Abstract
Between 1790 and 1820 western Pennsylvania changed from a struggling backcountry to a burgeoning industrial power at the epicenter of trade and commerce—one in which the "invisible hands" of African American laborers were the principal driving force. The process by which they negotiated the complex, always ambiguous, legal terrain between slavery and freedom is readily visible in recently unearthed slave manuscripts from the Allegheny County Recorder of Deeds Office. Aged, brittle, yet as vivid as the day they were initially penned, these documents are now in the hands of Samuel Black, curator of African American col-lections at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh.
