List of Famous people with last name Northup

Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Hebron, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. ; there he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.

Anne Meagher Northup is an American Republican politician and educator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. From 1997 to 2007, she represented the Louisville-centered 3rd congressional district of Kentucky in the United States House of Representatives, where she served on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. She lost reelection to Democrat John Yarmuth in the 2006 election. She then ran for governor, losing by 15 points to embattled Governor of Kentucky Ernie Fletcher in the Republican primary election for the 2007 Kentucky gubernatorial election. Prior to her election to the United States House of Representatives, Northup had served in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

Harry Northup is an American actor and poet. As an actor, he made frequent appearances in the films of Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme.