Dataset
A Just and True Return: A Dataset of Pennsylvania's Surviving County Slave Registries
University of Pennsylvania
2022
DOI: 10.48659/fqst-4893
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.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A Just and True Return: A Dataset of Pennsylvania's Surviving County Slave Registries
- Creators
- Cory James Young
- Resource Type
- Dataset
- DOI
- 10.48659/fqst-4893
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2022
- Academic Unit
- History
- Record Identifier
- 9984658258502771
Metrics
45 Record Views