Silvia Dubois

Writer

  • Born: c. 1788
  • Birthplace: Sourland Mountain (between Hunterdon and Somerset Counties), New Jersey
  • Died: 1889

Biography

Silvia Dubois was the daughter of Cuffy Baird and Dorcas Compton, two slaves owned by different masters. Because of incomplete birth records, Silvia Dubois’s true age was never discovered, but it is estimated that she was born around 1788. From the age of five, she labored in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She was eventually granted her freedom much later in life, having unsuccessfully tried on several occasions to buy her freedom.

Dubois spoke of her life story to Dr. Cornelius Wilson Larison in 1883 on Sourland Mountain in New Jersey. Published as A Biografy of the Slav Who Whipt Her Mistres and Gand Her Fredom (1883), the extended interview was transcribed by Larison using his own phonetic alphabet. An edition with normalized spellings was published in 1980. Like the more famous Sojourner Truth, Dubois had a mixed view of her masters whom she respected in spite of their well-documented, repressive treatment of her.

Dubois’s account serves as an important touchstone for understanding slave life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and disproved the notion that slavery was confined to the southern states in that time period (she was very well north of the area traditionally associated with slavery). However, very little is known of her youth since Larison’s questions focused primarily on adulthood and her reactions to the white patriarchy which ruled much of her life. Dubois died six years after the interview, around the age of one hundred.