Cornelius Sinclair (c. 1813 to unknown) was an African American child kidnapped in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

in August 1825 by

Patty Cannon Patty Cannon, whose birth name may have been Lucretia Patricia Hanly (c. 1759/1760 or 1769 – May 11, 1829), was an illegal slave trader, murderer and the co-leader of the Cannon–Johnson Gang of Maryland–Delaware. The group operated for a ...

's gang. He was one of a number of children kidnapped that summer and later transported south, to be sold into slavery. Sinclair was sold in

Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population o ...

in October 1825 and subsequently freed in March 1827 through the efforts of several Methodist ministers, Robert L. Kennon and Joshua Boucher, who filed a lawsuit on his behalf. John Gayle of the Alabama Supreme Court presided over the trial, where a jury of slave-owners in Tuscaloosa found in favor of Sinclair's freedom. When he returned to Philadelphia he testified as part of the successful prosecution of one of his kidnappers. The African American newspaper the '' African Observer'' provided coverage of the efforts to free Sinclair and prosecute the kidnappers.

References

African-American people Kidnapped American children {{US-crime-bio-stub