Grubb, Hamot, Moorhead, Kelso and Reed were prominent early Erie residents remembered today in street, business and neighborhood names.
They also were enslavers, growing crops, building businesses and managing their households through the labor of men, women and children they had purchased and brought to Erie in bondage.
Slavery was legal in early Erie — and in every colony and later every state in America — though that history has been largely forgotten.
“The history of slavery in Erie and in this country needs to be known. I can’t even imagine why people would want to hide the truth, as it’s been hidden for 400 or 500 years — the truth about how people of color have been treated in this county,” said Gary Horton, president of the Erie chapter of the NAACP.
“Slavery wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t fun. It did not benefit people of color.”
Pennsylvania had begun to outlaw slavery before Erie’s first permanent settlers arrived in the 1790s. A March 1, 1780, law abolished slavery in the state, but only gradually. People already enslaved on that date remained enslaved for life. Their children born afterward were enslaved until age 28 and legally could be bought and sold until then.