The newspaper ad, were it to run today, might appear in a lost-and-found column, wedged between yard sales and apartments for rent.
Yet it could hardly say more about the spirit of an age.
"Ran away from the Subscriber living in Annapolis, a young Country-born Negro Man named Harry," it said. "He is of a yellowish Complexion, near 6 Feet high, brisk and active. Had on and took with him a Wig, a new Felt Hat, a grey Pea Jacket, red Waistcoat and Breeches ...
"Whoever takes up the said Negro, and delivers him to me, at Annapolis, shall have THREE POUNDS Reward."
People seldom wax more eloquent than when describing something they've lost, and Nicholas MacCubbin, one of many slaveholders in 18th-century Annapolis, was no exception.
Vivid details, racial condescension and all, McCubbin's plea for the return of a runaway slave - placed in the Maryland Gazette in the 1750s - was a sight typical during the state's slavery era.
It's also one of the thousands the Historic Annapolis Foundation hopes will bring the period to life in Project Run-A-Way, a new multimedia enterprise the foundation will roll out in two weeks as the centerpiece of its second Black History Month seminar.
Based on the texts of ads found in the Gazette and the Maryland Republican from the 18th and 19th centuries, the project will weave theater, period couture, blogging and the contributions and memories of local citizens into "a community dissertation" on one of the least savory and most poignant chapters in the state's history.
"It's a tragic era, obviously, but against that backdrop, an inspiring one," says Heather Ersts, a foundation vice president. "This is a chance to get to know some courageous people who risked their lives for freedom. The stories ... provide windows into this [region's] history that hasn't been done before."
Organizers hope to turn the project into a full-fledged dramatic production by this time next year, one that features actors portraying characters described in the ads. It will include an extensive online scholarly component and costumes to go on permanent display.
At the heart of the project, though, are the ads themseves - succinct, often eyebrow-raising slices of life from a time whose values we only sketchily understand.
A pair of red stockingsThe idea for the project was born, in a way, four years ago. Scotti Preston, an actress known for interpreting characters from the region's African-American history, and her friend, Janice Hayes-Williams, a historian who helps her research those characters, were winding down after a performance one night.
Hayes-Williams mentioned a source of information she had especially enjoyed using. Starting in the early 1700s, she said, the Gazette, a statewide four-page weekly based in Annapolis, ran a constant stream of ads in which slaveholders tried to recapture escaped servants. The state's other big paper, the Republican, followed suit through the mid-1860s.
Historians had noted the ads, which appeared in virtually every edition of the papers during that time, but no one had studied them systematically.
They were a godsend for Hayes-Williams, a seventh-generation Annapolitan and student of local history who is always on the lookout for the sort of details that can make the past spring to life.
"It was a great way to learn of some of the minutiae of day-to-day existence during that time," she says.
She could almost see the people described: a "tall, slim, yellowish color'd Fellow, named Ishmael, with something remarkable about his Chin;" a "dark mulatto, nineteen years old ... with remarkable spare slim feet, legs and thighs, [and] a scar upon the side of his right knee, occasioned by sticking an ax in it."
But no details were more specific than those used to describe clothes. One frustrated owner wrote of a man in "a Grey Coat, the sleeves laced with Red Plush, and trimmed with Red Button-holes, and Brass Buttons, a Pair of Red Stockings, and Grey Breeches." Two 1760 escapees wore "white Country fill'd Cloth Coats and Breeches lined with Rolls, with flat Metal Buttons, new Osnabrigs [coarse linen] Shirts, Country Knit Stockings, and Negro Shoes nail'd all around."
Such details often led to capture in an era when the population of Annapolis barely cracked 1,000, and even Baltimore was just establishing itself as a major town.
"Everyone knew everyone," says Glenn E. Campbell, history director for the organization.
Hayes-Williams and Preston - best known for "4 Women of Annapolis," a one-woman show in which Preston inhabits characters from local history - discussed staging, of all things, a fashion show based on the descriptions.
They never got to try it, but six months ago, as Historic Annapolis Foundation officials sought a theme for this year's Black History Month seminar, the two mentioned the idea, and it sparked a buzz that surprised even Preston.
Historians saw value in other aspects of the ads. Scholars from the U.S. Naval Academy and Coppin State jumped on board. The Maryland Humanities Council came up with an $8,000 seed grant.
"These stories have never been told," Ersts says. "And [this] touches on everything [the foundation] is trying to do: scholarship, first-person interpretation, exhibitions, decorative art. It's right up our alley."
Black, whiteHistory is not so much what happened as what we choose to remember of what happened. As such, it's an evolving thing.
So says Campbell, who's spearheading the process at the heart of the project.
Even now, foundation staff and history students from the Naval Academy are taking the old Gazette and Republican copies and typing the ads into a database accessible to anyone with a computer.
Previously, they were only available on microfilm, with a few reproduced in a handful of books. None were indexed.
"It's a natural progression in how people can study the ads," Campbell says. "If you access [our] database, you'll be able to say, 'I'm looking for every person who ran away from Annapolis during that time.' Or if you're researching fabrics used in slave clothing in the 18th century, you can type in the kind you want. If it's listed in an ad, it'll show up."
As researchers pore over the individual ads, recurring themes may develop. What time of year, for example, were slaves likeliest to run away? What qualities fetched the highest rewards? Did escape plans grow more sophisticated with time?
Thus far, the material sheds light on everything from the language used at the time to the value slaves and slaveowners seemed to place on different skin tones.
Runaways are often identified as "Salt-Water Negroes" (slaves who had been brought to the colonies from overseas, many of whom spoke no English) or "Country Negroes" (blacks born locally, giving them better escape prospects).
Once the spice trade reached Maryland in earnest, Preston notes, the public used words from that industry - "coffee-colored," "cinnamon" - to differentiate skin tones. (Slaves were almost never described as "black.")
Now director of living history programs at HAF, Preston says the project will help dispel stereotypes about the era, including the notion that all bound servants in the region were African-American.
Many ads reflect the fact that, for a time, about 50 percent of bound servants in Maryland were white. Some were "convict-servants" - whites who had committed crimes in Britain, bound over to owner-employers in the colonies - and others were indentured servants, individuals who paid for their passage to the Americas by selling themselves for a period of years to the highest bidder.
"Some of those people got here and decided they didn't really like this deal so much," Campbell says.
For them, unlike for slaves, there was at least a slim element of choice in their fate, adds Campbell, who marvels at the many masters who openly described in ads the scars they'd left on their slaves - and still wondered why they would flee.
"They actually wrote things like, 'I always treated so-and-so very well, like family,' " he says.
Tailor on the runAt their most fascinating, the ads are succint character portraits, novelistic in detail, introducing us to shrewd, funny, surly, accomplished or bedraggled individuals we would otherwise never have met.
In 1765, for example, one Thomas Gantt wrote of his indentured servant: "Ran away last night, a man named Philip Cooke, a Taylor by Trade, about 22 years of Age, brought up in London," the ad reads. "It is probable he will put on some of the Taylor's best Apparel, and pass for an Officer, as he pretends to have been in the Army ... He understands the Latin and French tongues, has travel'd much, and gives a good Account of those Places he has seen."
Like the other ads, this one raises as many questions as it answers. How did such a man know foreign languages? Why did he run when he did? How might he and others have been treated while seeking freedom? Were they likely to have made it, to where, and with what results?
By sharing a mass of new information, Project Run-A-Way may suggest answers to those and other queries, not to mention more questions to ask.
In the end, it will include a living-history stage show, one that brings to life 10 or 12 of the runaways described. (Preston will direct the show, which will likely be performed in schools and other venues over a course of years.) The foundation will keep the replica costumes, creating a traveling exhibition and a permanent one. Future scholars will have access to the database.
Beyond that, planners are reaching out to the public. On Feb. 20, Preston, Campbell, Hayes-Williams and others will lay out their vision in a four-hour, open-to-the-public seminar at the Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center in Annapolis.
They'll seek feedback and suggestions from the audience, too, including anecdotes some might remember from their own family histories, whether on the slaveholders' or the servants' side.
Our notion of property, after all, has changed over the past 150 years
"It's a big story," Ersts says. "We want it to belong to everyone."
If you go What: Second annual Black History Month Seminar, Historic Annapolis Foundation
Topic: Project Run-A-Way
Where: Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center, 1101 Smithville St., Annapolis
When: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb. 20
Admission: Free to the public
For more information: Go to annapolis.org or call 410-267-7619 or 800-603-4020.
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