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Slave Market and Slave Jail -- Alexandria, Virginia
Bruin had been a slave dealer in the Alexandria area since 1840, and with the purchase of the Duke Street house and its adjacent two acres (used as an exercise area), he had sufficient space in which to conduct his trade. In December 1845, he and partner Henry Hill advertised in the Alexandria Gazette: "NEGROES WANTED: All persons having Negroes to sell will find ready sale and liberal prices for them by calling at the new estalishment of BRUIN & HILL." Harriet Beecher Stowe, in The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1854), described how she employed her knowlege of Bruin's slave jail as background for her explosive 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. In The Key, she described the escape of a number of slaves from Washington, DC, on April 15, 1848, in the ship Pearl, who were later captured and returned for eventual sale in New Orleans. Bruin & Hill purchased a slave family known as the Edmondsons, and brought them to the slave jail. According to Stowe, Bruin's daughter begged that Mary and Emily Edmondson be excluded from the group that was eventually sent to New Orleans for sale there, a group that included other Edmondson siblings. Their father, Paul Edmondson, traveled north to try and raise funds for the purchase of two of his daughters. He eventually met Reverand Lyman Beecher, Stowe's father, who raised the sum overnigt. Bruin and his "large slave warehouse" are mentioned approximately 20 times in the The Key. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Bruin fled Alexandria but was captured and then confined in the Old Captiol Prison in Washington, DC, until the end of the war. Bruin's Slave Jail is located at 1707 Duke St., in Alexandria, Virginia. In his absense, his slave jail was used as the Fairfax County courthouse until July of 1865. It currently is used as business offices, and is not open to the public. The Franklin and Armfield Slave Market Alexandria Black History Museum | Watson Reading Room | Robert H. Robinson Library |
