In 1804, in a town not too far from Pittsburgh, a woman named Priscilla gave birth to a daughter whom her enslaver, a founder of that town, said was named Patty.[1] I do not know whether this was the name that Priscilla chose for her daughter. I write this not to emphasize the violence inherent in Black chattel slavery, although it was violent, nor to draw attention to the limits of historical epistemology, although it is a mistake to make assumptions while working in slavery’s archive. Rather, I maintain that I cannot know whether Priscilla chose the name Patty because I know for certain that she did not choose the name of her younger daughter—at least not the name that is accessible to me.

In 1807, Priscilla gave birth to a daughter whom she refused to name. I know this because John Hoge said as much when he registered the child as his property at the Washington County courthouse in compliance with the state’s gradual-abolition law. In doing so, he produced one of the most remarkable documents in the archive of Pennsylvania slavery:

John Hoge of Washington Town has a black Woman named Priscilla at his Mill in Chartiers Township, who had on the 7th day of May 1807 a female child born, which he understands she will ^^not name under the impression that it cannot be otherwise recorded. He therefore names it Maria and desires it may be so recorded. Jn Hoge.[2]

Priscilla was correct and John knew it. Under Pennsylvania law, enslavers could not legally claim a bound woman’s child as property without supplying the child’s name.[3] John knew this because he had helped maintain the slave registry while working at the county courthouse in 1789 and 1790.[4] He wagered that naming Priscilla’s daughter himself would not offend his colleagues in the clerk’s office, which proved to be a fine instinct: an assistant neatly copied down the child’s registration without bothering to note her mother’s objection.[5] Yet Priscilla’s refusal to name her daughter—or at least to withhold this precious information from John, and thus from me—reveals that she, too, was familiar with the intricacies of Pennsylvania’s gradual-abolition program. By asserting herself as the keeper of her daughter’s name, Priscilla gestured to her right to sue John for her daughter’s freedom by invoking improper registration. She would not have taken this step lightly, as her decision to speak out—or rather to remain silent—forced John to confront the fact that someone he enslaved knew enough about the laws of freedom to attempt to rob him of his property.

Registration of “Maria.” Courtesy and Copyright The Learned T. Bulman ’48 Historic Archives & Museum, Washington & Jefferson College. I would like to thank Julia Bernier and Sinéad Bligh for facilitating my access to this document.

Priscilla was attempting to prevent John from legally transforming her free-born daughter into a term slave. If John had done nothing—if he had chosen not to register Priscilla’s daughter—then she would have remained free. But since John chose to register the child—to claim her as his property until she turned twenty-eight—Priscilla chose to act. Her attempt to frustrate John’s efforts to register her daughter likely invited his ire, although perhaps less than if she had gathered her daughter and absconded from the mill. Despite the obstacles, pregnant women and new mothers continued to seek refuge from slavery, even in states that were divesting from the institution.[6]

The stakes were high for Priscilla and her children. Daughters were uniquely vulnerable in Pennsylvania during the age of gradual abolition because they could pass their term-enslaved status onto any children they bore before turning twenty-eight.[7] As I discuss in my recent article in the Journal of the Early Republic, what I call hereditary term slavery operated openly in Pennsylvania until the state supreme court intervened in 1826.[8] It required the coordinated efforts of enslaved mothers, term-enslaved children, and abolitionist allies to compel the state to abandon this remnant of the chattel principle and commit itself to Black freedom.

In the end, Priscilla did not sue John. Indeed, I have not discovered her, nor the daughter whose name she refused to share, in any documents besides the slave registrations described above. I can hope that Priscilla either seized or negotiated their freedom, but it is more likely that John sold them. Unlike the people he enslaved, John is well documented; there is even a collection named for him in the archives of Washington & Jefferson College.[9] As a result, I know that he remained committed to slavery right up until he died in 1824. I know, for instance, that John sold Priscilla’s older daughter, Patty, to a physician that year as payment for boarding his stepdaughter, Ann, while she attended school in Washington. Patty labored so that Ann could learn “Grammar and Arithmetick.”[10] Even at this late date, the Hoge family continued to benefit from hereditary term slavery.

The benefits continued. On March 23, 1825, two Washington County men advertised the public sale of the “unexpired time” of a twenty-one-year-old woman, Margaret, and her infant daughter, Lucinda, who were “late the property of John Hoge Esqr. Decd.”[11] John’s executors made two stipulations: that mother and daughter “will not be separated” and that “no warrantee of any kind will be given.” It is possible that Margaret insisted on the first point. When John died the previous summer, Margaret grabbed Lucinda and fled from the mill to the home of an attorney in Washington, compelling her late enslaver’s executors to spend time “searching after Black Girl” and “getting Habeas Corpus for Black Girl.”[12] Through conversations in kitchens and courtrooms, Margaret may have discovered that Lucinda had a legal freedom claim. After all, the case that dismantled hereditary term slavery in Pennsylvania was tried first in Washington County the same month that John died and Margaret found a lawyer. This legal uncertainty could also explain the refusal of John’s executors to supply a warranty guaranteeing the transaction. Despite the risk, mother and daughter were auctioned off a week later for eighty dollars—roughly the same price the estate had received for twenty-five “first choice” lambs.[13] The infant Lucinda was claimed and sold as a hereditary term slave. This was precisely the fate that Priscilla had tried to spare her daughter in 1807.

Notice of the 1825 sale of Margaret and Lucinda. Courtesy and Copyright The Learned T. Bulman ’48 Historic Archives & Museum, Washington & Jefferson College. I would like to thank Julia Bernier and Sinéad Bligh for facilitating my access to this document.

Almost 9,000 people appear in the nearly 3,500 surviving slave returns (think census or tax return) I have examined.[14] Within this archive, Priscilla is the only person an enslaver accused of attempting to spoil a registration. Yet I doubt she was the only one. It is worth emphasizing that the sole reason I know about this act of protest is because an enslaver chose to complain about it; it was John Hoge who transformed Priscilla’s active silence into an archival presence. How many other women and men withheld information from their enslavers in the hopes of one day suing for freedom? How many other enslavers suspected such a conspiracy but did not write it down?

Priscilla may have chosen silence, but hers was a choice that can be understood only within the context of Pennsylvania’s gradual-abolition regime. Yes, she and her daughter appear in slavery’s archive, but this is precisely what Priscilla had hoped to avoid.

Endnotes

[1] Registration of “Patty,” May 4, 1805, Washington County Negro Register From 1782 to 1851, p. 62, box XV-J-238, Historical Collection, Washington & Jefferson College Special Collections, Washington, PA.

[2] Registration of “Maria,” Aug. 4, 1807, Enslaver returns and correspondence, 1782–1865, Box XV-J-238, Historical Collection, Washington & Jefferson College Special Collections, Washington, PA.

[3] Enslavers also needed to supply a child’s sex and date of birth, but sex was difficult to hide and state law only required that enslavers provide age “to the best of his or her knowledge.” See “An Act to Explain and Amend an Act Entitled, ‘An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1809, comp. James T. Michell and Henry Flanders, vol. 13: 1787––1790 (Harrisburg, PA, 1908), 54.

[4] Washington County Negro Register From 1782 to 1851, pp. 34–35.

[5] Washington County Negro Register From 1782 to 1851, p. 66.

[6] I use “seek refuge” in place of “run away.” See Cory James Young, “For Life or Otherwise: Abolition and Slavery in South Central Pennsylvania, 1780–1847” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2021), 169–73.

[7] I do not know if Priscilla was born before or after Pennsylvania passed its gradual-abolition law in 1780, and thus do not know whether she was enslaved for life or for a term. Either way, her daughters risked passing on their own unfree status.

[8] Cory James Young, “Hereditary Term Slavery and the Pursuit of Restitution in Antebellum Pennsylvania,” Journal of the Early Republic 45 (Summer 2025), 189–212.

[9] Division of Preservation and Access Staff, “March 2024 Awards in Preservation & Access,” National Endowment for the Humanities (blog), May 7, 2024.

[10] Account of David Quail and George Baird, Administrators of the Estate of John Hoge, Accounts “H” #47 – 1827, Probate Files, 1781-1850, Office of Register of Wills, Washington, PA, microfilm, images 66–67, 74, Ancestry.com

[11] John had acquired Margaret from a neighbor when he was still alive. See Washington County Negro Register From 1782 to 1851, p. 62; and Terms of Sale of Peggy & her Child, Mar. 23, 1825, folder XV-J-167, Historical Collection, Washington & Jefferson College Special Collections, Washington, PA.

[12] Account of David Quail and George Baird, microfilm, image 105, Ancestry.com; Commonwealth v. James Ashbrook Esqr, Appearance Docket June 1822–Nov 1824, Washington County Courts, Washington County, PA, p. 598.

[13] The lambs sold for $78.25. See Account of David Quail and George Baird, microfilm, image 116, Ancestry.com.

[14] Cory James Young, “A Just and True Return: Pennsylvania’s Surviving County Slave Registries, 1780–1826,” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 3, no. 1 (2022), 1–10.