“He spoke of going to the Forest of Delamere”: Finding marronage, family and community in Liverpool fugitive enslaved adverts

 By Thomas Kwasnicki (MA Modern History, LJMU)

In this blogpost, Thomas Kwasnicki discusses his research on finding community in Britain’s enslaved populations through a close reading of fugitive enslaved adverts.

During the era of Atlantic slavery, enslaved people persistently sought to escape their enslavers.  When such an event would occur, their enslavers would, by themselves or through an agent, advertise the escape of their enslaved people in the hopes of their immediate return. These advertisements provide windows into the lives of the enslaved by evidencing the ultimate form of personal resistance an enslaved person could perform, that being the act of stealing themselves away from their enslavers.[i] Compared to the lives of enslaved people in North America, those in Britain (and especially Liverpool) have received little historical discussion, especially when examined through the lens of runaway advertisements.[ii] As part of my research for the MA Modern History at LJMU I researched the resistance of enslaved people in Liverpool when compared to the US, with some fascinating findings.

There were two primary online databases of interest for this research: first, The Runaway Slaves in Britain database run by the University of Glasgow and funded through the Leverhulme Trust with 30 of its 836 runaway slave advertisements in Britain being from Liverpudlian papers; second the ‘Freedom on the Move’ database, a collaborative project between the Universities of Cornell, Kentucky, Alabama, New Orleans and Ohio. The comparison of these databases illuminates the lives of the ordinary enslaved in Britain – a move away from what Olivette has recently described as the focus on prominent black figures such as Olaudah Equiano or Ignatius Sancho.[iii]  This is also in line with work conducted by Eickelmann and Small on Pero Jones, an enslaved man in Bristol.[iv] The most interesting findings were on the presence and desire for communal and familial links amongst the enslaved. This examination of both the material situations of enslaved people and the more emotional motivations provided by familial and communal connections provided evidence of the significantly different experiences amongst the enslaved across the Atlantic – yet subtle similarities occur.

The comparison of Liverpudlian and North American runaway slave advertisements reveals that the area in which they differ the most is in mentions of the families, associates and communities of the runaway slaves. Simon P. Newman’s recent comparative work on runaways in the Atlantic world proved useful in its argument that runaway slaves often escaped bondage with the intention of seeking ‘to affirm membership in a family or community of their own choosing’ regardless of their location.[v]

Indeed, the mention of families of escaped enslaved people is commonplace in runaway slave advertisements from North America. When the family members of these escapees are mentioned it acts as both an indication of why the enslaved person escaped and as a dictation on how they are predicted to act by their enslaver. Regardless of state or colony, there were enslaved people who escaped with their partners and children in tow. In New York on 30th June 1777 a ‘part Indian’ negro man was advertised as having run away from New York with a ‘small mulatto’ woman named Moll ‘who he claimed to be his wife’ alongside two negro children, ages 3 and 5 months respectively.[vi] Enslaved parents sought to escape with their families regardless of whether they lived in urban or rural areas. This could have been for several reasons, ranging from a general pursuit of liberty for themselves and their families to an attempt to stop the involuntary separation of their families. Damian Pargas Alan, reinforced this through highlighting the ongoing threat of forced separation which he described as a ‘frequent source of anxiety and personal tragedy in slave quarters from Maryland to Texas’.[vii] Therefore, due to their escape likely being a family endeavour and the commonality of forced separation it is highly likely that maintaining family connections was at the forefront of their motivations.

For those North American slaves who had been separated from their families prior to their escape, said separation only provided further incentive for seeking freedom. The 14th May advertisement in the Wilmington Journal, from Wilmington North Carolina the enslaver is confident in the escaped Morris’s location, claiming that ‘he is doubtless lurking about Panther Swamp, and on Lime Stone’, as he is well known on Lime Stone and has a wife belonging to Doctor Graham of Kenansville on Panther Swamp.[viii] The fact that in this case the enslaver was ‘doubtless’ of Morris’ possible location implies that his escape was influenced or guided by a desire to reunite with his wife.  It is even possible that he may have been temporarily absconding just to meet with his wife, which wasn’t uncommon for enslaved people sold away from their families.[ix]

 The disparate number of mentions of family members within Liverpudlian advertisements is perhaps indicative of a society with fewer opportunities to create families amongst the enslaved (though this does not take into account any marriages between the enslaved and the free). This is reinforced by the fact that the advertised runaways from Liverpool were solely men.  Newman shares similar musings in his own work and shows that there is evidence of former enslaved individuals in Britain such as James Albert Gronniosaw and Olidau Equiano who had gone on to marry white women after gaining freedom.[x]

Nevertheless, there existed community ties, which may have inspired escape.   On the 25th August 1769, in the Liverpool General Advertiser, or the Commercial Register the advertiser points out that the escaped man, John Carr, is ‘well known in London’ as he had lived with his owner there for twenty-two years.[xi] This suggests that John in his time living in London had the opportunity to forge bonds with enough people to concern his owner enough to give a warning about it in an advertisement. This is significant as whilst, it solidifies communal links as a motivation, or at least a point of consideration, amongst escaping slaves in Britain it only does so through legitimising London as the breeding ground of such links.

On the other hand, in the event that the communal links in Liverpool and other cities didn’t provide enough inspiration and opportunity to escape their masters and remain hidden, it is possible that the believed existence of such links may have provided such an incentive. The 1763 escape of Lidiate, property of Thomas Seel was advertised by Seel in the Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser, and Mercantile Chronicle. [xii]  Lidiate was described as a ‘pretty strong and able’ man who ‘waits well at a Table, and has been both under Groom and Coachman, in the Stables’.[xiii]

Yet the details of Lidiate’s intended destination provides the most intriguing information in almost any of the advertisements.  Lidiate apparently ‘spoke of going to the Forest of Delamere’ after his escape, an action heavily mirrored in the Maroons of North America.[xiv]  Maroon communities were well known in both North America and the West Indies.[xv]  Moreover, with most enslaved people in Britain being brought from the Americas or West Indies by their masters it isn’t a stretch to assume that he had known of the existence of such communities as, like in America, Maroons were also commonplace within the dense forests of the British Caribbean.[xvi] This only makes it more possible that Lidiate may have been attempting to escape to the forest of Delamere as his past experience enslaved elsewhere had led him to believe that such a community existed there which he could join. It also hints at a trans-Atlantic knowledge network amongst the enslaved. 

There is a communal element to maroon communities in North America, whether it be through descriptions of working together as a group to survive or gaining aid from surrounding enslaved communities. There isn’t a greater example of such a community than the 7th July 1825 case of ‘sixteen Negroes’ who had ‘been living in the woods near Col. Cattel’s place’ after their escape in February.[xvii] This clearly shows enslaved people escaping together into the woods and forming a Maroon community without the intention of returning, a permanent form of resistance to slavery that many mirrored.[xviii]  Marronage could mean that they were free from enslavement on the plantations, whilst still being involved with them communally and economically.  As such, the woods provided a hub in which they could live autonomously despite their residence being common knowledge, thus cementing their freedom within the wilds. This incomplete autonomy showcases the importance of the community and the landscape in the upkeep of maroons.  Lidiate may have been inspired by such a free but connected community to abscond to the Forest of Delamere.  Alternatively, the fact that the advertisement stated that he had ‘spoke’ of absconding to Delamere indicates that he had made some attempt to inspire others to do the same, providing further evidence that he was using the landscape as more than just a place to hide.  

Stephanie Camp argued that there was a ‘geography of containment’ that epitomised slavery which entailed geographical differences in the eyes of the enslaved between areas of freedom and areas of oppression.[xix] In this sense, the Forest of Delamere must have represented an area of liberty for Lidiate wherein he hoped he could have sustained freedom. After all, it is unlikely he would travel from Liverpool to Cheshire if he didn’t presume the Forest of Delamere would provide permanent freedom in the event there wasn’t a maroon community present there. Regardless, it is impossible to determine what truly motivated him to choose such a destination, meaning both the community and landscape could have played an equal role in his absconding.

This comparative research shows a clear and distinct difference between the slave society of North America and the comparatively more servile slavery of Liverpool. Family wasn’t a defined motivation attributed to resistance in Liverpool, whereas the desire to reunite with family members after separation, or to circumvent separation, was an inescapable motive behind various escapes in the Americas. Nevertheless, through the case of Lidiate we are shown a sense of longing for community that would prescribe to the barren image these advertisements present of black communities in Liverpool, legitimising the influence of community over family within these available advertisements. Whilst it is equally as likely that Lidiate saw the Forest of Delamere solely as an environment that he could manipulate for his own sustained escape, it is undeniably maroon seeking behaviour which has irrefutable links with the idea of community.

[i] David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History, (London: Pan Books, 2017), pg.93

[ii] David Richardson, ‘Slavery and Bristol's ‘golden age’’, Slavery & abolition 26;1 (2005), pg. 38

[iii] Olivette Otele, African Europeans: An Untold History, (C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 22nd October 2020), pg.2

[iv] Ibid; Christine Eickelmann, and David Small, Pero: The Life of a Slave in Eighteenth-Century Bristol, (Redcliffe Press Ltd, 2004), pg. 19

[v] Simon P. Newman, ‘Rethinking runaways in the British Atlantic World: Britain, the Caribbean, West Africa and North America’, Slavery & Abolition 38:1 (2017), pg. 68

[vi] ‘FIVE POUNDS Reward’, The New-York Gazette; and the Weekly Mercury, Newark: NJ, US, 30th June 1777, https://app.freedomonthemove.org/search (accessed 10th December 2020)

[vii] Damian Alan Pargas, ‘Disposing of Human Property’, pg.251

[viii] ‘$50 REWARD’, Wilmington Journal, Wilmington, Wilmington: NC, US, 14th May 1847, https://app.freedomonthemove.org/search (accessed 20th December 2020)

[ix]Damian Alan Pargas, ‘Disposing of Human Property’, pg. 267

[x] David Olusoga, Black and British, pg.28

[xi] No Title, Liverpool General Advertiser, or the Commercial Register, Liverpool (UK), 25th August 1769: pg.3, https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/table/ (accessed 21st October 2020)

[xii] No Title, Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser and Mercantile Register, Liverpool (UK), 4th March 1763: pg.3, https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/table/ (accessed 20th October 2020)

[xiii] Ibid

[xiv] No Title, Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser and Mercantile Register, Liverpool (UK), 4th March 1763: pg.3, https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/table/ (accessed 20th October 2020)

[xv] Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identity in the Colonial and Antebel Gomezlum South, (University of North Carolina Press 1997), pg.182

[xvi] Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, ‘Had his nose cropt’, Pg. 212

[xvii] ‘Two Hundred Dollars Reward’, Charleston Mercury, Charleston: Charleston, South Carolina (US), 7th July 1825, https://app.freedomonthemove.org/search (accessed 10th November 2020)

[xviii] Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks), pg. 182

[xix]‘Catherine Armstrong, Frederick Law Olmsted and the cultural geography of southern slave autonomy’, Slavery & Abolition 38:1 (2017), Pg. 42