A Just and True Return: A Dataset of Pennsylvania's Surviving County Slave Registries

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Penn collection
The Magazine of Early American Datasets (MEAD)
Discipline
Subject
slavery
term slavery
statutory term slavery
hereditary term slavery
abolition
gradual abolition
Pennsylvania
History
American History
African American History
Pennsylvania History
Social History
Legal History
Digital History
African American Studies
Africana Studies
Black Studies
Genealogy
African American Studies
Africana Studies
African History
American Studies
Appalachian Studies
Digital Humanities
European History
Genealogy
History
Labor History
Law and Race
Legal History
Social History
United States History
Women's History
Region
Pennsylvania
Funder
Grant number
Date issued
2022-06-30
Distributor
Scholarly Commons, University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Related resources
Wright, Robert E. "Slaves in Bucks County, Pennsylvania." Magazine of Early American Datasets 6 (January 2015): pp. 1-26, https://repository.upenn.edu/mead/6/.
Young, Cory James. "For Life or Otherwise: Abolition and Slavery in South Central Pennsylvania, 1780-1847." PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2021.
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0&article=1045&context=mead&type=additional
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=1&article=1045&context=mead&type=additional
Contributor
Abstract

A Just and True Return (JATR) contains information about more than 6,300 Black people and their enslavers principally taken from extant registries from fifteen Pennsylvania counties: Adams, Allegheny, Bedford, Berks, Bucks, Centre, Chester, Cumberland, Dauphin, Delaware, Fayette, Lancaster, Northampton, Washington, and Westmoreland. It also includes a handful of records from four counties—Crawford, Franklin, Philadelphia, and York—whose registries have not been located, but which can be partially reconstructed from a variety of other sources. Pennsylvania's 1780 gradual abolition law required enslavers to register with their county clerk any people they wished to continue holding in lifetime slavery. A 1788 law required that they do the same for any children they wished to hold in twenty-eight-year term slavery. Complete entries provide the name, age or birthday, race, and sex of enslaved people; the name, place of residence, and occupation of their enslavers; and the registration date. Slightly less than two-thirds of the entries describe people whom enslavers held in lifetime slavery, whereas more than one-third describe children they held in term slavery. An ongoing project, JATR is the first effort to compile all surviving registration data in a single location and contributes to our understanding of slavery’s survival in the northern United States during the early republic.

This dataset is a part of the Magazine of American Datasets (MEAD). To view more of the collection, visit https://repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/orgunit/mead.

Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
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Comments
For any questions about specific registries, please email me at cory.james.young@gmail.com.
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