Maryland Freedom Seekers on the Underground Railroad

By Jenny Masur

Journey with the unsung heroes of the Underground Railroad. Maryland was the starting point of many freedom seekers. They embarked on the perilous journey from slavery to freedom in whatever way they could. John Thompson signed onto a whaling ship. James Watkins sailed to England and became a lecturer on slavery. Hester Norman fled, was caught, and was rescued by the Black community in her husband's Pennsylvania town. They used ruses, found allies and eluded slave catchers, but lived in constant fear until they obtained their freedom papers. In their adventures, these freedom seekers used initiative, determination, and courage. These qualities served them well as they achieved freedom. Jenny Masur tells their stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jan 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781439676776

Jenny Masur

Jenny Masur is a native Washingtonian. She worked for seventeen years for the National Park Service as national capital region manager for the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Her doctorate is in anthropology, and her interest in individual lives dates from the book Jewish Grandmothers , which she coedited while in graduate school. Her respect for the heroes of the Underground Railroad continues to grow.

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Introduction

FLIGHT FROM SLAVERY IN MARYLAND TO FREEDOM

Maryland is a state particularly useful for studying escapes on the Underground Railroad. It has thousands of documented incidents of daring escape attempts, permanent or otherwise, from its colonial period through emancipation. Maryland’s rate of successful escapes is perhaps higher than any other state’s except Kentucky and Virginia. Out of slavery in Maryland came such accomplished and distinguished individuals as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, James W.C. Pennington and Samuel Ringgold Ward.

The colony of Maryland was founded in 1632, with its first settlers arriving in 1634. Maryland’s geographic makeup includes a western mountain region, the southern plains, the piedmont plateau and part of the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore. Vast differences in these regions showcase the varied experiences in slave escapes. Formative in Maryland’s development were the Chesapeake Bay, which divides it in half, and the Potomac River, which divides it from Virginia. Many Marylanders were watermen accustomed to navigating its waterways, a skill useful for escape.

Maryland has a long, complicated history of the enslavement of Black people. The first man of African descent to arrive in Maryland was Mathias de Sousa, who entered the colony in 1634 as an indentured servant, not as a bondsman. Maryland did not legalize slavery until Maryland planters began importing more and more Africans to enslave as cheap labor for their new cash crop, tobacco. To legitimize their slavery, in 1664, Maryland passed a law equating race with enslavement and making the enslaved condition hereditary. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has identified Annapolis, Baltimore and Oxford as documented entry points for Africans coming into Maryland. By the eighteenth century, slavery existed in every corner of the state but was concentrated most heavily in the lower Western Shore.

Elisa Greenwell, woman of mystery, escaped from the residence of William Edelen of Leonardtown, St. Mary’s County, in 1859. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization identified Annapolis as a documented entry point for Africans brought for enslavement. VisitAnnapolis.org.

Slavery in Maryland differed from slavery farther south. Holdings of land and groupings of enslaved populations tended to be smaller. Most slaveholding families had small to mid-sized farms and maintained a workforce ranging from ten to twenty individuals. The few exceptions include those plantation communities owned by two state governors, Edward Lloyd and Charles Carnan Ridgely, with more than three hundred enslaved people tending to hundreds of acres of cash crops. As opposed to states situated in the Deep South, Maryland had the advantage of bordering the free state of Pennsylvania, which could serve as a conduit to liberty in other northern cities and states. By the nineteenth century, Maryland had a sizable free Black population ready to collude with fleeing bondsmen.

To offset these advantages, however, because its enslaved population had become self-perpetuating, Maryland had a domestic slave trade threatening the stability of enslaved African Americans. In the mid-nineteenth century, Maryland farmers shifted away from tobacco cultivation in favor of mixed agriculture, particularly grains. These crops did not demand the large enslaved workforce needed for intensive, year-round care. As cotton production increased in the Deep South, there was an increased demand for enslaved bodies to produce the crop. Entrepreneurs in the domestic slave trade took advantage of this change. Starting in the 1830s, companies like Franklin & Armfield of Alexandria, Virginia, sold slaves from Maryland and Virginia to southern states like Mississippi and