Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution (Rescheduled to May 21)

Join author Claire Bellerjeau for a talk about her new book, Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth. In January 1785, a young African American woman named Elizabeth was put on board the Lucretia in New York Harbor, bound for Charleston, where she would be sold to her fifth master in just twenty-two years. Leaving behind a small child she had little hope of ever seeing again, Elizabeth was faced with the stark reality of being sold south to a life quite different from any she had known before. She had no idea that Robert Townsend, a son of the family she was enslaved by, would locate her, safeguard her child, and return her to New York—nor how her story would help turn one of America’s first spies into an abolitionist.