Steve:
Are you sure about slaves being in Antrim??? Perhaps you were thinking of Antrim, Pennsylvania.
"According to the 1840 census 287 African Americans lived in Antrim and Greencastle, and one can suppose that the population would be much higher in 1860. The majority of these free African Americans lived within the township, working as farm hands, artisans, or domestics. Their counterparts in Greencastle held the same sorts of occupations."
http://www.cr.nps.gov/ugrr/learn_b7.htmIndeed there was considerable anti-slavery sentiment in Belfast.
"All the more reason then to respect the courage shown by those radical citizens who, when celebrating Bastille day in the streets of Belfast July 1792, raised a large flag as part of the procession which had upon it a picture of chained slaves and followed it by another banner declaring ‘Can the African Slave trade though morally wrong be politically right?’ . All the more reason to respect the insight and courage shown by leaders in the Presbyterian church and by reforming individuals such as William Drennan and MaryAnne? McCracken?, by newspaper owners such as Samual Neilson and by the leading lights of the Society of United Irishmen such as Thomas Russell. They were tapping into a dissenting tradition in the north of Ireland which had for many decades seen the equality of all men before their maker as crucial to the Christian faith. It was a philosophy which had informed the work of the Saintfield-born and Killyleagh-educated Professor Francis Hutcheson, for instance. Hutcheson had criticised slavery from Christian principles as early as the 1730’s, whilst working at Glasgow university. Elsewhere in Ireland the famous peer and United Irishman Lord Edward Fitzgerald had as his servant and constant companion, a black man who had rescued him from a battlefield during Fitzgerald’s soldiering career in the American war of Independence. Here was proof that black and white could co-exist as friends if still within the traditional structures of social hierarchy.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the movement for what we would now call fair trade in the north of Ireland in the late 18th century was the presence in Belfast for several months of the freed slave Oloudah Equiano. He had been born in the part of Africa where Nigeria now stands and at 10 had been sold into slavery. In the course of a varied and resourceful career he had managed to gain his own freedom and by the 1790’s he had been baptised as a Christian and had written an account of his experiences which was selling widely throughout Britain.
In 1791, Equaino came to lodge with Samuel Neilson in Belfast and went on what might be called a promotional tour of the north, speaking to church groups, appearing at local bookshops and advertising his account at Neilson’s other key business – his drapery firm. Between May 1791 and January 1792 no less than 1,900 copies of his book were purchased in Ireland, almost as many as of the 1790’s classic, The Rights of Man by Tom Paine. When you think that even today in the era of mass publishing and marketing, a local book on an ethical and political topic will do pretty well to sell 2,000 copies, this was an achievement of immense significance and it indicates the importance of the anti-slavery movement at the time. "
http://www.greens-in.org/tiki-print_article.php?articleId=582I could be very wrong here but I do not think you will find slaves having been in Antrim, Ireland except for those of St. Patrick's time and the usage of the term by the United Irishmen.
Pat
