Rare slave document donated to Natchez museum
Item shows sale of enslaved man for $500 to settler of Spanish NatchezBobby Dennis, executive director of the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture, left, and Richard Burke, Mayor Dan Gibson’s executive assistant, display a scanned cop…
Item shows sale of enslaved man for $500 to settler of Spanish Natchez
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Bobby Dennis, executive director of the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture, left, and Richard Burke, Mayor Dan Gibson’s executive assistant, display a scanned copy of an 1828 bill of sale involving the sale of a 21-year-old enslaved man. The document was donated to the museum by an anonymous donor.
“In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands and seals at Natches this twenty seventh day of December 1828.
Witness: Warren Offutt, R. C. Ballard”
David Slay, chief of interpretation for the Natchez National Historical Park, said the document is significant for several reasons.
“It documents the existence of a 21-year-old Aaron and the other enslaved people from the McInnis estate, which will be of value to genealogists in that Aaron and the others likely have descendants in this region,” Slay said. He noted this could be a key piece to someone's ancestry search one day.
“It is a tangible artifact of the domestic slave trade in this region,” Slay said. “It is a physical object representing the selling of a man's life in Natchez in 1828, who was bound both ‘mind and body’ to John Henderson.”
According to the information provided with the document, on the day of the sale, “Henderson advertised an auction of ten slaves in two families from the estate of Norman McInnis of Concordia, Louisiana, to be sold at auction on January 2, 1829.” However, three years later, he penned a letter to a Washington, D.C. newspaper in which he proposed “a method for the gradual abolition of slavery.”
