1740?: Pennsylvania. Sally Brant, owned by Henry and Elizabeth Drinker, was forcibly separated from her baby by her Quaker owners. Elizabeth Drinker noted in her diary that the subsequent death of the baby was for the best.
1740: Aberdeen, Scotland. kidnapping of child slaves becomes a multi-trade industry.
1740: Delaware. After 13 years of servitude and two failed escape attempts, the 25-year-old James Annelsey escapes to Philadelphia, where a man believes his story, that he was the heir of an earl who had been kidnapped and helps him gain passage on a ship to Port Royal, Jamaica, where he enlists as an ensign in the Royal Navy.
1741: Aberdeen, Scotland. The son of William Jamieson is kidnapped and sold.
1741: Carolina. Planters arm black militia against white slave uprising.
1741: New York. Conspiracy, black slaves conspire with white servants.
1742: Carolina. Certificates for military service were presented to black militia men.
1743?: Carolina, 80% of white slaves died in their first year.
1743: Ireland. Lord Annesley publishes his memoir, detailing his 13-year indenture in the Plantations.
1744: Aberdeen, Scotland. Peter Williamson is kidnapped and shipped to Philadelphia, where he is sold for 16 pounds sterling.
1744: Virginia. It was legislated that escaped white slaves be whipped through the Parrish. Dennis Mahoon and other “enticers” who were found guilty of persuading other servants to escape received thirty to forty lashes.
The fingers of servants were burned to elicit confessions.
Enticers were also jailed for assisting runaways. Masters of ships were put under “severe penalty” for transporting runaways. Freedom papers were required to be carried by free whites at all times.
1745: Aberdeen Scotland. James Ingram, kidnapped
1746: Scotland. The Battle of Culloden, in which Scottish rebels are defeated, makes Scottish troops and settlers available for frontier settlement and military operations in America.
1748: Virginia. The House of Burgesses upholds the Act of 1705 and uses it to conscript soldiers for the militia.
1750: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Fisher Island at the mouth of the Schuylkill River was established as a quarantine base, where sick child slaves were deposited.
1753: Scotland, child slave trade dwindles
1754: French instigated attacks on frontier plantations by Indians previously employed as slave catchers by puritan, Quaker and other slave masters, brings about a crisis. White slaves, predominantly Scottish, with some Irish and English, are armed and form the backbone of the colonial military force in the French and Indian War.
1754: Pennsylvania. John Woolman addressed his fellow Quakers in Some Considerations of the Keeping of Negroes.
1754: Charleston, SC, Black slave owners owned blacks.
1754: Servant John Lawson pens the following poem:
“Some who in England who lived fine and brave,
was there like horses forced to trudge and slave.
Some viewed our Limbs turned us around,
Examining like Horses we were sound.
“Some felt our hands others our Legs and Feet,
And made us walk to see we were complete,
Some viewed our Teeth to see if they was good,
And fit to Chaw our hard and homely food.
“No shoes nor stocking had I for to wear
Nor hat, nor cap, my hands and feet went bare.
Thus dressed unto the fields I did go,
Among Tobacco plants all day to hoe.
“Till twelve or one o’clock a grinding corn,
And must be up at day break in the morn.
For I was forced to work while I could stand,
Or hold the hoe within my feeble hands.
“Forced from Friends and Country to go…
Void of all, Relief…Sold for a Slave…”
1756: September 22, Maryland. Elizabeth Sprigs writes a letter to her father in London describing the agony of her indenture, that she is referred to as a “bitch” and is treated more harshly than the blacks.
1756: November, Aberdeen, Scotland. Peter Williamson returns to Aberdeen and is jailed for is claim to have been kidnapped.
1756: There is a rash of white slave escapes in Maryland.
1758: Scotland, Peter Williamson gains backing for the hearing of his case against the officials of Aberdeen.
1760: Jamaica. Tacky's War.
1762: Scotland, Court of Sessions finds in favor of Peter Williamson, against the slave-trading municipal government of Aberdeen.
1763: The French and Indian War ends with militia men North of Maryland retaining their weapons and often heading west.
1764: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Minister, Pastor Helmuth, upon visiting Fisher Island, described it as “a land of the living dead, a vault full of living corpses.”
1764: Aberdeen, Scotland. Guilty officials protest in a letter concerning the Court of Sessions ruling in favor of Peter Williamson.
