Manuscript Collections Relating to Slavery

New-York Historical Society

Abolitionists -- United States

African American children

African American loyalists

African Americans -- Colonization -– Nova Scotia

African Americans -– Colonization –- Sierra Leone

African Americans -– Education -– New York (State) -– New York

African Americans -– New York (State) -- Fishkill

African Americans –- New York (State) -– New York

Antislavery movements -- United States

Blacks –- Cuba

Blacks –- Education – West Indies

Blacks –- West Indies

Fugitive slaves –- United States

Missions –- West Indies

Plantation life -– Cuba

Plantations -– Cuba

Registers of birth, etc. -– New York (State) – New York

Schools -– New York (State) -– New York

Slave bills of sale -– United States

Slave records -– United States

Slave trade –- Africa, West

Slave trade –- Southern States

Slave trade –- United States

Slave trade –- West Indies

Slave traders -– United States

Slaveholders –- United States

Slavery – Cuba

Slavery –- Political aspects

Slavery –- United States

Slavery –- West Indies

Slaves –- Social conditions

Slaves –- Emancipation -– United States

Slaves –- United States

The site offers access to fourteen of the New-York Historical Society's most important collections of source materials documenting the history of slavery in the United States, the Atlantic slave trade and the abolitionist movement. The collection includes account books and ship manifests documenting the financial aspects of the slave trade; legal papers such as birth certificates and deeds of manumission; and political works and polemics. The materials range from writings by the abolitionists Granville Sharp, Lysander Spooner and Charles Sumner to the diary of a plantation manager and overseer of slaves in Cuba, Joseph Goodwin, and that of a former slave in Fishkill, New York, James F. Brown. The collection also provides access to the archives of abolitionist organizations such as the New-York Manumission Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, as well as the records of the African Free School, which document the education of free blacks in early nineteenth-century New York. With nearly 12,000 pages of text dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this collection constitutes a rich archive of primary source materials on the history of slavery, the slave trade, and the abolitionist movement.

New-York Historical Society

Bolton, Dickens & Co.

Bradburn, George, 1806-1880

Brown, James F., 1793-1868

Castleton (New York, N.Y.)

Clarkson, John, 1764-1828

Day, Mahlon, 1790-1854

Gardner and Dean

Goodwin, Joseph

Grimke?, Angelina Emily, 1805-1879

Gurney, Joseph John, 1788-1847

Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society

New-York African Free-School

New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be Liberated

Othello (Brig)

Rhode Island (Ship)

Sharp, Granville, 1735-1813

Sierra Leone Company

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874

Spooner, Lysander, 1808-1887

Sumner, Charles, 1811-1874

Stokes, E. H.

Vernon, Samuel

Vernon, William, 1719-1806

Weld, Theodore Dwight, 1803-1895

Accounts

Account books

Birth certificates

Birth registers

Bylaws (administrative records)

Calligraphy (visual works)

Clippings (information artifacts)

Correspondence

Deeds

Depositions

Diaries

Drafts (documents)

Drawings (visual works)

Editorials

Ephemera

Estate inventories

Free papers

Indentures

Journals (accounts)

Letters (correspondence)

Lists (document genres)

Memorandums

Minute books

Minutes

Petitions

Poems

Receipts (financial records)

Registers (lists)

Regulations (executive records)

Reports

Resolutions (administrative records)

Ships’ manifests

Speeches

Tax returns

Collection