Mellon Scholars 2026: Aniyah Williams – The Library Company of Philadelphia

Mellon Scholars Summer Program – Subject Guides

Moving Against the Boundaries: Black Travel and Agency in the 19th Century

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Overview:

In the 19th century, travel was vastly different from how we understand it now. We take it for granted that movement is now readily available with various transportation methods anyone can use. However, for 19th Century African Americans traveling was rarely just leisurely movement. For Black figures in the 19th century, travel was an important way to inquire about the world, dedicate time to work, spread ideas, build faith, and claim agency.
This subject guide focuses on 19th Century Black Travelers Nancy Prince and William Wells Brown. These Black travelers’ narratives show how movement shaped their lives and their work. Nancy Prince used travel to spread education and religion in Russia and Jamaica. She was also a working class woman who used her work to support herself and her endeavors. William Wells Brown’s travel began with forced movement under slavery but later it also became his path to freedom and his platform for abolition work in Europe.
My main project will use the experiences from Nancy Prince and William Wells Brown to analyze Black Travel and how they promoted Agency in the 19th Century.

About the Author:

Aniyah Farrow Williams is a junior History major at Temple University, where she has developed a deep passion for African American history and the preservation of Black stories that have too often been overlooked. Through her academic work, she is committed to learning from archival sources, engaging with historical memory, and understanding how the past continues to shape communities today.

Keywords

Contributors

Nancy Prince
William Wells Brown
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
The West End Museum

Subject Headings

African Americans, Travel, 19th century
Fugitive slaves
Slave narratives
Freemen Travel
Citizenship
Abolition, (or Abolitionist)
Slavery, United States
Black women travelers
Missionaries, Jamaica
Russia, Description and travel
Great Britain, Description and travel
France, Description and travel
African American agency
Antislavery movements

Access Terms

Genre Terms: Slave narratives
Genre Terms: Black Travel writing
Genre Terms: Autobiographies
Genre Terms: Black Travel Narratives
Provenance Evidence: former owner (George F. Young, Charles L. Blockson)

Annotated Bibliography

Resources at LCP:

Nancy Prince, Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince (Boston, 1853).

This narrative is Nancy Prince’s travel writing/autobiography. Prince describes her early life, her family background, her travels and work life in Russia, and her later mission work in Jamaica. This source helps show how travel gave Prince a way to build independence. She found agency in spreading her faith abroad and supporting newly freed people after emancipation. It is one of the main sources for understanding how travel worked for Black women in the 19th century and specifically how Nancy travel promoted agency within her own life.

Wells Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (Boston, 1848). George F. Young, former owner.

This narrative explains William Wells Brown’s early life under slavery and how he used travel to escape to freedom. Brown describes being moved around by enslavers and witnessing the cruelty of the slavery. His escape near Cincinnati shows how travel became a path toward self-definition. This source is useful because Brown’s experiences show how travel worked under slavery and also how travel/movement was used to escape the horrors of slavery.

Wells Brown, Three Years in Europe, or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met (London, 1852). Charles L. Blockson, former owner.

This source follows William Wells Brown’s travels through Europe after he escaped slavery. Brown writes about Liverpool, Dublin, London, Paris, and Scotland. His travel gave him a larger audience for his abolition work and allowed him to speak about American slavery outside of the United States. This source helps show how Brown used international travel to build influence and support himself through lectures and writing. This challenged American slavery from abroad.

Resources at Local Museums:

“The Abolitionist Movement.” (Philadelphia, 2026). Exhibition panel. Museum of the American Revolution.

This exhibition panel connects abolitionist activism to American ideas of freedom and equality. It explains how abolitionists used newspapers, speeches, and public arguments to point out the hypocrisy of supporting freedom abroad while allowing slavery at home. This source helps support my project because it gives background on the abolitionist world that William Wells Brown entered after escaping slavery.

“Social Action and International Mission” (Philadelphia, 2026). Exhibition panel. Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

This exhibition panel focuses on Richard Allen and the role of Black religious communities in social action. It explains how Bethel Church supported abolition, education, community care, and international missions. This source connects to my project because it shows how Black travel and mobility could be tied to faith and community building. Allen wanting the AME church in other countries to teach his religious messages shows that Nancy Prince’s mission work abroad was a power concept that many other abolitionists also followed.

Other Resources:

Newspaper announcement for Nancy Prince’s lecture on “manners and customs of Russia.” (ca. 1854). National Park Service.
This newspaper announcement shows Nancy Prince using her travel experience in Russia as a public lecture topic. It advertised her lecture on the “manners and customs of Russia”. This source shows her public work had reached a widespread audience.

Reference Books:

Fish, Cheryl J. Black and White Women’s Travel Narratives: Antebellum Explorations. University Press of Florida, 2004.
Fish’s book helps support my project because it looks at travel writing, race, gender, and mobility in the antebellum period. This source is especially useful for Nancy Prince because Fish discusses how Black women travelers used movement and writing to speak with authority.

Pryor, Elizabeth Stordeur. Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Pryor’s book helps explain the larger argument behind this project. She shows that Black travel in the 19th century was connected to citizenship and freedom. This source is useful because it gives historical context for Nancy Prince and William Wells Brown’s individual narratives. It also supports the idea that Black movement was not ordinary travel. Black travel had to be planned and was calculated because of Criminalization of Black Mobility. Despite this, Black Travel in the 19th century showed agency because of the way travelers worked around racism and spread their works and ideas anyways.