African Americans in Union County: Slave and Free – an account of slavery, slaveholders, and abolition: the political machinations to maintain the institution of slavery in the early Commonwealth and country; the continuation of slavery in the form of “indentured servants” or “term slaves” into the mid-1800s; the politics and practices in Union County and local
slaveholders; the personal story of Charles Bell who fled slavery in Virginia to freedom in central Pennsylvania; and the free African Americans who in the 19th and early 20th centuries worked in the county’s iron furnaces, as coopers, liverymen, and more.