[Slavery]

The life of an African slave in eighteenth century Connecticut, contained in a ledger, apparently kept by one David Mack Jr

The sparse ledger entries date from 1817 to the mid-1850s. Although they are not without interest, they are routine, along the lines of '4 bushels of apples, 6 yards of cloth'. However, the many blank spaces remaining have been put to much better use. Most of the large volume (405 × 165 mm, 176 pages, in original worn quarter roan and marbled papered boards) has been used as a daily diary, interspersed with lengthy reminiscences. Mack (we presume) commenced his diary in January 1869, and the last entry is dated 18 May 1877. He records a few pages earlier, on 22 August 1876, that it was his 84th birthday. His 'Reminiscences of an Old Man' include a section on 'Peter the Slave'. Mack write that 'When I was a boy some 70 years ago I remember an old blind negro who lived in a family within a hundred rods of my father's house. He was then supposed to be nearly one 100 [sic] years old. No one knew his age, he did not know it himself. He was kidnapped or stolen from Africa when he was a small boy supposed to be about seven, and as he said the grandson of an African Chief. Being out one day to play with other boys on the sea shore he was seized by a band of kidnappers carried on board their ship, brought to Hartford and sold as a slave. Slavery at that time was tolerated in all the States'. Peter must have been kidnapped in the first decade of the eighteenth century.