Austin Steward

author

Austin Steward

1794–1860

Born into slavery and determined to shape his own future, he became a businessman, abolitionist, and memoirist whose life story offers a vivid first-person view of slavery and freedom in early America.

1 Audiobook

Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West

Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West

by Austin Steward

About the author

Austin Steward was an African American abolitionist and writer, born in Prince William County, Virginia, around 1793 or 1794. As a child he was taken with the family that enslaved him to New York, where he later gained his freedom after years of resistance and hardship.

He went on to build a life as a businessman in Rochester, New York, and became active in antislavery work. Steward is best known for his 1857 memoir, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman, which recounts his experiences in bondage and his life afterward with clarity, force, and personal conviction.

His story also connects to the Wilberforce Colony in Canada West, a Black settlement project he helped lead during a difficult period for people fleeing slavery and racial violence in the United States. Today he is remembered for preserving an important firsthand account of slavery and for the determination he showed in creating a public life after emancipation.