A good likeness of Sancho, a negro : newspaper advertisement.

Classified advertisement in the September 30, 1807 edition of the semi-weekly Boston newspaper Columbian Centinel; the accompanying silhouette portrait of Sancho is probably the earliest likeness of a fugitive enslaved person.
Sancho escaped from a Mississippi plantation and was presumed to have made his way north. His enslaver, Winthrop Sargent (1753-1820), offers a reward of up to $100 for Sancho's return and presents an extraordinary portrait of Sancho, "a good likeness," presumably made from a cut paper silhouette.
Sancho is described as "a Negro man, thirty years of age, about 5 feet high, very black complexion ... & a fast walker." He "had learned the trade of a Barber and is in every respect a most accomplished servant for a gentleman or a family; was born and educated in his master's house; endeared to him and his mistress and his own wife and children, as well as the numerous blacks of his Master's Plantations, by long, affectionate and faithful services." Sargent suggests that Sancho was so loyal that he must have "been inveigled away by some artful villains for their own use."