Austin Reed (1823?–?) is the author (as Rob Reed) of '' The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict'', reportedly the first prison memoir by an

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

. Born in Rochester, New York State, Reed was apprenticed to a local farmer in 1832. After being arrested for arson against the farmer's property, he was confined from 1833 to 1839 to the New York House of Refuge, a

juvenile detention Juvenile may refer to: In general *Juvenile status, or minor (law), prior to adulthood * Juvenile (organism) Music * Juvenile (rapper) (born 1975), stage name of American rapper Terius Gray *''Juveniles'', a 2020 studio album by the band Kingsw ...

facility in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, from which he escaped several times. Indentured to a farmer in

Rockland County Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the county's population is 338,329, making it the state's ...

, New York, in 1839, he soon returned to Rochester, where he was convicted of larceny the following year. He went on to serve several terms in the

Auburn State Prison Auburn Correctional Facility is a state prison on State Street in Auburn, New York, United States. It was built on land that was once a Cayuga village. It is classified as a maximum security facility. History In 1816, assemblyman John H. Bea ...

and the Clinton State Prison. Released in 1866, he received a pardon from New York's governor, Samuel J. Tilden, in 1876. Reed lived until at least 1895, according to a

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

letter preserved in New York State records. Reed's memoir, written around 1858–59 when he was still incarcerated, was acquired by the

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts and ...

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

and authenticated by Yale scholar Caleb Smith, who published an edition of the manuscript in early 2016.Tom Overton
"The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict by Austin Reed review – the first African American prison memoir"
(review), ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 24 February 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reed, Austin Writers from Rochester, New York African-American non-fiction writers American non-fiction writers 1820s births Year of death missing