Cornelius was enslaved at the Bowman House in the early 1770s. Almost nothing is known about him, and he appears in only three documents. In November 1773, a receipt records a “pair of leather breeches for Cornelius.” The next year, a receipt for a pair of shoes for him sits beside one for Cicero’s shoes. A third, undated receipt shows Captain Samuel Miller paying Jonathan Bowman for Cornelius’s labor, seventeen and a half days of it. Cicero worked for Miller five days.

Cornelius’s labor was valuable enough to be hired out, and Bowman was paid for it. We do not know his age, where he came from, or what happened to him. Cornelius and Cicero likely shared work, clothing purchases, and daily life in an isolated household. Cornelius’s story is mostly a record of what is missing, and that absence is part of what slavery did to the people it held.