This census page from the town of Saratoga Springs, New York, includes Solomon Northup, a free man of color and his family (the 12th name listed). The 1840 census documented White persons, free persons of color, and enslaved people in different categories. Northup and his family are tallied under “Free Colored Persons.”
Northup was later kidnapped and sold into slavery. He told his life story in his autobiography 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.
