Alfred Olahan Robards was a 19th-century slave trader and grocer of Kentucky, United States.
According to a family history published in 1910, A. O. Robards was the youngest child of Nancy Merriman and George Lewis Robards (b. 1795). Alfred O. Robards sometimes worked at slave trading in partnership with his brother
Lewis C. Robards.
The Robards brothers may have started as field agents for, first, Lexington slave trader
Joseph H. Northcutt, and, second, Lexington slave trader
R. W. Lucas. Alfred O. Robards was one of a number of agents who worked for Lewis Robards "in all the
Bluegrass counties and those bordering on the
Ohio River
The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...
—buying and selling slaves, and sometimes stealing and kidnapping free Negroes." A. O. Robards was likely involved in some trading independent of L. C. Robards.
According to Carol Wilson in ''Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865'', circa 1851, Alfred O. Robards had possession of Hilda Polley, Mary Jane Polley, Martha Polley, and Peyton Polley Jr., four of the
Peyton Polley children who were kidnapped from their beds in
Lawrence County, Ohio
Lawrence County is the southernmost county of the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 58,240. Its county seat is Ironton. The county was created in 1815 and later organized in 1817. It is named for James Lawrence, t ...
, June 6, 1850, by a gang of four white men led by David Justice. In 1856 A. O. Robards advertised that "Persons wishing to dispose of negroes can always find a purchaser by calling on the undersigned at
Harrodsburg."
At the time of the
1860 census, Robards was a resident of the fourth ward of Lexington, Kentucky, occupation trader. At the time of the
1870
Events
January
* January 1
** The first edition of ''The Northern Echo'' newspaper is published in Priestgate, Darlington, England.
** Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed.
* January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge be ...
and
1880 censuses
Year 188 (CLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known in the Roman Empire as the Year of the Consulship of Fuscianus and Silanus (or, less frequently, year 941 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomi ...
he was married with a family, and working as a grocer in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Robards was a master mason in the Warren Lodge of Kentucky Freemasons. He appears in an 1884 Kentucky business directory as partner in a grocery, hardware, and farm implements business, "special agents, Milburn wagon." Robards died in 1884 after a "long and painful illness" and was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
See also
*
List of American slave traders
*
Slave trade in the United States
The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the mercantile trade of enslaved people within the United States. It was most significant af ...
*
History of slavery in Kentucky
The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state, until the end of the American Civil War, Civil War. In 1830, Slavery in the United States, enslaved African Americans represented 24 percent ...
*
Kidnapping into slavery in the United States
The pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping into slavery in the United States occurred in both free and slave states, and both fugitive slaves and free negroes were transported to slave markets and sold, often multiple times. There wer ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robards, Alfred O.
1824 births
1884 deaths
19th-century American slave traders
People from Kentucky