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by Claire Bellerjeau (Author), Tiffany Yecke Brooks (Author), Vanessa Williams (Foreword by)
In 1785, an African American woman, Elizabeth, was sold to her fifth enslaver. She had no idea that Robert Townsend, a son of her first enslaver, would locate her and safeguard her child--nor that Robert, one of America's first spies, had joined an anti-slavery movement. The paperback has a new chapter on recent discoveries about her life.
Author Biography
Claire Bellerjeau is the co-author of Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth. In 2022, she cofounded a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization called Remember Liss that educates the community about Elizabeth's extraordinary life and times. Bellerjeau formerly served as historian and director of education at Raynham Hall Museum in Oyster Bay, New York, where Elizabeth was once enslaved. She has been researching the Townsend family and those they enslaved for more than eighteen years, including curating a yearlong exhibit on the Townsend "Slave Bible" in 2005. In 2015, during a research visit to the New York Historical Society, she discovered what may be one of the earliest poems ever written by Jupiter Hammon, America's first published African American writer. She has developed educational programs on the subjects of slavery in New York and the American Revolution on Long Island and works with teachers to develop curricula to share Elizabeth's story using primary documents from her research. Bellerjeau lives with her husband, Chris, in Oyster Bay, New York.
Tiffany Yecke Brooks holds a PhD in American and dramatic literature from Florida State University and has spoken and published widely on early portrayals of race in trans-Atlantic performance as well as the emerging American identity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She was the lead researcher and contributing writer for the New York Times best-selling George Washington's Secret Six, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, and Andrew Jackson and the Miracle at New Orleans, as well as for Fear Is a Choice with Pittsburgh Steelers running back James Conner and Limitless with Paralympic gold medalist Mallory Weggemann.
