How could there be so many term slaves in Pennsylvania in 1850, seventy years after passage of the Gradual Abolition Act?
A. The “hundreds of children of slaves” that were still around in 1850 came as a result of many severe abuses, misunderstandings and simple disregard for the law. Some of the most blatant and frequent abuses occurred in Lancaster County, where the children of slaves were themselves registered as children of slaves for another twenty-eight years. This practice obviously would have set up an endless cycle, which would have been contrary to the spirit of the law–yet few or none were challenged in court. Some of these abuses were possibly a result of a misunderstanding of the law, and some were justified by the slaveholders by the pregnancy of term slaves. In the latter cases, additional years were added to the terms of women in bondage who became pregnant while serving their twenty-eight year term, and their children were in turn registered as slaves. See the entries for Mary H. Thompson, of Colerain Township, Lancaster County, for the slave child Saul, who was registered in 1830 as the
