What Major Insurance Company Got its Start Selling Slave Insurance?

Now the Third-Largest Insurance Company in America

ButtonwoodTree at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

A mutual insurance company is one wholly owned by its policyholders. Consider it self-funding as opposed to being dependent on outside investors. The concept originated in England in the late 17th century to cover losses from fires. Benjamin Franklin founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses From Loss by Fire in 1752, the first mutual insurance company in America. Another industry saw the advantages of a consumers’ cooperative, the business of enslavement. There were frequent losses during transport, childbirth, and due to disease, and being literally worked to death. Some firms specialized in offering “future insurance” covering enslaved people, particularly females of childbearing age. The advertisement below for a slave auction highlights the eight women covered by future insurance.

Replica of 1848 slavery auction poster on display at Michigan Street Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York

You may be unfamiliar with the term “bud’n out,” which meant the girls were in puberty, between 8 and 12.5 years old. They could be used as wished for producing more children, pleasing their master, or working in brothels, which is why they were…