Elizabeth Donnan’s four-volume Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1930–35).

Volume 1, 1441–1700 (1930)

Volume 2, The Eighteenth Century (1931)

Volume 3, New England and the Middle Colonies (1932)

Volume 4, The Border Colonies and the Southern Colonies (1935)

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  1. Donnan’s boxes of drafts, speckled with burnt holes from her cigarette ash, typed on the backs of scrap paper, contain scribbled with notes to herself with treasures of additional detail and other sources. For example, when Donnan collated information about the 1809 slave schooner Fair Traider she scribbled in, “There was also found–a letter of John Stoughton of Boston recommending [slave] Capt. Waine.” The captain was a “native of Boston, who with his wife and family, resided at Holloway” [Mass]. This vessel was owned by Jacob Ogden, Jr., and John B. Frazier, of Boston or New York or both, and carried rum, tobacco and lumber from Boston to St. Michaels, and with the help of local merchant company, exchanged these for slaves. Waine “sold” the schooner to Jeronimo Vincente, who positioned his son as captain, renamed it the Esperanza, and sailed with an American crew. They were captured with 90 Africans. Moreover, a letter was found with explicit instructions to Waine on how to proceed. Donnan cited the report of Thomas Ludlam on a Voyage from Sierra Leone to the Gold Coast, in the Prosecution of the Objects of the Commission of African Inquiry. (Sixth Rept. of the Directors of the African Institution, pp. 43-45, 107-108).

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