root doctor and physician, first appears in the historical record in the early 1830s as a slave in Maury County, Tennessee. At the time he was owned by William H. Macon, who hired him out to practice medicine in six counties in the middle Tennessee frontier. Doctor Jack seems to have begun his general practice throughout Tennessee in the 1820s, though he may well have attended to the medical needs of his fellow slaves and others in the community for several years before. Like Cesar and other slave physicians in early America, Doctor Jack probably gained a knowledge of traditional African folk remedies using roots and herbs from other slaves though he may also have learned of various cures from Native Americans or European settlers in the region In the late 1820s one of his patients expressed the view that the world would be peopled a great ...
Article
Doctor Jack
Steven J. Niven
Article
Durham, James
Betty E. Plummer
physician, was born a slave in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His surname is sometimes spelled Derham. Despite his slave status, he learned basic reading and writing skills from his first owners, whom he described as Christians. Durham also received his medical training from his masters. At that period most American physicians acquired their medical education through the apprenticeship system. Durham began a form of apprenticeship at the age of eight, when he became the slave of John A. Kearsley Jr., a physician who taught him to compound medicines and to perform routine medical procedures. Durham later belonged to other doctors in Philadelphia, at least one of whom was a British sympathizer. This association with a Loyalist master probably explains why Durham later became the property of George West, a surgeon in the British Sixteenth Regiment.
Along with his new master Durham performed amputations on wounded troops along the ...
Article
Durnford, Andrew
David O. Whitten
plantation and slaveowner, physician, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Thomas Durnford, an-English immigrant and merchant, and Rosaline Mercier, a free woman of color. Thomas Durnford was a cousin of Colonel Elias Durnford of the Royal Engineers, lieutenant governor of British West Florida. Andrew Durnford, reared by parents who were denied marriage by law, grew up in New Orleans's free colored community with the comforts afforded the family of a successful merchant and speculator. His schooling, like most of his early life, is a matter of conjecture. In his adult years he revealed a working knowledge of written and spoken English and French, the rudiments of elementary arithmetic, and medical procedures. He apparently passed freely between the white community with his father and the free colored community with his mother and her family. For example, John McDonogh a successful merchant and planter ...
Article
Freeman, Elizabeth
Xiomara Santamarina
civil rights litigant, known as Mum Bett, was born a slave in Claverack, New York, most likely to African parents. Mum Bett and her sister were owned by the Dutch Hogeboom family in Claverack. At an uncertain date, the sisters were sold to the family of John Ashley, a judge in the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas and a prominent citizen of Sheffield, Massachusetts. Little is known about Mum Bett's life with the Ashleys, but it probably resembled the life of many northern slaves during the eighteenth century. Most slaves lived in small households in close proximity to their owners and performed a wide range of tasks to support the North's diversified economy.
Mum Bett's decision to sue for freedom was sparked by an incident of cruelty that is prominent in accounts of her life. When her mistress, Hannah Ashley struck Mum Bett s sister in ...
