I am a 7th year Graduate Student in the Temple University's History Department.  My dissertation focuses on an enslaved family, known collectively as the Crosswhites, that fled enslavement in 1843 only to be hunted by a slave catcher representing their former master.  My work argues that this failed attempt to recapture the Crosswhite family helped create the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a revised and harsher law than the original 1793 act.  This dissertation combines the fields of antebellum legal, cultural, religious, and economic histories in an effort to recreate the lives of the Crosswhite family up until their final escape to Canada in 1847.

Faculty Advisor: Jessica Roney