What Major Insurance Company Got its Start Selling Slave Insurance?
Now the Third-Largest Insurance Company in America
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.
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 described as “comely.” The international slave trade had been banned in 1808 and the demand for slaves was being met domestically, often via forced breeding or rape.
The Nautilus Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York was chartered in 1841 as a joint stock organization, specializing in fire and marine insurance. Its first president, James de Peyster Ogden, had previously worked with merchants LeRoy, Bayard, and McEvers, who specialized in transporting goods across the Atlantic and to the Caribbean. They didn’t carry enslaved people but did feed them, sending dried and salted fish (cod) to the plantations in the West Indies. Ogden also worked for several years in Liverpool, which supplied the ships equipped to outrun the British and American navies so that the now-illegal slave trade could continue. He held the post of U.S. consul for Liverpool, generally overlooking Liverpool’s contribution to the continuing slave trade.
Ogden returned to New York and served as the first president of the Atlantic Dock Company, chartered by New York State on May 6, 1840. The company developed the Brooklyn Harbor by erecting docks, warehouses, and a basin for deep-water ships, which today is known as Red Hook and South Brooklyn. Ogden was never a slaver but had worked in slave-adjacent industries his entire career. He knew the business inside and out and was the perfect person to lead the offering of future insurance to enslavers.
The Nautilus charter required them to raise $300,000 to provide life insurance, which they did by 1843. On April 12, 1845, the company formed a board of trustees comprised of what one historian called “some of the most influential merchants and ‘captains of industry’ in the City of New York.” In June 1846, Nautilus gave up its marine business to other companies. By the following March, it had issued 1,000 life insurance policies, a third of which were for enslaved individuals. On April 5, 1849, Nautilus successfully petitioned the New York State legislature to change its name to the New York Life Insurance Company. They continued to sell future policies until 1848, when they discontinued the practice.
New York Life Insurance Company is currently the third-largest insurance company and the largest mutual insurance company in America. Their descriptions of their history make no mention of its beginnings, insuring enslavers against loss. The New York Times ran an article in 2017 about that history, which is generally unknown. I have a friend who worked for New York Life Insurance Company for decades and had no knowledge of their past.
Not only New York Life, but America was built on the practice of slavery and the rape and breeding of slaves. Reflect on the captains of industry serving on the insurance company’s board of directors. Other companies that sold slave insurance included Aetna and U.S. Life. In 2000, Aetna issued a formal apology, saying they “may have” sold such policies. That apology could use a little work.
“Aetna has long acknowledged that for several years shortly after its founding in 1853 that the company may have insured the lives of slaves. We express our deep regret over any participation at all in this deplorable practice.”
New York Life has also acknowledged its past. Here is a portion of that statement.
“As a 180-year-old company, New York Life’s history is interwoven with our nation’s history, including its worst periods. For two years, between 1846–1848, New York Life sold policies on the lives of enslaved people. Our company has publicly acknowledged and is deeply sorry for this period of our history.”
I love your work but it makes me sick. Not you but to think I’ve been contributing unknowingly to these companies. Yuck. We have to keep shining a light on this mess. We cannot pretend it didn’t happen.
Thank you for this article. Would love to see a follow-up on some of the famous families of US history who made their money in either the slave trade or the opium trade.