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Collection Data
- Description
- The Nautilus Insurance Company (predecessor of the New York Life Insurance Company) was one of several insurance companies that sold policies to enslavers to insure their enslaved persons against damages or death. The Nautilus Insurance Company slavery era ledgers contain information on insurance policies for enslaved persons insured between 1845-1848.
The Nautilus Insurance Company Slavery Era ledgers consist of a total of eight volumes: four policy registers; a death claim book; a volume listing losses for death benefits paid; and two indices containing names of all insurance applicants. The policy registers contain names of persons, including enslaved persons, who were insured between 1845 and 1848. There are also lists prepared in 2001 and 2002, one of which is a printout from a database developed by the California Department of Insurance entitled "Slavery Era Insurance Policies Registry", that contains information from documents submitted by the New York Life Insurance company as well as other insurance companies that had insured enslaved persons.
The four registers, dating from December 24, 1845 through April 19, 1848, encompass policy numbers 3-3253. Of the first one thousand policies written by Nautilus, 339 were on the lives of enslaved persons, and they were usually written for less than $500, for a term of one year. In addition to the policy number and date, other information in the ledgers includes applicant's name and residence; name of insured along with his residence, age, and occupation; amount insured; premium; annual payment; the length of term and expiration date; and remarks. Most of the insured enslaved persons were skilled laborers; among their occupations are boatman, carpenter, fireman, laborer, and miner.
During the research process, the company placed slips of paper in the ledgers to bookmark the pages which list policies taken out on enslaved persons. These bookmarks have been left in the volumes in order to expedite location of the policies; the page and policy numbers are written on the slips. The information from the ledgers can also be found in the "Slavery Era Insurance Policies Registry"; it lists the name of the enslaved person (in alphabetical order); residence; other identifying information such as policy number, age and occupation; the name and residence of the enslaver; and the insurance company. New York Life Insurance Company submitted the names of 484 slaves and 233 slaveholders.
The Death Claim book, organized chronologically, lists the policy number; date of policy; name and age of insured; date of death of insured; cause and place of death; name, occupation and residence of policy holder; the date of payment; the term; amount paid; total premium received; loss number; and location of life insurance office. Enslaved persons who were insured are identified by a lower case "s" (in script) following the name of the individual in the "Life Insured" column.
The volume entitled "Losses/Amount Paid/Death Benefit Numbers 1 to 8000" notes the "loss" and the policy numbers, date of death, amount paid, and policy year. The word "slave" was written in red ink in the column labeled "year of issue and age". There are two volumes which contain indices of the names of all applicants from the beginning of the company (1845) through April 1, 1888, as well as the loss and policy numbers, date of death, amount paid, year of issue, and age of insured.
Additionally, there are four lists prepared by the New York Life Insurance Company, in October 2001, in compliance with the information requested by the California statute. One is a list of enslaved persons, alphabetically arranged, for whom there were policies with the Nautilus Life Insurance Company; a second list contains names of enslavers, beneficiaries, or policyholders. There is also a list of cancelled policies for enslaved persons as well as a listing of "possible" enslaved persons (denoting that the company was not certain that the individuals were enslaved persons).
- Names
- Nautilus Insurance Company (Creator)
- New York Life Insurance Company (Donor)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1845 - 2002
- Library locations
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
- Shelf locator: Sc MG 715
- Topics
- African Americans -- Reparations
- Insurance companies -- United States
- Slave records
- Slaveholders -- United States
- Enslaved persons -- United States
- Genres
- Documents
- Registers (Lists)
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: The Nautilus Insurance Company (predecessor of the New York Life Insurance Company) was one of several insurance companies that sold policies to enslavers to insure their enslaved persons against damages or death. The company sold these policies for approximately two and a half years from 1845 until 1848, at which time the board of trustees voted to end the sale of such policies.
Beginning in the early 1990s, legislation had been introduced in Congress as part of the growing reparations movement, demanding an inquiry into slavery and its continuing legacies. In 2000, the California State Legislature passed a statute authored by former Senator Tom Hayden entitled "Slavery Era Insurance Policies". California thus became the first state to gather information from insurance companies that had conducted business in that state and that had issued policies covering enslaved persons' injuries and deaths. In October 2001, following hearings held by the Legislature, approximately eight insurance companies reported findings from the investigations that they conducted into their archival records. The insurers' responses were recorded in the report to the California Legislature in May 2002. Of the eight companies, only three, New York Life Insurance Company, United States Life Insurance Company, and Aetna Life Insurance Company, were able to locate ledgers containing the names of insured enslaved persons and the enslavers who had insured them. Although most of the other companies had insured either enslaved persons or ships involved in the slave trade, they retained few, if any, records containing the names of individual enslaved persons.
- Acquisition: Gift of New York Life Insurance Company, May 2002.
- Funding: Digitization made possible by the philanthropic support of the New York Life Foundation.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 1.75 linear feet (6 boxes)
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Identifiers
- Other local Identifier: Sc MG 715
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b15560929
- MSS Unit ID: 24140
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): b81c5820-5884-013b-1018-0242ac110002