Missing Celebrities Whose Disappearances Remain a Mystery

Soloman Northup

Solomon Northup was born in Minerva, New York, in 1808 to freed parents. Northup was a free black man who was illegally enslaved for twelve years before regaining his freedom. In his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave: The Narrative of Solomon Northup, Northup recounted his experiences, a citizen of New York who was kidnapped in Washington in 1841, and was taken from near Red River, Louisiana, in 1853. Northup disappeared from the historical record in the late 1850s, and historians are divided over what happened to him. Some say he died of natural causes, others claim he was kidnapped back into slavery, while still others believe his political outspokenness led to his murder.