Administrator's Sale of Negroes: Estate Auction 1849

Heartbreaking historical document: an 1849 estate sale advertisement from St. Charles County announcing the auction of enslaved people from a deceased slaveholder's property. Posted by A. Broadhead, administrator of Joseph McCoy's estate, this notice advertises the sale of "a negro woman and child, and two likely boys from five to eight years of age" to be sold to the highest bidder on January 1, 1850. The casual bureaucratic language reveals how slavery's cruelty extended even into death—when slaveholders died, their human "property" was liquidated like furniture or livestock to settle estates. Young children, barely old enough to understand what was happening, would be sold away from any family they had left. The twelve-month credit terms show how normalized the buying and selling of human beings had become in American commerce. A devastating document of slavery's dehumanization, essential for historical education, available in three sizes with your choice of black or silver aluminum frame.