SLAVES AT
DUPUI'S PLANTATION

Regretfully, Nicholas Dupui's general store ledger tells us very little about the lives of area slaves.  All that we can say with certitude is that their population consisted of both men and women, and of young and old (with one entry pointing to the purchase of a Negro boy for 33 pounds, and another citing the 6 shilling cost of supplying a coffin for a Negro wench).

Beyond that, all we have are a very few references to Negroes being provided with caps and stockings.

As the earlier-cited letter from the Shawnee chiefs to the Pennsylvania Governor illustrates the fact that several "negro slaves used to run away" from Dupui's plantation, those slaves quite clearly deemed Dupui to have been a relatively harsh taskmaster. 

Yet how does one empirically distinguish the "harsh life of a slave" from the "frontier life of a colonist"?  Both, in their own ways, must have been grueling experiences.

One could make the argument that only one of these two populations was prone to running away (as evinced by the slave runaway ads routinely posted); an example:

The Pennsylvania Gazette, May 14, 1747: RUN away on the 12th of April last, from Matthias Gmelin, glazier, in the township of Worcester, at Matachen, Philadelphia county, a Negro man, named Jack Tross, aged about 38 years, of middle stature, a big head, speaks good English, and some Dutch, and is left handed: Had on when he went away, a striped callimancoe jacket, new check trowsers, blue stockings, two shirts, one fine and the other coarse, good hat, and shoes with white metal buckles in them. Whoever takes up the said Negro Man, and secures him, so that his master may have him again, shall have Forty shillings, if taken in Pennsylvania, and if taken in any other province, Three Pounds reward, and reasonable charges, paid by MATTHIAS GMELIN.

...and yet, when matters became harsh at the start of the French & Indian War, we also have plenty of evidence indicating that the colonist population, in similar fashion, opted to "run away" to the safety offered by the Jersies.