![Item #4111 [Manuscript Document from 18th-Century Maryland, Recording the Sale of a Thirty-Year-Old Slave Woman Named Torry]. Slavery, Maryland, Women.](https://thejoefaycompany.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/4111.jpeg?width=768&height=1000&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1761620214)
[Manuscript Document from 18th-Century Maryland, Recording the Sale of a Thirty-Year-Old Slave Woman Named Torry].
Frederick County, Md. March 7, 1788. [1]p., folio, docketed on verso. Old folds, short splits along a couple of fold lines, minor toning. About very good. Item #4111
An impactful manuscript document from the early national period in Maryland, formalizing the sale of a slave woman in Frederick County. The sale was made by Robertson Eastburn, whose family emigrated from England to Maryland in the early 18th century. The document reads, in part: "In consideration of the sum of forty six pounds in Gold and Silver to me in hand and paid by Frederic Strombol...I do hereby Acknowledge, have Bargain'd Sold and Delivered and by these presents doth Bargain Sell and Deliver Unto the said Frederic Strombol One Negro Woman named Torry about thirty years of age To Have and to hold the said Bargained Negro woman unto the said Frederic Strombol...."
Slavery in Maryland lasted over 200 years, from its beginnings in 1642 when the first Africans were brought as slaves to St. Mary's City, to its end following the Civil War. In 1664, under the governorship of Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, the Assembly ruled that all enslaved people should be held in slavery for life, and that children of enslaved mothers should also be held to the same standard of law. 19th-century American slave sale documents are growing increasingly scarce in the market.
Price: $650