Venture Smith was captured as a youth and sold into slavery in New England in 1739. He was able to buy his freedom in 1765 even though his owner had cheated him of money on several occasions. Smith would later purchase the freedom of his wife and children, although he also bought several people he enslaved as workers. In his later years, he recounted the story of his life in an autobiography, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself, that was published in Connecticut in 1798.