Jeffrey Brace

About the Author

Jeffrey Brace, born Boyrereau Brinch in 1744 in present-day Guinea, was an African man who endured the unimaginable horrors of the transatlantic slave trade before forging a life of resilience in colonial America. Captured as a teenager, he survived multiple voyages across the Atlantic, brutal enslavement in the West Indies and New England, and ultimately earned his freedom through service in the American Revolutionary War. Brace's extraordinary memoir, 'The Blind African Slave: Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace,' published in 1810, stands as one of the earliest firsthand accounts of the slave experience, offering poignant insights into identity, survival, and the quest for liberty. Later in life, he settled in Vermont, where he worked as a farmer and storyteller, leaving a legacy that illuminates the human cost of slavery and the indomitable spirit of those who resisted it.