PETER WHEELER

Inscription

PETER WHEELER
BORN 1789 IN NJ. KIDNAPPED,
SOLD AS SLAVE & BROUGHT TO
LUDLOWVILLE 1801. FLED 1806
WITH HELP OF ABOLITIONISTS
THOMAS & HENRY LUDLOW.
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2020

Peter Wheeler was a Black man born January 1, 1789 in Tuckertown, New Jersey. He was freed in the will of his master and mistress, but re-enslaved by their son and sold for $110 to a man by the name of Gideon Morehouse, who brought Wheeler to Ludlowville. Morehouse proceeded to be extremely abusive to Wheeler. Wheeler’s autobiography Chains and Freedom (1839) described how he would be beaten, whipped, and neglected. At one point, Wheeler was taken “down with the typhus fever” due to the fact that he was “exposed, and abused, and whipped, and almost starved and frozen to death, through the winter.” Wheeler continued on to say that there was a period of five years where he believed that his wounds never healed due to the constant beatings he had received. Despite this, Wheeler bided his time before his escape, stating that he been planning to run away for three to four years, and when he finally decided to leave, he stated he would rather be free “or die in the cause.”

In 1806 he escaped with the assistance of his abolitionist neighbors, the Ludlow brothers, Henry and Thomas. He recalls the brothers in Chains and Freedom:

“Young Tom Ludlow, one of the scorers, comes up to me, arter master was gone, and says he, ‘Peter, whin the the name of God don’t you show Morehouse the bottoms of your feet? I’d be hung afore I’d stand it,’” Wheeler recalled. “‘Well, Tom,’ says I, ‘I wants to wait till I knows a little more of the world, and then I’ll show him the bottoms of my feet with a greasein’.’ Well, Tom laughed a good deal, and says he, ‘that’s right Pete.’

Wheeler continued:

Tom was a great friend of mine, and he tried to get me to run off for a good while, and Hen, his brother, he was a good feller, and he tried tu.

Shortly following his escape, he met a sea captain and joined the ship’s crew, allowing him the opportunity to live as a free man and see the world.