{"id":2412,"date":"2022-10-03T13:34:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T17:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/?p=2412"},"modified":"2023-06-18T13:31:47","modified_gmt":"2023-06-18T17:31:47","slug":"1825-william-grimes-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/1825-william-grimes-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"(1825) William Grimes, Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Relentlessly pursued by slaveholders, William Grimes pays for his own freedom by writing one of the first slave narratives in US history<\/h4>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Date(s): escaped 1814, self-purchase 1824<\/p>\n<p>Location(s): King George Country, Virginia; Culpepper Virginia; Maryland; Savannah, Georgia; New York; New England; New Haven, Connecticut<\/p>\n<p>Outcome: Freedom<\/p>\n<p>Summary:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2011\" style=\"width: 207px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/08\/Grimes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2011\" class=\"wp-image-2011 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/08\/Grimes-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"Grimes seated wearing tophat holding basket\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/08\/Grimes-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/08\/Grimes.jpg 497w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2011\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Grimes (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.georgiaencyclopedia.org\/articles\/arts-culture\/william-grimes-1784-1865\/\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener\">New Georgia Encyclopedia<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">William Grimes was born to a rich slaveholder named Benjamin Grymes and an enslaved woman (left unnamed in his autobiography) on a Virginia plantation.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> Slaveholders sold and resold Grimes <\/span>at least ten different times until he ended up in Savannah, Georgia. There, <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">Grimes seized the opportunity to escape when <\/span>his latest slaveholder, planning a vacation with his family, allowed Grimes to find work on his own during their absence. Instead, Grimes befriended sailors who helped him escape by boat to New York. Once in the North, Grimes found work as a barber, but enjoyed little peace of mind as slaveholders constantly dogged him. The freedom seeker encountered one former slaveholder in New York and promptly moved to Connecticut, only to come face to face with another former enslaver there. Fearing reenslavement, Grimes purchased his own freedom for $500 in 1824. The move plunged Grimes into bankruptcy and pushed him to publish his own story to make ends meet. Some scholars consider the result, <em>Life of William Grimes, The Runaway Slave\u00a0<\/em>(1825), to be the first slave narrative published in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Related Sources<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/docsouth.unc.edu\/neh\/grimes25\/grimes25.html\"><em>Life of William Grimes, The Runaway Slave<\/em> (1825)<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/docsouth.unc.edu\/neh\/grimes55\/grimes55.html\">revised edition (1855)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relentlessly pursued by slaveholders, William Grimes pays for his own freedom by writing one of the first slave narratives in US history Date(s): escaped 1814, self-purchase 1824 Location(s): King George Country, Virginia; Culpepper Virginia; Maryland; Savannah, Georgia; New York; New England; New Haven, Connecticut Outcome: Freedom Summary: William Grimes was born to a rich slaveholder [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23482],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newby-alexander"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2412"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2413,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412\/revisions\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}