues of the newspapers of that colony, now at the Library of Congress,
namely, the Boston Evening Post, Boston Gazette, New England Weekly Journal, Boston News-Letter, Boston Post-Boy, Massachusetts Gazette, Massachusetts Spy, Essex Gazette, and New England Chronicle. Besides those slaves
who were noted as being able to read or write, I also counted as literate
those who forged passes and carried with them books and newspapers.
Those who carried literature were noted as being able to read. As for those
who forged passes, they were noted as being able to read and write. Notably,
this presumption of literacy has been shaped by Woodson’s and Monaghan’s
exhaustive studies of slave education in colonial America, which provide a
broader context through which to understand the religious currents that
informed the development of literacy and black culture in the eighteenth
century. When compiling the database, I did not count reprints of notices;
only originals notices were counted. Moreover, as the circumstances that
made slaveholders turn to the press were unfixed and because estimates for
notices printed in nonextant issues of papers yield little useful evidence in
the way of developing individual profiles, I did not take into account nonextant notices that may have appeared in lost issues of newspapers. Rather,
I relied on the extant record of absconded slaves in the colonial newspapers
in Virginia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Boston, and New York.
Incidentally, I did not count Charles as literate. Instead, I took the conservative course and, in so doing, leave it the readers of this essay to come
to their own conclusions about him in that regard.