Life Story: McLennan’s Enslaved Woman

On September 30, 1734 New York City resident John McLennan placed an ad in the New York Weekly Journal newspaper. He was selling “a young negro woman.” McLennan and the enslaved woman lived at the upper end of Beaver Street, near the Royal Bowling Green. He never gives her name, but his ad offers plenty of other information that helps historians better understand what the lives of enslaved women were like in colonial cities.

McLennan guesses that the woman is about twenty years old. It was not unusual for enslaved people to not know their exact ages because no one kept careful records of their births. This also indicates that the woman was not born in McLennan’s household and may have been sold away from her mother when she was young. Without the one person who could give her age with any certainty, her age would always be a mystery.

McLennan gives a few other personal qualities of the woman to entice potential buyers. He describes her as “strong, hale, healthy, well-set.” This means she was in good health, had a strong, well-fed body, and was therefore capable of doing hard work for long hours. He describes her as mild and quiet, although whether this is her actual personality or just how she acts around her enslavers is up for debate. He says one of her good qualities is that she does not use tobacco or drink liquor. This was probably included to reassure potential buyers that she would not cause trouble. He also mentions that he thinks she had smallpox once. McLennan includes this detail because it means she would be less likely to die of the disease during the next outbreak. But it also reveals a lot about the woman’s life experiences. She survived a terrible, deadly disease, likely without much medical support. McLennan’s uncertainty also implies that she had smallpox before she lived with him. It is likely she had been under at least two different enslavers in her life and was about to be sold again. 

McLennan’s ad is full of information about the work the woman is able to do, which in turn tells historians about the kind of work enslaved women were forced to perform. Many of her skills are related to keeping a colonial family fed. According to McLennan she can cook roasted or boiled food “pretty well.” This probably means her food was good enough for the daily meals of a working family but was not fancy enough for the city’s elite. He describes her as a good dairywoman, which means she can milk cows and churn the milk into butter or use it to make cheese. She can also bake bread and brew beer and ale. Brewing requires a lot of manual labor and careful monitoring to make sure the final product is drinkable, so this means she has special skills. These skills were useful not only for providing for a family. Any surplus the woman created could be sold, putting money in her enslaver’s pockets.

The woman’s other skills relate to keeping a colonial family clothed. Making and maintaining clothing was a very time-consuming process before the invention of the sewing machine. McLennan’s assurances that the woman can card and spin both wool and cotton at the “great wheel” make her an incredibly valuable asset for any colonial household. Her thread could be used in the home or sold for a profit. The woman could also make her own soap, as well as wash, iron, and starch all the family’s clothing and linens. Having an enslaved person who could perform these tasks would make life much easier for any colonial housewife.

The final note McLennan includes is that the woman is relatively well-clothed, with both linen and woolen outfits. By indicating that the woman has good clothing for both summer and winter, McLennan is letting interested buyers know that they did not need to worry about spending extra money to dress her.

From these details, we can begin to understand how enslaved women were valued and treated in colonial New York. Enslaved women performed the time-consuming and difficult tasks that an urban colonial household required to thrive. Women who were healthy and mild-mannered were particularly prized by enslavers because they could be made to work extra hard without causing problems. They were bought and sold at the will of their owners and might pass through many households in the course of their lives. They learned a variety of skills that made them particularly valuable because their enslavers could profit from the goods they produced. But for all their value, enslaved women were still objects. Their enslavers did not even bother to list their names when putting them up for sale.

• card: To comb through raw wool or cotton to clean out any dirt, sticks, or other impurities.
• linen: A light, breathable fabric made from the fibers of the flax plant.
• smallpox: A deadly, highly contagious disease that causes a high fever and pustules. It leaves permanent scars on survivors

• To learn more about the hard work enslaved women were expected to perform in the colonies, see Spinning Wheels, Spinning Bees, Laundry Workers: Tools of the Trade, Childcare in Oneida and Dutch Communities, and Mortar and Pestle for Pounding Rice.
• To learn about the sources historians use to piece together an understanding of the daily lives of enslaved people in the colonies of North America, pair this life story with any or all of the following:
  • Runaway Slaves
  • Evacuating the Colonies
  • The Business of Slavery
  • The Middle Passage
• Read Life Story: Sarah to learn about the social and cultural climate women like McLennan’s Enslaved Woman faced in their daily lives.

AMERICAN IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP

• For resources relating to the history of the New York colony, see New World—New Netherland—New York.