158-year-old record proves Tampa slave trade continued after emancipation

TAMPA — On May 6, 1864, Union troops arrived in Tampa and, with no opposition, took the city and declared emancipation for the Black residents who were enslaved here.

The troops were gone days later, moving on to engage in other battles. Historians have long thought that, without enforcement, the enslaved were not all set free.

A record discovered by the Tampa Bay Times proves that.

Found within the pages of a Hillsborough County book that recorded land sales in the 1800s, the 158-year-old handwritten receipt documents the sale of 16-year-old Jefferson and 12- or 13-year-old Isam for $2,200 from William H. Meredith to John Pearce.

The transaction was recorded on March 14, 1865, nearly a year after the area’s enslaved were emancipated.

The Tampa Bay History Center’s Rodney Kite-Powell said that the receipt is the first “documented proof” that the slave trade continued here post-emancipation.

“That makes sense,” said Cheryl Rodriguez, professor of Africana Studies and Anthropology at the University of South Florida. “After the Union troops left, Tampa tried hard to bring things back to normal. Enslaving people was their normal. It was part of their culture, part of people’s outlook.”

It’s unclear where Pearce lived but, according to census records, he was a Hillsborough farmer.

“The Union had taken away all the slaves they could gather,” said Canter Brown, a Florida historian who has focused on Tampa’s pioneering Black community. “But most Hillsborough slaves were out in the countryside” where the Union did not visit.

Brown said that Pearce might have hidden those he enslaved.

Still, while the record was officially logged in March 1865, the receipt states the sale was made in January 1861, more than three years prior to emancipation.

That was normal, said Brown. “Deeds sometimes were recorded long after a purchase and sale, including the slaves.”

But that in March 1865 the county government headquartered in downtown Tampa recorded the sale of people, even from a few years earlier, shows that the slave trade was still active in Tampa Bay at that time, Kite-Powell said. “It was a legal transaction and confirms what I and others suspected.”

Pearce likely decided to make the sale official with the county “to protect his rights of ownership, Brown said.

On May 20, 1865, Union troops arrived in Tallahassee, where they read the Emancipation Proclamation to officially free the enslaved throughout the state, but it took time for word of the order to spread.

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“Slaves at Bartow officially learned of freedom in June when Black federal troops appeared with the message,” Brown said.

As for Tampa Emancipation Day continuing to be acknowledged on May 6 of each year, Kite-Powell said that should remain the tradition. “There is no way to pinpoint the actual day when the last enslaved person became free in Tampa.”