Search United States, Inspection Roll of Negroes, 1783

Disclaimer: Please note that the terms used in historical records reflect the attitudes and language of the time and may now be considered inappropriate, derogatory or offensive.

The records in the Inspection Roll of Negroes (also known as the Book of Negroes) are very detailed. Exact content varies according to the status of the individual evacuee (for instance, whether free, or former slave, or slave of a Loyalist). The following fields are usual:

• Name

• Age

• Brief physical description

• Vessel evacuated on

• Destination port

• Accompanying Loyalist

• Status

• Circumstances – previous history, including former enslaver and year of escape, where applicable

From spring to autumn 1783, the defeated British evacuated by ship from New York, with most vessels heading for the still British Nova Scotia and what was shortly to become New Brunswick. The Loyalists evacuated with them a significant number of black and mixed race individuals and families, who became known as the Black Loyalists.

One way of looking at Black Loyalists is that they preferred personal liberty and freedom under the British to continued enslavement in a newly independent America. This is epitomised by the existence in the records of three former slaves of General George Washington, a prodigious slave-owner soon to become the 1st President of the United States. These slaves are the 22-year-old Daniel Payne, the 20-year-old Deborah Squash and the 43-year-old Harry Washington, who had left him four, four and seven years previously respectively.

It is important to understand that the status of the persons on the Rolls varied. The majority – about 58% – were former slaves, such as Washington’s. These might be regarded by their former enslavers as runaways – in other words, they had had the temerity to leave without consent and joined the British troops or other Loyalists, following the Proclamations. Only about 4% were freed slaves, being those who had been freed by their former masters or been bought out of slavery. A further 3% are described as free (their exact circumstances not always clear) and an additional 11% were clearly born free (if we include those minors who were born within the British Lines during the War). There are also a number of former servants (rather than former slaves), who make about 2% of the total. In addition, there are 15 indentured servants, some of whom had only just become indentured (in some cases seemingly voluntarily, albeit in circumstances unknown and perhaps driven by necessity). In 259 cases we are unsure of the status of a person – while most of these are accompanied children, in other cases the original record is silent or the text ambiguous.

This leaves a balance of 369 individuals, or 12%, who are slaves, and it is clear from references to bills of sale and receipts that some had been subject to recent slave transactions. These are slaves of Loyalists. This is an important qualification to the statement made earlier about Black Loyalists choosing freedom under British rule as opposed to slavery under American rule. Clearly, these slaves of Loyalists were not choosing freedom; they were being taken by their Loyalist enslavers to a new enslaved life wherever that might be. In most cases, that would have been the Canadian Maritimes of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, but some were taken to the Bahamas, Britain or Germany. King George III was Hanoverian, of course, and the British troops and Loyalist forces had been supported by German troops from Hesse and elsewhere. Some of the evacuees were Black drummers and trumpeters in German regiments (quite a fashionable or totemic role in this era).

One individual on the Inspection Roll seems to have been a runaway slave of a Black enslaver. This is Tom Cain, aged 30, who is described as having been “formerly the property of John Thomas, a black freeman” of Charleston SC. Cain had left him four years previously, circa 1778/79.

There are two versions of the original document, created at the same time. One copy was created by the British and has been deposited in The National Archives in London (although at the time of writing it is lent out to the Nova Scotia Archives). It is a single bound volume and its title is simply Book of Negroes. The second copy was created by the Americans and has been deposited at NARA in Washington DC; it is in parts known as books. The title of this second copy is the Inspection Roll of Negroes. There are many differences in detail between the two versions, including some differences in paging and sequencing of records; neither version is more authoritative than the other. We have used the American title for our transcription as being more descriptive of the content. These documents were called inspection rolls because they are the record created by American inspectors of all Black persons boarding British vessels evacuating New York. The British themselves were not inspecting as such (they had already established to their satisfaction the bona fides of the Black Loyalists, largely via interviews held at New York’s Fraunces Tavern), although they likewise registered the Black evacuees. The Americans registered each and every Black evacuee, including their status and former enslavers, in the expectation that they would be returned to them, as their rightful property, as part of the terms of a final treaty in due course. The British went along with this as a charade, having no intention of returning Black Loyalists to the Americans. They had granted freedom to them in exchange for their support and loyalty in the recent War and, for once perhaps, meant to honour their promise.

The promises of freedom had been by proclamation. Among the proclamations were Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775, Sir William Howe’s Proclamation of 1776 and the Philipsburg Proclamation of 1779. Essentially, these said that any slaves who left their American enslavers and joined the British would be afforded protection and given their freedom. A number of records refer explicitly to freedom being exercised in direct response to proclamation.

Many of the free or formerly enslaved Black Loyalists were carrying emancipation certificates. The two principal kinds were General Birch’s Certificate and General Musgrave’s Certificate. Over 1,000 Black Loyalists in Inspection Roll Books held this documentation. These must have been precious to their bearers, as a guarantee of present and future freedom. It is interesting that one man – William Holchapan – is in possession of an Anglican baptism certificate from St Paul’s in London, England (it would have been an adult baptism, at aged 36 or so). This also seems to have served as proof of freedom. Perhaps this fact can also be associated with the increasing number of Black adult baptisms seen in England, especially in sea-ports, from the 1780s onwards – perhaps the holding of an Anglican baptism certificate was regarded, rightly or wrongly, as proof of freedom and proof against enslavement.