What was the date that slavery ended in Pennsylvania, officially and unofficially. Also, what was the method?
A. No one knows for sure exactly when the last Pennsylvania slave crossed from being held in bondage to complete freedom, whether through manumission, legal action, or death. The census of 1850 was the first national census to record no slaves being held for life in the state (see note below), however there were still, in 1850, hundreds of children of slaves, who we now refer to as “term slaves,” who were in bondage until their 28th birthday, in accordance with the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Officially, slavery ended in Pennsylvania with the state’s ratification of the 13th amendment to the Constitution on February 3, 1865. For more information on gradual abolition, see our text of the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Note: The census of 1850 reported no slaves-for-life in the state of Pennsylvania, yet some researchers have questioned whether that is true. They note that the 1850 census was the first census in Pennsylvania that had no column in which
