In this article, the authors discuss how children can learn from runaway slave advertisements. The advertisements for runaway slaves that masters placed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century newspapers are among the documentary sources available to teachers for studying the lives of African-American slaves. Such advertisements often describe a number of characteristics: clothing, personal appearance, and bodily adornment; special trades or skills, linguistic, and ethnic or cultural origins of African-Americans. Scars from disease or punishment are mentioned. When students look at a set of these advertisements, they can detect differences in how African-Americans lived in various states and regions of the country. They might even begin to infer the thoughts and attitudes of both slave and master from these texts. The text of actual advertisements from this time period are included in the article. (Contains 14 endnotes and 3 figures.)