How Industry Secured His Freedom

As a developer and defender of his owner’s westward movement to settle the Kentucky Pennyroyal wilderness, Free Frank’s value was immeasurable. With the initial settlement period in the late 1790s over, new laws at the turn of the century further encouraged settling on the Kentucky frontier. Slave labor was in demand by new settlers and very profitable for owners who could earn from $80 to $100 a year hiring out their slaves. Given Free Frank’s skills as both a farm laborer and jack-of-all-trades, his master could benefit from the lucrative practice by hiring him out throughout the early years of the nineteenth century. Sanctioned and even encouraged by law, the lucrative practice soon became commonplace for slaveholders. However, it was against the law for owners to allow their slaves to hire out their own time.

By 1810, Free Frank was already allowed to hire himself out with the potential to earn his freedom, but the provision required him to pay his owner $10 to $12 a month. Doubtless, George McWhorter never anticipated that there was any real possibility that Free Frank would find enough time to earn his freedom, much less that of his family as well. Then too the availability of crude niter allowed Free Frank to capitalize on the growing demand for saltpeter brought on by the War of 1812. He established a saltpeter works business and was apparently the county’s sole provider.

George McWhorter died in 1815 without making any provisions for Free Frank’s manumission. His sons agreed to grant Free Frank’s freedom in exchange for his continuing to do all the work on the Pulaski farm until he could accumulate the $500 required for his freedom. While the McWhorter brothers probably expected him to take at least another five to fifteen years before he earned the price of his freedom, they had misjudged Free Frank’s resourcefulness and business shrewdness.

In April 1817, within just two years of his owner’s death, Free Frank purchased his wife’s freedom from William Denham for the considerable sum of $800. While the purchase price was $300 more than his own, his wife’s freedom meant that any future children she bore would also be free, and the couple welcomed their first free-born child whom they named Squire that September. In September 1819, Free Frank also managed to bargain with the McWhorters for the purchase of his freedom for $800.

Free Frank and his family continued to live in Pulaski County, all the while expanding their business and receiving fame as a result of its success. The family reveled in the accomplishment of Frank, Lucy, and Squire’s freedom, but their joy would be short-lived. Denham, Lucy’s former owner, died suddenly living considerable debts, part of which his son and executor attempted to pay by suing Lucy for $212 in 1824. The Pulaski court ruled against the Franks and ordered Lucy to repay the debt. Even so, the Franks refused to accept the lower court’s verdict and continued to pursue the case until it reached the Kentucky Court of Appeals later that same year. In a landmark decision, the Court of Appeals ruled in the Franks’ favor, establishing the precedent that later allowed free blacks to marry in the state of Kentucky. After a series of attempted counter-moves by the Pulaski Court, the Court of Appeals finalized its determination in a 1827 ruling that recognized the right of free blacks to legally marry.

With the possibility of being sold away by the Den-ham’s twenty-one-year-old, Frank Jr. fled as a fugitive slave in December 1826. In 1829, Free Frank used the continued success of his saltpeter business to arrange for the purchase of his son Frank’s freedom, even though the business was worth more than young Frank’s $1000 market value. This was one of the elder Frank’s last business transactions before leaving Kentucky for Illinois. In preparation for his departure, Frank purchased a 160—acre tract of land for $200 without ever having seen it to circumvent a new Illinois law that required free blacks to pay a $1000 security bond to guarantee that he or she would not become a public charge. As such, the strategic purchase effectively demonstrated that he was self-supporting and unlikely to become dependent on the state.