Venture smith biography
•
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 by Himself.[1] This autobiography is 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" by Robinson Mumford, his first white enslaver. Mumford decided to call him "Venture" because he considered purchasing him to be a business venture. Mumfor
•
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 amerika. Related bygd 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 boskap and livestock in the Narrative indikera 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
•
A 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:
Electronic Edition.
Smith, Venture, ?
Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported the electronic publication of this title.
Text transcribed by Apex Data Services, Inc.
Image scanned by Monique Prince
Text encoded by Apex Data Servies, Lee Ann Morawski, and Jill Kuhn
First edition,
ca. 65K
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Source Description:
(title page) A 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.
Venture
iv, p.
New-London
Printed by C. Holt, at the Bee-Office
Call number Sm67 (Connecticut College, New London, CT)
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-CH digitization project, Documenting the