Jordan (June 1810)

Jordan – we see you! He was a child of 14. And if he had “a lie ready to answer every question,” we can know he was nimble and clever. We can be sure that the child had lived a hard life without any investigation, for the clues provided in this advertisement leave little room for doubt. He had a large and noticeable scar on his left cheek and had tried to run only a week previously. His courage in running again, this time with a “strop of iron riveted round each ankle,” tells us he was desperate, terrified, and resolute. He would have known the chances of running while visibly weighted down with irons were almost nil. Let us imagine, too, the difficulty he would have had standing, much less running. And we can reasonably infer from the circumstances and tone of this advertisement that he was likely suffering from other physical ailments. We can suspect he was whipped and beaten after his earlier attempt only a week before. His wounds would still have been fresh and painful. But that didn’t stop him from running. Indeed, perhaps that pain was what enabled him to accomplish the unthinkable, to just move at all in a frantic and panicked attempt to escape his body or his situation entirely.

Was Jordan a charismatic, endearing, or friendly lad with Black family and friends in the area? His enslaver seems to think that poor Jordan might well be able to persuade someone to assist him – possibly with smithing tools or another technique for removing the irons. It is notable that the enslaver leaves open the possibility that the ally might be Black or White. This suggests that the enslaver might have vaguely been aware that his reputation as a brutal man might not have endeared him to any of his neighbors, whether enslaved or not. It suggests, too, that the enslaver knew the pathetic sight of young Jordan might well be sufficient to change hearts – even a person not generally inclined to put himself in the way of trouble by assisting a fugitive might well be stunned into helping a manacled child. Jesse F. Jones may have known that brutalizing children wasn’t a good look, and that it might inspire an “evil disposed person” to intervene. Jones needed to use his advertisement to assassinate Jordan’s character and implicitly justify the enslaver’s violence.

Can we speculate carefully that there might have been other underlying reasons why this relationship between the captive child and the enslaver had become so particularly ugly? Jordan was of a fair complexion, a “yellow” and “mulatto” child. Might he even have been a son of Jones? Or the child or grandchild of other White men in the environs? If so, it is evident that no such connection was recognized or earned him any mercy. And perhaps it earned him extra cruelty – fair skinned or lighter skinned children who carried within their bodies the evidence of rape or miscegenation as they would have termed it then, could sometime present embodied challenges to the racist system of freedom that was defined by the complete opposition of Black and White.

Finally, the idea that he might have a “free pass” is worth lingering on. It was more common for a grown person to obtain a pass than for a young one. Few enslavers, even the most self-styled munificent ones, would entrust a child with a pass to leave the confines of their assigned plantation labor camp. Had Jordan been entrusted with one before? Moreover, the fact that the enslaver notes that “it is supposed” that Jordan has one indicates, too, that a larger and more fraught story is behind this advertisement. If Jordan were illiterate, as he almost certainly would have been, where would this pass have come from, and whom did Jesse F. Jones suppose it came from? Many enslaved people, such as Frederick Douglass, used their literacy whether fluid or rudimentary to forge passes. Is it possible one would have been given to Jordan? Or is there even a possibility that the enslaver suspects Jordan himself might have drafted such a thing? Achieving literacy, just enough to draft a pass was hard to achieve, and rare, but not unheard of…and the illiteracy of many White patrollers could occasionally mean that even a scribbled note with few coherent words on it at all, might pass muster as a legitimate travel “ticket” as passes were sometime called. We can hope that Jordan did indeed, have such a thing.

We cannot know the answers to many of these questions, but we can see a remarkable child of courage. And we can see the depraved self-justifying cruelty driving this monstrous injustice. So, what may have happened to these two individuals? Well, as a white man, the trail of Jesse F. Jones is easier to follow. The US Census appears to show him in the 1800 census, with only a wife and no enslaved people (alternatively, a similar record for Jesse Jones of Halifax indicates a man who lived only with three other free white people).[1] But regardless of which entry had been his in 1800, by a decade later, his fortunes rose, and it seems likely that he invested in human trafficking and exploitation. By 1810, the Census indicates his household had four enslaved people.[2] By 1830, the census suggests he led a household of 21 people, including his white wife and children, and 14 enslaved folks.[3] Thus, back in 1810, when young Jordan would have run, his flight would have been easily noticed and a significant loss for Jesse F. Jones. After all, it would have represented a fourth of his investment in human beings, and perhaps an especially great loss considering that the promise of the power of a growing teen boy would have been considerable.

So, was Jordan recaptured? Sadly, he may well have been. If Jordan were 14 in 1810, he would have been roughly 34 in 1830. According to census documents, during that year, Jesse F. Jones reports enslaving an unnamed Black man between the ages of 24 and 35 – and it may well have been an older version of young Jordan.[4]

These speculations are a bit hazy, to be sure. Census records can be misleading. And we only have a short paragraph to go on. But Jordan’s courage shines forth. And we can all hope that this clever, determined boy survived to find some happiness or freedom in his life.