Advertisement Seeking the Recapture of Peg - July 7, 1779

Title: Advertisement Seeking the Recapture of Peg - July 7, 1779

Location: Thornbury, Chester County, Pennsylvania

Object Information: Newspaper advertisement

Repository: Pennsylvania Gazette. “Run away…” Wednesday, July 7, 1779. Philadelphia: Printed by Hall & Sellers at New Printing Office, near Market. GenealogyBank.com.

Description:

In July 1779, Persifor Frazer placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette seeking to recapture Peg, an enslaved servant, nineteen months after she self-emancipated from his home. Peg began her journey in the spring of 1778, when she left the Chester County household of Major Persifor and Mary Torrell Taylor Frazer in search of freedom.

Peg’s enslaver was no stranger to escaping captivity himself. Around the same time Peg began her quest for freedom, Frazer—a Continental officer who had been captured by the British after the Battle of Brandywine—escaped from British captivity in Philadelphia and returned to George Washington’s camp at Valley Forge. Frazer published a total of two advertisements looking for Peg; in the first, he claimed that Peg was aquainted with British soldiers in Philadelphia. Peg was never found and disappeared from the historical record.

TRANSCRIPT

RUN away about 14 months ago, and went into Philadelphia, whilst the British troops were there, a young Negroe Wench, named PEG, about 20 years old, very lusty of her age, was born in Chester county, there is great reason to believe she is in, or at no great distance from, Philadelphia, possibly in the Jerseys, as she was seen last winter in the market. Whoever takes up and secures said Wench, so that I may have her again, shall have One Hundred Dollars Reward, and all reasonable charges paid, on applying to Colonel WILLIAM HENRY, in Philadelphia, or the subscriber, in Thornbury, Chester county.
PERSIFOR FRAZER.

*** Any person who harbours or conceals her may depend upon the severest prosecution.

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