As we approach the annual observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday and Black History month, we might not recognize these events are rooted in American societal practices begun four centuries ago. The Virginia Center for the Digital History’s project on the Geography of Slavery in Virginia has assembled a rich resource of documents, mostly from contemporary newspaper advertisements, about runaways and indentured servants.
Using this resource, eleven advertisements describe slaves and indentured servants who ran away from their owners in Rockingham County between June 1778 and August 1795.
[i] As the advertisements were submitted by the owners, they represented perhaps a one-sided view of the runaways.
