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Jourdan Anderson was a slave who was freed under the Emancipation Proclamation. Under gunfire, he and his wife, Amanda McGregor, escaped Colonel P.H. Anderson’s home in Tennessee and started a family in Ohio. In 1864, Jourdan Anderson received his free papers.

A year later, the colonel sent a letter to Anderson asking him to come back and work on the farm. Anderson wrote the man back and stated the conditions in which he and his family would return to Tennesee. Among them was if the Colonel issued he and his wife backpay for their years of servitude. The total amount was $11,680. Anderson told the colonel that the money would let them know that he and his wife would be treated fairly if they returned. He said, “In Tennessee, there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows.”

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