Isaac Franklin
b. 1789 · d. 1846
Tennessee-born slave trader who, with partner John Armfield, operated the largest domestic slave trading firm in the United States during the 1830s. Franklin managed the firm’s New Orleans end of the Alexandria-to-New-Orleans trade.
Isaac Franklin was born in Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1789 and entered the interstate slave trade in the 1810s. In 1828 he joined his nephew John Armfield in a partnership that established headquarters at 1315 Duke Street in Alexandria and shipping operations at Natchez and New Orleans [1] Franklin & Armfield ledgers Manuscript . Over the eight years the firm operated, Franklin and Armfield shipped thousands of enslaved people south from the Chesapeake slave-selling region to the cotton and sugar plantations of the Deep South.
Franklin retired from the active trade in 1836, married Adelicia Hayes of Nashville, and acquired large plantations in Louisiana and Tennessee worked by hundreds of enslaved people. He died in 1846 at one of his Louisiana plantations [1] Franklin & Armfield ledgers Manuscript .
Associated places
1315 Duke Street — Franklin & Armfield
1828–1836Isaac Franklin co-owned the firm and managed the New Orleans end of the trade.
Sources
- 1.
Franklin & Armfield business records, ledgers, and ship manifests held in various archives including the Chicago History Museum and the New Orleans Notarial Archives.
Manuscript
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