Patsey

Patsey's mother was said to have been from Guinea, enslaved and taken to Cuba. She was then sold to a family named Buford in the Southern United States. Patsey is believed to have been born around 1817. In 1830, when she was 13, she was sold to Edwin Epps in Louisiana.{{cite web |url=http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2014/03/04/3356141/12-years-slave-patsey-solomon/ |title=What Happened To Solmon Northup And Patsey After The Events Of '12 Years A Slave'? |last=Rosenberg |first=Alyssa |date=4 March 2014 |access-date=20 September 2014 |work=Thinking Progress}} According to Northup, Edwin Epps had "repulsive and coarse" manners and did not have a sense "of kindness or of justice." When drunk, he would lash out at enslaved people with a whip, enjoying the sound of their screams.

Epps leased the Bayou Huffpower plantation from Joseph B. Robert, his wife's uncle. In 1845, Epps moved Patsey and other enslaved people to his 300-acre plantation near Bunkie in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Solomon Northup and Patsey became friends on the Epps plantation. Known as the "queen of the fields", Patsey was often praised by her owner for her ability to pick large amounts of cotton, up to 500 pounds a day. Northup said that she was unlike the other enslaved people and had a spirit that was unwavering in its strength.{{cite web |url=http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/12-years-a-slave.php |title=12 Years a Slave: History vs Hollywood |year=2013 |access-date=20 September 2014 |work=History vs. Hollywood}} She had been "a joyous creature, a laughing, light-hearted girl"{{sfn|Northup|1853|pp=140–141}} who fervently dreamed of freedom.{{sfn|Northup|1853|p=191}}

While an underage teen, Epps began raping her. He whipped Patsey if she resisted his sexual demands, which left "scars of thousand stripes" on her back. His wife, Mary, was jealous of Patsey, and "nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer," according to Northup. She physically abused Patsey and demanded that Epps sell Patsey, which he would not do. Mary tried to bribe other workers and enslaved people to kill Patsey and dump her body in the swamps, but no one would. Even though Patsey was a highly productive enslaved person and a favorite of Epps, she endured abuse by a "licentious master and a jealous mistress".

On one occasion, Patsey went to a neighboring plantation for a bar of soap. When Epps found out she had left his plantation, he had four stakes hammered into the ground and ordered her hands and feet to be tied to them; she was stripped naked, and Epps ordered Northup to whip her. Epps then took the whip himself until she was "literally flayed" from over 50 lashes. Epps had saltwater poured over her wounds. Patsey nearly died. Northup and Patsey were severely traumatized due to all the abuse that she endured.{{cite magazine |url=http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/jezebel-and-solomon-why-patsey-is-the-hero-of-12-years-a-slave |access-date=20 September 2014 |title="Jezebel" and Solomon: Why Patsey Is the Hero of "12 Years a Slave" |last=Sorkin |first=Amy Davidson |date=5 November 2013 |magazine=The New Yorker |publisher=Condé Nast}} After this brutal whipping, she lost her light-hearted manner, the sparkle in her eyes, and the ease of her laughter. She often wished that she would die.{{sfn|Northup|1853|pp=140–141}}

Northup knew Patsey for almost a decade. As he was about to leave the Epps plantation in 1853, he said that:

{{quote|Patsey ran from behind a cabin and threw her arms about my neck. 'Oh! Platt [the name given to Northup by his kidnappers],' she cried, tears streaming down her face, 'you're goin' to be free—you're goin' way off yonder where we'll neber see ye any more. You've saved me a good many whipping, Platt; I'm glad you're goin' to be free—but oh! de Lord, de Lord! what'll become of me?|Solomon Northup{{sfn|Northup|1853}}}}

Northup then boarded a carriage to freedom and he never saw her again.{{sfn|Northup|1853}} In 1854, his book Twelve Years a Slave was published. Almost ten years after, during the American Civil War, the 110th New York Infantry Regiment came to the plantation. They met Bob, one of the enslaved men mentioned in Northup's book, which several soldiers had read. Patsey left the plantation in May 1863 with the Union soldiers. Patsey's life and fate thereafter are unknown. In 1850, Patsey had a daughter named Mary White, born into slavery on the Epps plantation. Mary was later sold down south, and she had children of her own, sons Jacob White and George Dudley White and a daughter Sarah White, who told the family story to her children.{{Cite web |date=2017-03-21 |title=The Enduring Legacy of Patsey |url=https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2017/03/enduring-legacy-patsey/ |access-date=2021-06-24 |website=The Journal of the Civil War Era |language=en-US}}{{cite news |url=http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83031559/1863-06-18/ed-1/seq-3/ |title=Letters from Capt. Devendorf|access-date=21 September 2014 |newspaper=Mexico Independent |date=18 June 1863 |page=3 |via=NyS Historic Newspapers}}{{cite web |url=http://hikeghosttowns.com/patsey.htm |access-date=21 September 2014 |title=Seeking Patsey's Fate |last=Fiske |first=David |year=2012 |work=Hike Ghost Towns}}

The 2013 film 12 Years a Slave was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.{{cite journal |title="What'll Become of Me?" Finding the Real Patsey of 12 Years a Slave |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/03/patsey-12-years-a-slave |journal=Vanity Fair |last=Calautti |first=Katie |date=2 March 2014 |access-date=1 May 2018 |publisher=Condé Nast}} Writer Katie Calautti chronicled her search for what became of Patsey in a 2014 Vanity Fair article. With renewed interest from the film, historians continue to research in hopes of pinpointing more specifically what happened to her.{{cite journal |url=http://madamenoire.com/316112/12-years-slave-patsey-reclaiming-negro-bed-wench/ |access-date=20 September 2014 |title="12 Years A Slave," The Character Of Patsey, And Why I Wish Death To The Term "Negro Bed Wench" |last=Ball |first=Charing |date=25 October 2013 |journal=MadameNoire}}

• List of people who disappeared

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book|author1=Fiske, David |author2=Brown, Clifford W. |author3=Seligman, Rachel |title=Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave|year=2013}}, a complete biography of Northup
• {{cite book |last=Northup |first=Solomon |author-link=Solomon Northup |title=Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana |publisher=Derby & Miller |pages=362 |isbn=978-1-84391-471-6 |year=1853|title-link=Twelve Years a Slave }}

{{refend}}

{{Solomon Northup}}

{{History of slavery in the United States}}

{{Slave narrative}}

Category:19th-century American slaves

Category:American people of Guinean descent

Category:1810s births

Category:Year of death unknown

Category:19th-century American people

Category: 19th-century African-American women

Category:19th-century African-American people