Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

William and Ellen Craft, who gave last week, at the Woodhouse Mechanics’ Institute, so touching an account of their escape from slavery, were the guests of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Wilson Armistead. Being that gentleman’s lodgers on the 30th of March, it was requisite that their names and places of nativity, as well as their rank and profession, should be inserted by him in the government census paper to be filled up and returned on the 31st. These two individuals were accordingly entered by Mr. Armistead under their real designation “Fugitives from Slavery in America, the land of their nativity.” What a disgrace to a professedly free and Christian country as America that such an acknowledgment should have to be made. That it should be published to all the world that America’s own born citizens are driven to seek refuge in a foreign clime from the man-stealer, and from the horrors of slavery. The fugitives arrived about four months since in Liverpool, where, for the first time, they set foot on really free soil. They are very interesting and intelligent persons. Ellen is a gentle, refined-looking young creature of twenty-four years, as fair as most of her British sisters, and in mental qualifications their equal too. William is very dark, but of a reflective intelligent countenance, and of manly and dignified deportment.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Read the story in their Wikipedia entry! Can someone produce the census entry?

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Original

REMARKABLE RETURN IN THE CENSUS.-DISGRACE TO AMERICA. Wm. and Ellen Craft, who gave last week, at the Woodhouse Mechanics’ Institute, so touching an account of their escape from slavery, were the guests of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Wilson Armistead. Being that gentleman’s lodgers on the 30th of March, it was requisite that their names and places of nativity, as well as their rank and profession, should be inserted by him in the Government census paper to be filled up and returned on the 31st. These two individuals were accordingly entered by Mr. Armistead under their real designation “Fugitives from Slavery in America, the land of their nativity.” What a disgrace to a professedly free and christian country as America that such an acknowledgment should have to be made. That it should be published to all the world that America’s own born citizens are driven to seek refuge in a foreign clime from the man-stealer, and from the horrors of slavery. The fugitives arrived about four months since in Liverpool, where, for the first time, they set foot on really free soil. They are very interesting and intelligent persons. Ellen is a gentle, refined-looking young creature of twenty-four years, as fair as most of her British sisters, and in mental qualifications their equal too. William is very dark, but of a reflective intelligent countenance, and of manly and dignified deportment.

238 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• 1851 United Kingdom census (1) ·
• Abolitionism (1) ·
• Discrimination based on skin color (1) ·
• Ellen and William Craft (1) ·
• Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (1) ·
• Fugitive slaves in the United States (1) ·
• High yellow (1) ·
• Human skin color (1) ·
• Leeds Anti-Slavery Association (1) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Liverpool (8) ·
• Quakers (14) ·
• Slavery (20) ·
• United States (18) ·
• Wilson Armistead (1) ·
• Woodhouse, Leeds (5) ·

All tags.

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