The Cope Line Voyages of David Henry White Evidence from the Cope Family Archive

Abstract: The Cope Family Archive documents the extensive local and international networks of this prominent Philadelphia family. The collection also contains comprehensive records of the Copes’ shipping business, including the employment and legal status of free Black sailors during both the antebellum and Civil War periods. Notably, the archive documents the circumstances of David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor from Lewes, Delaware, who was kidnapped from the Copes’ vessel Tonawanda on October 9, 1862, by Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate commerce raider Alabama . Although described as a slave, crew manifests prove that at the time of his capture, White was legally free, and had signed onto a galley crew connected to a network of free Black abolitionist sailors. The Cope Family Papers are thus a critical resource not only for documenting the Cope Family itself, but also the circumstances, networks, and activities of free Black sailors in the region.