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Receipt - Record of the sale of two enslaved children by a prominent Virginia slave trader who kept his office and slave pens in Shockoe Bottom, the heart of Richmond's slave trading district This manuscript record of a slave sale by Benjamin Davis measures 8" x 6" and is dated April 8, 1853. The document reads: Sales Made by Benjamin Davis on account of Mr. Wm Parr Girl Maria $800.00 Boy Joseph $895.00 Charges $1,695.00 Commissions 2% 33.90 Clothing 8.50 Board 1.50 ___43.90 Net Proceeds $1,651.10 ... Richmond April 8 1853 Benj Davis for N Daniels Benjamin Davis was a prominent Richmond slave trader whose headquarters at the City Hotel were located in Shockoe Bottom on the northeast corner of 15th and Main streets. Today, the location lies alongside Richmond's Main Street Train Station between Franklin and Broad Streets just under an elevated section of Interstate 95. Davis, like many of Richmond's slave traders, lived nearby in Court End, on Marshall between 8th and 9th Streets. The 1860 census shows that Davis, who owned five slaves, employed two free black women as household servants. Historians believe that one of the men standing in the background of Eyre Crowe's famous 1853 painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale, is Benjamin Davis. Richmond was, after New Orleans, the second largest slave trading center in the United States. Although the Richmond Directory listed only nine slave traders in 1845, by 1852 the number had grown to 18, and in 1860, there were 18 "traders, another 18 "agents," and 33 "auctioneers engaged in the slave trade." The booming business was profitable and, although the traders were despised throughout the North and in many places in the South, they were respected in Richmond as attested to by an editorial, "Our Slave Market" published in the Richmond Enquirer. (For more information, see "The Slave Trade as a Commercial Enterprise in Richmond, Virginia MPS #127- 6196" at the National Registry of Historic Places, Bancroft's Slave Trading in the Old South, and McInnis's Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade. ) Very scarce. At the time of listing, no Richmond slave-trader documents or letters are for sale in the trade. The Rare Book Hub reports that two letters from Richmond slave-traders have been sold at auction.

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Physical Location

Arc.MS.56, Box 20, Folder 8