Near this site, enslaved Africans disembarked at Perth Amboy, the principal port in eastern New Jersey. During colonial times, numerous slave ships such as the Catherine, William, Africa, and Sally were present in Raritan Bay, sending their captives onto the city pier, now the present-day site of the Historic Ferry Slip. In one day alone, the Catherine arrived with 240 enslaved people, leaving 17 dead at sea and depositing 130 survivors in Perth Amboy. In Africa, traders captured approximately 24 million children, women, and men, half of whom died on the march to coastal prisons or within the prisons while awaiting transport across the Atlantic. Chained and tightly packed in dark, filthy, stifling hot cargo holds, 12 million endured ocean crossings that often took months. During these voyages, known as the Middle Passage, 2 million people died from disease, malnutrition, dehydration, abuse, and suicide. African slavery in New Jersey began with the early Dutch settlement named New Netherland. Ideally suited as a maritime port of entry, Perth Amboy, the colonial capital of East Jersey, became an arrival location for ships in the trans-Atlantic human trade. Because the colony of New Jersey imposed no tariff on the importation of captive Africans, many traders disembarked their human cargo at this location, avoiding taxation while supplying buyers in New Jersey and other colonies. In 1790, New Jersey's enslaved African population was 11,423. It was the last Northern state to adopt gradual emancipation in 1804. By 1854, the Eagleswood section in Perth Amboy had become a major station of the Underground Railroad. Slavery was not completely abolished until 1865 by the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 2019, Perth Amboy was designated a "Site of Memory" by the UNESCO Slave Route Project.
