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| 1016554 | Item available |
No aspect of America's history has so captured the nation's imagination as the frontier experience. From the beginning of the 17th century, the new American challenged and conquered a vast continent, spectacularly rich in land and natural resources. Black pioneers shared in building the new country, but a national image which portrays successive waves of westward-moving pioneers fails to reflect the full extent of black participation in the development of America's frontiers. The subject of this book--Frank McWhorter aka Free Frank, a black pioneer--played an active role in the development of three successive frontiers as the new nation moved westward in the era between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Few contemporaries shared his distinctive experiences--an Afro-American frontiersman who as a slave established his own extractive mining operation and then, after purchasing his own freedom, was a frontier land speculator, commercial farmer, stockraiser, town founder, and town developer. Free Frank's diverse business activities were motivated by an overwhelming drive to buy his family's freedom. Over a period of forty years he purchased sixteen family members, including himself, from slavery.