Boyrereau Brinch / The Blind African Slave

Born in 1742 in West Africa, Boyrereau Brinch was sold into slavery at age 16. Renamed Jeffrey Brace, he fought in the Seven Years War as an enslaved sailor and endured the cruelty of masters in Connecticut. About 1768, he was sold to Mary Stiles, who taught him to read. In 1783, Brace was manumitted for his service in the American Revolution. A freeman, Brace moved to Poultney in 1784, settling in 1804 in Georgia where he purchased 60 acres of land. Brace, now blind, committed the bible to memory and was baptized at the Baptist Church of Georgia. He filed in the Franklin County Court to receive the $8 per month veteran’s pension; it was awarded in 1821. Brace died on April 20, 1827, at his home in Georgia.

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Jeffrey Brace dictated his story to lawyer Benjamin Prentiss, sensing a duty to recount “how poor Africans have been and perhaps now are abused.” The memoir begins in Africa, marking all of Brace’s “adventures in the British navy, travels, sufferings, sales, abuses, education, service in the American war, emancipation, conversion to the Christian religion, knowledge of the scriptures, memory, and blindness.” He wished it would open “the hearts of those who hold slaves and move them to consent to give them that freedom which they themselves enjoy, and which all mankind have an equal right to possess.” The Blind African Slave was issued in 1810, the first book published in St. Albans.