author
1789–1842
Best known for the 1839 life story Chains and Freedom, this early Black autobiographical voice tells of enslavement, escape, seafaring work, religious struggle, and hard-won independence in the northern United States.
by Peter Wheeler, C. Edwards (Charles Edwards) Lester
Peter Wheeler was a Black American memoirist whose life was recorded in Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living (1839). Reliable reference sources describe him as a fugitive slave who later worked as a mariner and domestic servant, and his book stands as an early example of the escaped-slave narrative.
Sources available here agree that he was born around 1789 and died on March 2, 1842. Accounts connected with historical markers in New York say he escaped slavery in 1806, later settled near Spencertown around 1825, and published his autobiography in 1839.
Because confirmed biographical details are limited, much of what is known today comes through that narrative itself and brief historical reference entries. His story remains notable for preserving a rare first-person account of northern slavery and of one man’s determined search for freedom.