In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Charmaine Nelson (UMass Amherst / Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow) explores how transatlantic slavery was grounded in violence and systems of control imposed by enslavers and their surrogates. In Canada, one such surrogate was the sheriff. Nelson draws from the extant business records of eighteenth-century Montreal sheriff Edward William Gray, who worked to sustain and protect the interests of white enslavers such as the Quebec City printers William Brown and Thomas Gilmore. This case study offers a lens through which to better understand the broader context of the individual at the center of Nelson’s larger research project: an African-born enslaved man known as Joe. Enslaved by Brown and Gilmore and forced to work in their printing office, Joe was named in six fugitive slave advertisements issued in Quebec between 1777 and 1786. Gray’s correspondence with Brown and Gilmore reveals his efforts to uphold the enslavers’ claims to their “human property.”
A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.
Image: The Jailbreak of Joe and John Peters from His Majesty's Gaol in Quebec City (February 1786), created by Charmaine A. Nelson using ShutterStock AI
In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Charmaine Nelson (UMass Amherst / Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow) explores how transatlantic slavery was grounded in violence and systems of control imposed by enslavers and their surrogates. In Canada, one such surrogate was the sheriff. Nelson draws from the extant business records of eighteenth-century Montreal sheriff Edward William Gray, who worked to sustain and protect the interests of white enslavers such as the Quebec City printers William Brown and Thomas Gilmore. This case study offers a lens through which to better understand the broader context of the individual at the center of Nelson’s larger research project: an African-born enslaved man known as Joe. Enslaved by Brown and Gilmore and forced to work in their printing office, Joe was named in six fugitive slave advertisements issued in Quebec between 1777 and 1786. Gray’s correspondence with Brown and Gilmore reveals his efforts to uphold the enslavers’ claims to their “human property.”
A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.
Image: The Jailbreak of Joe and John Peters from His Majesty's Gaol in Quebec City (February 1786), created by Charmaine A. Nelson using ShutterStock AI
