Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated Past

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In its 19th-century beginnings, New York Life Insurance sold 508
policies covering slaves. Their descendants are grappling with it.

By RACHEL L. SWARNS | DEC. 18, 2016

An ad taken out by Nautilus Mutual Life Insurance in 1847 in the Daily Democrat newspaper in Louisville, K.Y. offering slave policies. Nautilus was renamed New York Life Insurance in 1849.

 

 

New York Life, the nation’s third-largest life insurance company, opened in Manhattan’s financial district in the spring of 1845. The firm possessed a prime address — 58 Wall Street — and a board of trustees populated by some of the city’s wealthiest merchants, bankers and railroad magnates.

Sales were sluggish that year. So the company looked south.

There, in Richmond, Va., an enterprising New York Life agent sold more than 30 policies in a single day in February 1846. Soon, advertisements began appearing in newspapers from Wilmington, N.C., to Louisville as the New York-based company encouraged Southerners to buy insurance to protect their most precious commodity: their slaves.

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