He wasn't the first to be declared a slave for life. Perhaps he was the first to be enslaved to a black man but a 1640 Virginia court decision ruled, "Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath . . . brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away . . . the court doth . . . order [that] the first serve out their times with their master according to their indentures, . . . and that [the] third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere."
History is great, if only it were true.