author
Peter Wheeler
1789–1842
Born into slavery in New Jersey, he later told his own story in a memoir that blends escape, hard travel, religious conversion, and a direct appeal to the antislavery cause. His voice gives readers a rare first-person window into Black life and resistance in the early United States.
1 Audiobook
Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living
by Peter Wheeler, C. Edwards (Charles Edwards) Lester
About the author
Peter Wheeler was an African American memoirist best known for Chains and Freedom; or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living, published in 1839. Library and book-record sources identify him as living from 1789 to 1842, and the book presents his life as a journey through enslavement, seafaring, and spiritual struggle toward freedom.
A historical marker from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation says he was born in 1789, escaped slavery in 1806, and later settled near Spencertown, New York, around 1825. It also notes that his story was recorded with the help of abolitionist Charles Edwards Lester, suggesting the book was meant not only as personal testimony but also as an argument against slavery.
Today, Wheeler is remembered mainly through that autobiography, which survives in major library and public-domain collections. Even with only a small paper trail, his account remains important for the immediacy of its witness and for the way it links one man’s life story to the wider fight for freedom.