Venture Smith

Venture Smith (Birth name: Broteer Furro) (c. 1729 – 1805) was an African American farmer and craftsman. Smith was kidnapped when he was six and a half years old in West Africa and was taken to Anomabo on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to be sold into slavery. This autobiography is one of the earliest known examples of an autobiographical narrative in an entirely African American literary vericas, only about a dozen left behind first-hand accounts of their experiences.

Smith was renamed "Venture" by Robinson Mumford, his first white enslaver. Mumford decided to call him "Venture" because he considered purchasing him to be a business venture. Mumford bought Venture with four gallons of rum and a piece of calico. After regaining his freedom, Smith adopted his last name from Oliver Smith (the last person to enslave him). In his narrative, Smith describes the people in his native country as generally of great bodily stature, stout, and tall. And he reports that he personally was well over tall, weighed , and carried a axe for felling trees. This is confirmed by the archaeological project in 2007 and the runaway ad from 1754.

Smith's autobiographical narrative Early life Broteer (Venture Smith) was born in a place he recalls as Dukandarra in "Guinea"—a term that at the time referred to much of West Africa. Dukandarra, argues Chandler B. Saint, a historian with the Documenting Venture Smith Project, was probably in the Savannah region.

His father was Saungm Furro, the prince of Dukandarra. His mother was the first of his three wives, and Broteer was the first of her three children. She left Saungm Furro's village after he married another wife without her permission. However, polygamy was not uncommon in that country, especially among the rich, as every man was allowed to keep as many wives as he could maintain. On board, Broteer was purchased by Robinson Mumford of Rhode Island for four gallons of rum and a piece of calico and renamed "Venture." During the Middle Passage to Barbados, a smallpox outbreak took the lives of 60 of his fellow captives.

Life in the Americas and death Smith relays in his narrative that upon the ship's arrival in Barbados, all but four of the enslaved persons were sold to Barbadian planters on August 23, 1739. Smith and three others sailed on to Rhode Island, arriving early in the fall of 1739. Afterward, Smith was enslaved at Mumford's residence on Fishers Island, New York. Once there, Mumford forced Smith to work in the household. At this time, he showed his loyalty to his enslaver. When he received the keys to the trunks, he did not give them others, even if the enslaver's father asked him to do so. Because of his work, his enslaver increasingly trusted Smith. He served dutifully and was praised highly after faithfully guarding the contents of his enslaver's chest for an extended period. Nevertheless, Smith was subjected to intense and back-breaking labor at a young age and severe punishments. His enslaver's son, in particular, tormented him and abused him, and at one point, attempted to beat him with a pitchfork and ultimately tied him up and whipped him for his defiance. As he grew older, he endured more arduous tasks and severe punishments.

Due to this tumultuous series of events, Smith determined to liberate himself from the Stantons. The Smiths had two more children, Solomon in 1756 and Cuff in 1761. Smith was sold twice more. In 1760, he ended up enslaved by Col. Oliver Smith, who agreed to let him buy his freedom. Smith let Venture work for money when his labor was not required at home. Venture Smith tried to earn money by going out to work. Finally, in the spring of 1765, Venture Smith purchased his freedom for 71 pounds and two shillings, a notably exorbitant price. "

In 1775, Smith bought a farm at Haddam Neck, on the Salmon River, in Connecticut. By 1778, he had expanded the initial 10 acres to form a farm of at least 130 acres. Additionally, he made a living by fishing, whaling, farming his land, and trading in the Long Island basin. He lived the remainder of his life at Haddam Neck. and was the subject of a 2006 USA Today newspaper story.

Saidiya Hartman cites Venture Smith's narrative in her book, Lose Your Mother. She uses Smith's account to illustrate how rare it is for anyone to describe "the castle" at Anomabo where Smith was held until, he writes, "I and other prisoners were put on board a canoe, under our master, and rowed away to a vessel belonging to Rhode-Island, commanded by capt. Collingwood."

Russell Shorto's 2017 book, Revolution Song contains a chapter detailing Smith's life story.

Because Venture Smith's last enslaver, Oliver Smith, was an ancestor of guest Ted Danson, Venture was mentioned on the PBS television show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Season 4, Episode 3 "Puritans and Pioneers" which aired in 2017.

The autobiography is also mentioned in Percival Everett's novel James (2024), a re-imagining of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Chapter 15, James (the novel's central character) refers to the book, which he had rescued earlier from a wrecked steamboat. "And my books, once read, were not what I wanted, not what I needed. The so-called self related story of Venture Smith became more infuriating the more I examined the work, wondering how a five-year-old could have remembered so much detail that made such neat sense. I had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance."