Browse Items (458 total)

In this letter from April, 1852, John R. Thompson -the new owner of 140 enslaved persons sold by Jesuits of Maryland in 1838- thanks Rev. Charles Stonestreet, the Jesuit provincial in Maryland, for allowing him to delay the payment of his debts.…

In this letter written six years after the sale of 1838, Fr. Thomas Mulledy notifies Henry Johnson that he accepts the new payment arrangement negotiated with Johnson by Mulledy's agent, Edmund Forstall, a prominent New Orleans banker.

Mulledy…

This undated list sheds some light on the aftermath of the mass sale of enslaved persons in 1838. It enumerates eighteen enslaved persons who were "transported to Louisiana out of the 84." Presumably the 84 refers to the enslaved people identified in…

In this rich letter from 1817, Fr. Francis Neale, the pastor of Holy Trinity Church at Georgetown College, writes to Fr. Joseph Marshall at St. Inigoes to inform him of the impending arrival of Ned, an elderly man who will be sent from Georgetown.The…

In 1818, Fr. John Henry, the manager of the Jesuits' Bohemia farm sold five enslaved people to a neighbor involved in the interstate slave trade. However, a Methodist judge put the enslaved men in jail to prevent them from being illegally transported…

This receipt from November 23, 1838 records a payment by Rev. Thomas F. Mulledy of seventy five dollars to Francis Herbert for transporting thirty two enslaved persons from Newtown to Alexandria.

This receipt from December 8, 1838, charges Fr. Thomas Mulledy ten dollars for taking an enslaved person to Alexandria and depositing him in jail.

Playbill for a blackface minstrel show at Georgetown dated December 17, 1861.By December 1861, the word "contraband" had come to refer to enslaved people who had escaped to the Union Army.For more information on the Georgetown "Contrabands", see…

On May 4, 1818 Benedict Fenwick, a former President of Georgetown University recorded in the city of Washington the manumission of an enslaved woman named Jane Smith.

The document describes Smith as "formerly of Virginia," and "between five and…

This entry in the Procurator ledgers of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus indicates that the Jesuits' general fund financed the hire of "servants" for Georgetown College in 1804. The reference to "servants" most likely refers to enslaved…