Slaves' Writing

choi

Craig Fehrman, A Look Into the Rare, Secret Writings of American Slaves. Boston Globe,
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas ... wXr2UcKO/story.html
(book review on Christopher Hager, Word by Word; Emancipation and the Art of Writing. harvard University Press, February 2013)

Note:
(a) The book is about writing of American slaves while in bondage.  
(b) The German surname Fehrmann (Fehrman is teh Americanized form)  means "a ferryman, from Middle High German ver(e) ‘ferry’ + man ‘man.’"

Compare: The German surname Fuhrmann is "from Middle High German vuorman ‘carter’, ‘driver.’"
(c) Frederick Douglass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass
(born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Talbot County, Maryland; c 1818-1895; escaped in 1838)
(d) Trinity College (Connecticut)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_College_(Connecticut)
(a private, liberal arts college in Hartford; Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University)
(e) Massachusetts Historical Society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Historical_Society
(in Boston; the oldest historical society in the United States; 1791, by Reverend Jeremy Belknap)
(f) The quotations from the salves' writing:
(i) "blue flowered suger bole”: correct word is "bowl"
(ii) "“November 25 Day 1851 Emily Plummer and five Childrens who whous sold publick.”

It should be "who were sold publicly."
(iii) “it is retten that a man can not Serve two masters. But it seems that the Collored population has got two a reble master and a union master the both want our Servises.”

It should be:
"It is written"
"a rebel master"