SOLOMON NORTHRUP
April 1841

A free African-American farmer and violinist from upstate New York, Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. Slave traders brought Northup from Fredericksburg by railcar to Richmond, then one of the largest slaving-trading hubs in America. Northrup joined the 300,000 to 350,000 slaves sold, bought, and traded in Richmond between 1800 and 1865.

Northup was likely held at William Goodwin’s slave jail in Shockoe Bottom, as he awaited auction to be sold farther South. Northrup remembered it as a place with rooms for the “examination of human chattels by purchasers before concluding a bargain.” Here, a white slave trader “turned me partly round…as if estimating in his own mind about how much I was worth.”

In 1852, Northrup escaped bondage and joined the movement to abolish slavery. His visit to Richmond would have gone unnoticed had Northrup not recorded it in his memoir, 12 Years a Slave.

Illustration from 12 Years a Slave, 1957 edition, Courtesy of the Library of Virginia