The Library Company of Philadelphia

Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Library Company of Philadelphia

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo by William Hoare

On the afternoon of my lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I was the guest of the Library Company of Philadelphia.  Benjamin Franklin helped found the company in 1731 as a cooperative, lending library for the enlightened citizens of the city.  Later, it was transformed into what it is today, a leading research library with an extensive African American history collection.  While I knew this, I was still surprised when I arrived to see that Phil Lapansky, curator of the collection, had laid out an 1734 edition of the book on Ayuba Suleiman Diallo that was written by Maryland lawyer Thomas Bluett.  I used the book to write about Diallo's life in the first chapter of From Slave Ship to Harvard.  I had never seen the physical book; I had relied on a digital copy.  I didn't know it had this fold-out in front.  Like Yarrow Mamout, Diallo was a Fulani Muslim and was brought to Annapolis, Maryland on a slave ship.  He arrived twenty-two years before Yarrow and soon came to the attention of important men.  After a few unhappy years as a slave in Maryland, Diallo was sent to England where he became somewhat of a celebrity and was freed.  He was painted by William Hoare, a student of Thomas Gainsborough.  Hoare's portrait is the frontispiece to Bluett's book.  It and Peale's portrait of Yarrow appear to be the only two portraits by major artists of men who experienced the horrors of being "cargo" on a slave ship.  Diallo's portrait is owned by the Qatar Museums Authority and is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.