The ferry slip at Perth Amboy hosts a UNESCO port marker as a site of memory associated with the Middle Passage of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Perth Amboy served as the primary port of entry for ships bringing enslaved persons from Africa and regularly hosted a slave market.
Figure 1: Perth Amboy ferry slip plaque (front), photo Jolyon Pruszinski
Figure 2: Perth Amboy ferry slip plaque (back), photo Jolyon Pruszinski
The text of the marker reads:
Enslavement and the Trans-Atlantic Human Trade:
Near this site enslave Africans disembarked at Perth Amboy, the principal port in eastern New Jersey. During colonial times, numerous slave ships such as the Catherine, William, Africa and Sally were present in Raritan Bay, sending their captives upon the city pier – now the present-day site of the Historic Ferry Slip. In one day alone, the Catherine arrived with 240 enslaved people, leaving 17 dead at sea, and depositing 130 survivors in Perth Amboy.
In Africa, traders captured approximately 24 million children, women and men, half of whom died on the march to coastal prisons or within the prisons awaiting transport across the Atlantic. Chained and tightly packed in dark, filthy, stifling hot cargo holds, 12 million endured ocean crossings that often took months. During these voyages, known as the Middle Passage, 2 million people died from disease, malnutrition, dehydration, abuse and suicide.
African slavery in New Jersey began with the early Dutch settlement named New Netherland. Ideally suited as a maritime port of entry, Perth Amboy, the colonial capital of East Jersey, was an arrival location for ships during the trans-Atlantic human trade. Because the colony of New Jersey imposed no tariff on the importation of captive Africans, many traders disembarked their human cargo at this location, avoiding taxation while supplying buyers in New Jersey and other colonies.
In 1790, New Jersey’s enslaved African population was 11,423. It was the last Northern state to adopt gradual emancipation in 1804. By 1854, the Eagleswood section in Perth Amboy became a major station of the Underground Railroad. Slavery was not completely abolished until 1865[1] by the adoption of the 13thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 2019, Perth Amboy was designated a “Site of Memory” by the UNESCO Slave Route Project.
Anglicans and Episcopalians were intimately involved in the legal establishment of slavery in New Jersey, in defending the trade, and in profiting from enslavement.
One of the most recent instances of Episcopal engagement with the slave trade in Perth Amboy occurred in 1818 in connection with the Van Wickle slave ring. As many have documented elsewhere,[2] Van Wickle was one of the most notorious enslavers during the period of gradual abolition in New Jersey. As a Middlesex County Judge he facilitated the illegal trafficking out-of-state of well over one hundred African-Americans who were either already free in New Jersey, or who would have become free under gradual abolition. They were permanently enslaved in the south through Van Wickle’s actions. Public outcry shut down the operation of the ring in late 1818, but not before Van Wickle had convinced the other lay leaders of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Spottswood to defend his actions in print.[3] Van Wickle managed to orchestrate the sailing of one last ship of enslaved persons out of Perth Amboy, late in 1818, after public pressure on the ring had already begun to mount. On October 26, 1818 the ring smuggled forty-eight people[4] out of Perth Amboy aboard the Schoharie. These are their names from the shipping manifest:
William M. Clare, 25; John C. Marsh (of New York); John C. March (on board); Jafe Manning, 21; Robert Cook, 17; Ben Morris, 22; Sam Prince, 19; Sam Peter, 30; George Phillips, 18; James Thompson; Edward Gilbert, 22; Dan Francis, 20; James, 15; Charles, 19; Susan Wilcox, 36; Nelly, 18; Betsey Lewis, 28; Jane Clarkson, 23; Eliza Thompson, 21; Jane Cook, 15; Ann Moore, 29; Julian Jackson, 21; Jane Smith, 33; Peggy Boss, 21; Mary Harris, 21; Sally Cross, 20; Rosanna Cooper, 22; Mary Simmons, 18; Hannah Jackson, 18; Hanna Crigier, 18; Harriet Silas, 15; Fanny Thompson, 14; Elizabeth Ann Turner, 16; Susan Jackson, 20; Hanna Johnson, 20; Hannah, 18; Cane, 22; William Stone (New York); Jack, 22; Lewis, 22; Peter 14; Frank, 21; Caleb Groves, 50; John, 21; Collins, 35; Othello, 16; Anthony Fortune, 21; Joseph Henricks, 19; Jane, 23; Susan 21; Lena, 38.
Van Wickle was never even indicted for his crimes.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
[1] This is an inaccuracy in the site marker text. Slavery was not fully abolished by the 13th Amendment because the text of the amendment specifically allowed slavery as a legal punishment for a crime.
[2] See the various primary sources and public history project related to Van Wickle and the slave ring listed in Jolyon Pruszinski, “Jacob Van Wickle (1770-1854): Middlesex County Judge, Notorious Enslaver, and Respected Episcopalian Lay Leader,” DNJRJR, September 18, 2023.
[4] Documented at https://lostsoulsmemorialnj.org.
