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Virtual Lecture – Slavery and Servitude in Early Annapolis

In early Annapolis, Maryland, bound artisans labored in craft workshops, construction sites, public buildings, and domestic interiors. These bound artisans—including enslaved, indentured, and convict servants—comprised the majority of the labor force in Annapolis and elsewhere in the British Atlantic World. Annapolis’s great Georgian mansions, extant furnishings and artworks, and even the Maryland State Capitol building remain as products of bound laborers’ skill and expertise. Despite working for and with the city’s most famous free white artisans, most notably Charles Willson Peale, William Buckland, John Shaw, and William Faris, enslaved and...