# 5: The Most Astounding Runaway Advertisement I Have Ever Seen: part one of two
A few years ago, on Twitter/X, a scholar I admire, Dr. Learotha Williams from Tennessee State University, shared a runaway slave advertisement from September of 1854 that informed a larger project he was working on concerning Nashville. As you can see, the advertisement raises many mysteries.
I went down a rabbit hole:
My first impulse upon seeing it was to marvel at the last names given to the men who were being pursued. JOE HALL and JIM BURRIS. I have studied and read thousands of these advertisements in my time and a last name that is recognized by an enslaver in these advertisements is a rare phenomenon indeed. Upon closer inspection, however other remarkable aspects of it become clear and I started digging in.....
The Nashville Union and American, Sept 5th, 1854, page 2 (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
There is so much that is astounding in the story this advertisement suggests. Who tries to escape with an 80-year-old companion, for one? Were they relatives? Allies? Happenstance hostages? Surely Joe must have had some love for Jim to escape with him.
And while I have occasionally seen indications of the literacy or suspected literacy of freedom seekers mentioned, it certainly is uncommon and adds a strange and rich dimension to the theories the enslaver, M. Bell, is hinting at.
And what of the supposed white man who might be aiding them or kidnapping them? Was he real or part of the projected paranoia of Bell?
And the money they are supposedly carrying with them? OMG the money?!
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So the first thing I hoped for was to find out WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE MEN. After a sleepless night, fretting over their fate, I checked in with Dr. Williams for the newspaper and the exact date of publication in order to get a handle on the probable birthdates. Dr. Williams speculated that if they made it onto a steamer, they were 5 days from the Ohio border. But the Ohio border was rift with bounty hunters and slave catchers, so who knows what might have happened?
Hoping hard, I dove into census records for Ohio and nearby states and then extended my search to Canada. Sadly, I wasn’t able to confidently identify any good leads in the census. Joe Hall and Jim Burris are common names and strategically, if these men managed to somehow survive and escape, they might wisely have decided to change their names or keep a low profile as far as government records are concerned.
Were their names (first and last) ever listed in newspaper articles about their escape, their capture, the possible theft or some transaction involving cash from the Bank of Tennessee? I dipped into a couple of digitized newspapers from Ohio and Tennessee and elsewhere searching for a hit but didn’t find anything useful.
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I did, however, go back to the original advertisement to see how long it ran. It was first placed in September of 1854 and ran weekly in the Nashville paper through January 1855. This indicates to me that the men may have been successful in their escape (unlikely but, let’s hope) or that they died or were re-enslaved illegally somewhere. It’s possible they were captured and returned, of course. Montgomery Bell died in the summer of 1855 so his will or family papers might provide some clues.
Montgomery Bell of Tennessee
OK – onward to information about Montgomery Bell (Williams identified this as the almost certain author of the ad) because rich white men in the 19th century do tend to have a paper trail – and boy, Bell was a strange piece of work. And learning about his life and how he managed the human property he had enslaved adds further puzzling dimensions to this story.
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO OF THIS BLOG POST
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To Cite:
Ashton, Susanna. "The Most Astounding Runaway Advertisement I Have Ever Seen: part one." Runaway Chronicles. Squarespace. 06/10/2024.https://susannaashton.squarespace.com/config/pages/65c93bd35c81e32bb1a08098/content
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