Untangling slavery’s roots: the yearslong search for ‘Angela’

Her name, as written down for the first time in a 17th-century muster, was Angelo.

She is now known to history as Angela, one of “20 ... odd” twice-captured Angolans who became the first enslaved people in British North America 400 years ago this summer.

Just behind the fallen Ambler Mansion here on Jamestown Island, a group of archaeologists with T-shirts rolled up to their shoulders are feathering away dust from what appears to be a trash heap – deer bones, broken wine bottles, jar shards. They are searching for evidence of the first African woman to be sold into slavery in the 13 British colonies.

Before arriving in what became Virginia, Angela, whose name also appears in the 1624 and 1625 censuses, survived