Venture smith biography
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Venture Smith
Colonial American enslaved African and author
Venture Smith (Birth name: Broteer Furro) (c. &#;– ) was an African American farmer and craftsman. Smith was kidnapped when he was six and a half years old in West Africa and was taken to Anomabo on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to be sold into slavery.[1] As an adult, he purchased his freedom and that of his family. He documented his life in A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in green hills of sega, Related bygd Himself.[1] This autobiography fryst vatten one of the earliest known examples of an autobiographical narrative in an entirely African American literary vericas, only about a dozen left behind first-hand accounts of their experiences.[2]
Smith was renamed "Venture" bygd Robinson Mumford, his first white enslaver. Mumford decided to call him "Venture" because he considered purchasing him to be a business venture. Mumfor
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Venture Smith was born ca. in Dukandarra, Guinea, the oldest son of a prince. When he was a young child, he and his family were taken prisoner by an invading army, and his father was killed for refusing to comply with their demands. Following his father's brutal murder, Smith and his family were taken captive. When another army defeated his captors, Smith was sold to Robertson Mumford, and they departed for Barbados and Rhode Island. He grew up as a household slave and married Meg, another of Mumford's slaves, when he was Shortly after, he and a few fellow slaves attempted to escape, but their plan was aborted. Smith and his wife were then sold to Thomas Stanton. Smith describes the conflicts he encountered with his new master's family and tells how he purchased freedom for his wife and family by hiring himself out to others, cutting wood, farming, and fishing. He eventually bought property in East Haddam, Connecticut, and continued to amass and cultivate adjacent property, eventua
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Broteer (Venture Smith) is one of a relatively small number of Africans captured in the Transatlantic Slave Trade who wrote a narrative of their experiences. His Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself was published in New London, Connecticut in
According to the narrative, Broteer, was born in “Dukandarra” in “Guinea,” a generic term often used to describe the homeland of enslaved West Africans. Scholars believe it most likely that Dukandarra is in present-day Ghana, but its precise location is unknown, and it is also not known to which ethnic group his family belonged. Historian Paul Lovejoy has speculated that references to cattle and livestock in the Narrative indicate that Broteer probably came from the interior savanna region rather than the forests closer to the coast.
Broteer’s father was Saungm Furro, a West African pr