Hannah Crafts

Hannah Bond, also known by her pen name Hannah Crafts (born 1830s), was an American writer who escaped from slavery in North Carolina about 1857 and went to the North. Bond settled in New Jersey, likely married Thomas Vincent, and became a teacher. She wrote The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts after gaining freedom. It is the only known novel by an enslaved woman.

Written between 1853 and 1861, the novel was published in 2002 for the first time after Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University professor of African-American literature and history, purchased the manuscript and had it authenticated. It rapidly became a bestseller.

Bond's identity was documented in 2013 by Gregg Hecimovich of Furman University, who found that she had been owned by John Hill Wheeler of Murfreesboro, North Carolina. He had identified many details of her life. Gates and other major scholars have supported his conclusions. This was part of the evidence found by Hecimovich that confirmed "Hannah Crafts" had lived at the Wheeler plantation. Bond apparently was able to read and to use the library, as her novel shows influences from other literature; she reflects elements of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott.

Other scholars, including investigator Joe Nickell, who authenticated the manuscript, had previously tied Crafts to John H. Wheeler. She had accurately described him as the US Minister to Nicaragua and his duties, as shown by his own diary. Believing that the novel was autobiographical, scholars speculated from its plot that Crafts had married a Methodist minister and lived in New Jersey. Her married name may have been Hannah Vincent, the wife of Thomas Vincent, as they were both listed in the census records of New Jersey in 1870 and 1880.