With the acknowledgment of slavery at Rock Ford and Lancaster’s importance as an extension of 18th century Philadelphia's economic and political scene, presenting this information became an essential part of Rock Ford's mission. This exploration, research and knowledge reveal a more complex and complete picture of the Hand family history.

Our consultant and advisor for this research was Leroy Hopkins, Ph.D., President Emeritus and Founder of the African American Historical Society of South-Central Pennsylvania. It was our curiosity that guided the research that follows. Please note that the archaic language is quoted from period historical documents and can be considered offensive by today’s standards.

Completing the Picture: Slavery and Servitude in Early Lancaster County

Lancaster's Wealth and Class Structure

By the time Edward Hand arrived in Lancaster in 1774, Lancaster Borough was firmly established. He entered into a society that was well-ordered and had a defined class structure. In 1751, the wealthiest 35 Lancastrians owned two-thirds of the town's taxable assets. In 1788 the bottom third of the population owned only 2.5 percent while the top ten percent held almost one-half. (Wood, 1979:167). Significant differences in wealth and class were, therefore, established and evident during Hand's time in the county. He quickly rose to the top of the social and economic strata within the county.

Slavery, characterizing the lowest strata of society, existed in the region that would become Lancaster County long before the city was awarded its charter by the British crown. Susannah Wright recorded the existence of Peter and Sal, both enslaved persons who belonged to Samuel Blunston, one of the earliest settlers of Shawanah Town, presently Columbia (Lancaster New Era, April 6, 1988.)

Before he built Rock Ford, Hand purchased and sold indentured servants of European descent who were known as "bound laborers." We also know from extant primary documents, that General Hand also enslaved laborers at his home in the city and later at Rock Ford when it served as a tenant farm. It is likely that tenant farmers were allowed to live on Hand's property in exchange for their work. The lives of these people, because they are on the lowest levels of the class structure, are not as well-documented as the life of General Hand.

Most people in the 18th century held Black people in the lowest regard and acts of prejudice against them were common. When in 1788, Christopher Marshall's enslaved woman, Dinah, died, he invited the "Negroes in Lancaster" to attend the funeral offering them an unusual opportunity to be together as a group. Unfortunately, Marshall had a very difficult time finding anyone who would attend to the body or even "put the Negro woman in her coffin." He writes "O what a wretched place is here, full of Religious [sic] Professions but not a grain of love or charity..." (Wood, 1979:166, from Christopher Marshall, Remembrancer, May 2, 3, 1778, HSP).

The Origin of Lancaster’s Enslaved 

Although there are records of ships docking in Philadelphia from the West Indies and Africa carrying human cargo, records indicate that most of Lancaster County's enslaved persons were born in America or what was referred to as "country born" in the 18th century. There are accounts of auctions of enslaved people in Philadelphia and at least one occasion in Lancaster (PA Gazette, July 13, 1769). Most such transactions, however, were done privately and thus documentary references to these transactions are rare.

One such reference comes from a document dated July 24, 1779 in which James Crawford of Lampeter writes that on this date, he "granted, bargained and sold 1 negro Wench" to Thomas Dewers and "no one else may lay claim to her." (Lancaster County Historical Society [now LancasterHistory] (African American Records Collection). Additionally, many examples of advertisements exist in the Lancaster newspapers offering African Americans for sale. Interested parties were asked to direct inquiries to the publisher who would presumably make the connection with the seller. See section "Evidence of Enslavement from Census, Tax Reports, Church Records...".

The Labor of the Enslaved 

In Lancaster County, other than being household servants or farm laborers, enslaved persons were used commonly by the county's iron masters as iron workers. Iron masters who owned African Americans might lease local enslaved persons for charcoal manufacture and surface mining of limestone and iron ore. (Walker, 1969:466-486) Records indicate that most Borough enslavers were craftsmen or wealthy professionals who owned one or two persons and primarily employed them as domestic servants.

This indicates an important aspect of slavery in Lancaster County, suggesting that, unlike any other areas of the American Colonies where the enslaved were relied upon to create an economic surplus through production of goods or agricultural products, in Lancaster County the nature of slavery seems to primarily have been one of domestic household help. It may be that for wealthy Lancastrians, having a domestic enslaved person in one's household was a display of status. One Lancaster Borough enslaver who owned more than the typical one or two persons was Matthias Slough, owner of the White Swann Inn, but this seems to have been the exception rather than the rule.

1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery 

While it is outside the scope of this research to address a topic as complex as the origin and history of slavery as an institution, in the 18th century, the changing laws regarding slavery were reflected in the records found during this research.

On March 1, 1780, The Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery was passed, and while it did not free the enslaved in Pennsylvania, it prohibited their legal importation into the state. The law established that the children born to an enslaved person would thenceforth be considered free after their 28th birthday. The law also required enslavers to register their property (enslaved) annually, and punishment for non-compliance may have included loss of ownership, and manumission for the enslaved. However, because the law did not seek to totally deprive owners of their property, African Americans purchased before 1780 would remain enslaved for life. In 1788, the assembly of Pennsylvania amended the Act of Gradual Abolition of Slavery to prevent the abuses that arose from defects in the 1780 Act. Dr. Leroy Hopkins comments on the contradictions of the Act:

The Act was designed to protect the economic rights of slaveholders and forestall potential slave insurrections. No slaves were emancipated as a consequence of the measure. Enslaved Africans born before March 1, 1780 were to be slaves for life. Their children born after that date were to serve a master for up to 28 years. Given the life expectancy ca. 1800, such a term of servitude might have been a life sentence. While on face value the gradual abolition act provided a transition from slavery to freedom, in fact it freed no slaves and retained for slaveholders at least a generation of free labor. What further exacerbated the situation were the flaws in the law.

The 1780 law had to be amended in 1788 because it allowed slaveholders to take their pregnant slaves to nearby slaveholding states (in 1780: New York New Jersey Maryland and Delaware) and then bring mother and child(ren) back to Pennsylvania and declare both slaves for life. Thus, instead of decreasing, the number of Africans in bondage increased after 1780. Once that loophole was closed in 1788 another defect emerged that threatened the original intent of the law. 

Originally the children of slaves were to be indentured servants for a specified period-of-time and then set free. Over time, however, the grandchildren of the slaves-for-life were also made indentured servants. So widespread was this practice that the state Supreme Court had to intervene in 1830 to end what could have become perpetual servitude for Black Pennsylvanians.

Evidence of Enslavement from Multiple Public Records and Personal Correspondence

It is difficult to establish the number of “human property" in the county since its inception in 1729, but tax evidence shows that were probably a proportionate number of enslaved African Americans in the townships surrounding the Borough.

The Federal Census records of 1790 and 1800 provide some details about the years just before Hand's purchase of Rock Ford in 1785 and during his residency there but do not give us any insight into the servant and enslaved populations from the period of his arrival in Lancaster in 1775 to 1789. For that, the "Borough Returns" or tax assessment records which have been analyzed by Wood in Conestoga Crossroads, were helpful. Lancaster Borough and Lampeter Township tax records are also useful in supplementing the census data from 1790 forward. There are gaps in these records as some years are missing. Slave Returns provide the names and ages of enslaved persons beginning in 1780 but are an incomplete record. In addition, church records from St. James Episcopal and personal correspondence between members of Hand's social and business network help add some specific information. Finally, the "Runaway" ads in the newspapers of the day are perhaps the most informative of all sources, giving not only the names of enslaved African Americans and indentured servants, but also their physical characteristics and the personal attributes. (Lancaster Intelligencer, 8 May 1802)

In the Borough proper, there were at least seven enslaved African Americans in 1750, thirteen in 1756, and 28 in 1764. It was during the Revolutionary War that their population jumped to 54 in 1779 and 63 in 1782 (Wood, 1979: 162). It should be noted that each of these numbers represents less than 1 percent of the total population of Lancaster Borough. More enslaved African Americans were held by owners who lived outside the Borough Limits.

In the Lancaster County Historical Society's February 3, 1911 minutes, Miss Martha B. Clark reported on "Lancaster County's Relation to Slavery," and referenced a "docket" which had at some unknown date been transcribed into Blank notebooks, then in the keeping of a Mr. Hensel. The "docket" was titled, "The Register of Negro and Mulatto Slaves for Lancaster County, 1780. Ms. Clark states, "In it we find there were in the county at that time ***807 slaves for life, of whom 394 were males and 412 were females.**** The slaves in age ran from two and one-half years to sixty years and the average was from twenty to twenty-five years. They were owned by the Scotch-Irish and the Germans in the following proportions, viz: Scotch-Irish, two thirds; English, Germans, Huguenots, Welsh, etc., one-third." The document referred to by Ms. Martha Clark is now its the Lancaster Historical Society's Manuscript collection. (Lancaster Historical Society [now LancasterHistory]. According to this record, the thickest centers of the county seemed to be in and around Donegal and Salisbury townships and Lancaster borough, possibly indicating some degree of correlation to predominantly Scotch-Irish populations.

As indicated by the Lancaster County Septennial Census of 1809, (an enumeration of taxable inhabitants taken every seven years), 115 enslaved persons were enumerated and 78 enslavers were named. (PA State Archives) While the drop in numbers from 807 in 1780, to 115 in 1800 parallels the passing of the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, it is important to keep in mind that some scholars argue that after 1780, some enslavers re-named them to "servants" in order to avoid taxation, and therefore census numbers after 1780 may not be entirely accurate. (www.afrolumensproject.com)

Research was conducted to investigate specific information about the servants and enslaved persons of Edward Hand and his contemporaries. Unfortunately, scant detailed information exists about the lives of the individuals who served the wealthier class of Lancaster Borough and Lampeter Township. However, there are sources that give us a relatively good indication of who they were. Lancaster Borough tax assessment records show that Hand owned one enslaved man valued at 40 dollars in 1785 and one "negro girl" valued at 25 dollars in 1786. Lampeter tax records for 1801 indicate that Hand owned one enslaved man valued at 200 dollars. This man seems to be "Frank" who escaped on March 28th, 1802, causing Hand to place an advertisement for his return.

Commonly, African Americans who were married were rarely together because they had different owners. One exception was the example of Hannah, a woman belonging to Edward Sheen, Prothonotary of the Court of Common Pleas and Recorder of the Court of Quarter Sessions for Lancaster County. In a letter dated 9 January 1769 from Edward Shippen to Reverend George Craig, Shippen notes that Hannah had a husband who was the property of a resident of Chester, Pennsylvania about seventy miles away. The servant was allowed to visit his wife periodically, and on one such occasion Shippen, observing Hannah's joy on her husband's arrival and her grief in parting with him, not knowing whether she would ever see him again, was moved to reflect "Blacks have natural affections as well as we have." (Wood, 1979:16) In 1776, Hannah's husband, Thomas, was allowed to leave Chester and move to Lancaster where Shippen assisted him in setting up a cooper's shop. He was not freed, but fell under the supervision of Shippen's law clerk. (Wood, 1979: 164-165)

Some Lancaster owners allowed, encouraged or insisted that their enslaved attend church, and clergymen performed the rites of baptism and marriage. Reverend Thomas Barton, Edward Hand's clergyman at St. James Episcopal Church, married "Othello and Mary (Negroes)" on June 18, 1772, "Tom and Catherine (Negroes), on August 11, 1773 and "London and Judy (Negroes)" on September 2nd of the same year. In February 1785, Reverend Joseph Hutchins baptized "Priscilla, a Negro chid." Listed as Priscilla's mother was "Mary, slave of Robert Lockhart" (St. James Register Volume I, 1759-1777, LancasterHistory). Baptisms and marriages of both African American and Mulatto persons, as well as free people of color, were regular occurrences and were not exclusive to St. James. Some enslaved tended a school run by Joseph Rather, the Anglican curate. He endeavored "to instruct them in their Catochism [sic] and some of the plainest Duties of Religion and Morality, by which I hope those poor creatures will be much benefitted." (Wood, 1979:164)

Other Evidence of Hand’s Enslaved Persons

Edward Hand enslaved people throughout his married life as evidenced by tax assessment records, slave returns and census records.  His letters written during the war to his wife, Katherine (or "Kitty"), and his close friend and mentor, Jasper Yeates present a personal perspective of his enslaved. In a letter dated December 5, 1776, he references "Robert" a well-trusted enslaved man who carried cash and valuables between Hand's locations during the war to Kitty in Lancaster. In 1776, Hand wrote about "the purchase of Negroes" for Kitty and also refers again to Robert and a servant named William who was in need of a pass for traveling. In 1778, he wrote that he was in the market for a "strong healthy new Negro man from 18-25[years of age]. There is a reference to "Sue" in 1780 and another mention of Robert in 1781. (Rock Ford Manuscript collection)

More information on Hand's enslaved can be found in the Slave Return dated October 25, 1780. Prior to his residence at Rock Ford, in compliance with the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, Hand certified that he owned Sue, Aged 30 years who was enslaved for life, Bob, 14 years old and enslaved for life, and Bet, a mulatto girl, aged 12 years also enslaved for life. (PHMC, Record Group 47).

Bibliographical Sources:

Clark, Martha B. “Lancaster County’s Relation to Slavery,” Lancaster Historical Society [now LancasterHistory], Volume XV, No. 2, 1911.  MG-240, “The Slave Records of Lancaster County Collection” Box 1, Folder 2.

General Assembly of Pennsylvania, An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.  Philadelphia: Paine, 1780.

General Assembly of Pennsylvania, An Act to explain and amend an act, entitled “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.” Philadelphia: T. Bradford, 1788

Hopkins, Leroy. “African Americans and Lancaster City’s Southeast Area,” 2023.

Lancaster County Septennial Census of 1800, Pennsylvania State Archives, Reel 0244.

Lancaster Historical Society [now LancasterHistory], MG-240, Folder 5,Bill of sale of Negro woman, Nann (Ann). To Thomas Dewers by James Crawford, 1779. Then to David Potts by Thomas Dewers, 1780 (on reverse).

Lancaster Intelligencer, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May 8, 1802.

Lancaster New Era, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, April 6, 1988

Kase, Trevor, Indentured Servitude in Lancaster County: A Community in Transition.  Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010.

Klein, H.M.J. and William F. Diller. The History of St. James’ Church (Protestant Episcopal) 1744-1944. Lancaster, PA: The Vestry, 1944. Page 79.

Pennsylvania Gazette, July 13, 1769

St. James Register Volume I, 1759-1777, Lancaster County Historical Society [now LancasterHistory]

The Register of Negro and Mulatto Slaves for Lancaster County, 1780, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Record Group 47.

Walker, Joseph, E.  “Negro Labor in the Charcoal Iron Industry of Southeastern Pennsylvania.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography; Vol. 93, No. 4.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969.

Wood, Jerome H., Jr. Conestoga Crossroads: Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1730-1790.  Harrisburg, PA: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1979.

Internet sources:

www.Afrolumensproject.com

Image sources:

1. Historical map of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Hand colored. Relief shown by hachures. “Entered according to act of Congress August 27th 1821 by W. Wagner of the State of Penna.” Shows mills, forges, and churches. Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/78694204/

• “Negroes just landed from a Slave Ship.” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1810. Source: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-704f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

• “Slave auction.” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1849. Source: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-74ba-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

• Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, A Young Girl with an Enslaved Servant and a Dog, Bartholomew Dandridge, ca. 1725

 Source:  https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:715

• Advertisement, Lancaster Intelligencer, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 13 Dec 1817, Sat. Source: Newspapers.com

• Advertisement, The Pennsylvania Packet, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 01 Aug 1778, Sat. Source: Newspapers.com