A Slave Named Juris Prudence

I spent much of the last week trying to understand what will probably be my last case study for the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland project. Following a review of my techniques in the Schweninger Collection reappraisal I found a handful of potential case studies for myself and one for a colleague.

I re-examined a few reels to check for errors or omissions on my part as I picked out cases from LOSIM’s geographic zone of interest. Only a few hundred records originated from agencies or bureaus pertinent to the five Eastern Shore counties of Kent, Queen Anne’s, Talbot, Dorchester, and Caroline, which are the subjects of the Department of Education grant. Following my first pass, the reappraisal, I combed through them again: I wrote down citations for cases clearly marked from county, circuit court, or other bureaus from these five counties but also cases at the state level in the Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore. Sometime later I examined my reference spreadsheet of these handpicked county cases and realized there could well be Eastern Shore people involved in non-Eastern Shore lawsuits. Using the URLs I collected for every case, I read each target card to discover Eastern Shore connections in the case descriptions. Although only a few were revealed themselves in the Court of Appeals for the Western Shore cases, it was completely worth it.

The case was of Julia Ann Bailey. Although the case starts in Baltimore City and thus eventually to the Court of Appeals for the Western Shore, it truly begins in Kent County on the other side of the Chesapeake; that was why I initially missed it since the Kent County connection was not evident by the record's provenance. Bailey was born in 1816 of a 24 year old Kent County slave named Lucy. Although Lucy's previous owner Gideon Longfellow recorded a delayed manumission in 1803 and stipulated that her future children would not be slaves, John Anderson claimed ownership of Bailey in the Baltimore City Court and the Court of Appeals for the Western Shore.

Longfellow’s manumission for his eleven year old slave read, in part, for "divers [sic] good causes and considerations...[I] release from slavery liberate manumit and set free my Negro Girl named Lucy...when she shall arrive at the age of thirty years; and in case the said Negro Girl Lucy shall or may hereafter have any child or children before she arrives at the age aforesaid that then such child or children shall be free at their birth." Longfellow then sold Lucy to Henry Taylor; since she was to be freed in just over fifteen years I expect her value was far lower. Taylor gave Bailey, then a small child, to his daughter "who took her into possession and held her till after her father's death." At seventeen Bailey departed for Baltimore City where Lucy lived; Taylor's daughter and her husband John Anderson, "supposing her to be free under the said manumission," did not lay claim to her for another two years. For reasons unexplained by Anderson he did not press any claim to Bailey's three sisters.

In 1821, two or three years before Lucy was freed, Anderson sold a home and farming materials to Mary Ann Kennard for $950. Some of the items included: Two adult slaves named George and Rebecca, three juvenile slaves named John, John Harris and Matthew, six plows, twelve sheep, seven "milch" cows, four weeding hoes, various kitchen utensils, sixty "barriles" of corn, a wheat fan, and three beds amongst other goods. Kennard, perhaps out of generosity in 1825, sold back the now eleven or twelve year old boy named "John or John Harris" to Anderson for $1. It was not unusual for slaves with common names to be distinguished from each other by using last names but, if John and John Harris were always the same person as the 1825 bill of sale suggests, the original 1821 sale involved four slaves instead of five. By 1830 Anderson had no slaves. In 1832 Anderson again sold various farm animals and furnishings, this time to Samuel G. Kennard, for $65. Some of the items included: Two cows, nine pigs, ten juvenile pigs or "shoats," two beds, bedsteads, and beddings, a mahogany desk, table, and bookcase, a walnut breakfast table, and "a lot of Kitchen furniture." By 1835 Anderson did not have much in assets; that year he only possessed $142 in taxable property. Perhaps this state of relative poverty compelled him to sue for Bailey’s return even though he never apparently claimed her in his assessable property taxes.

During the trial, beginning June 1, 1835, Anderson's counsel's argued that Bailey was born a slave because "the general principle of law that the issue follows the condition of the mother" and that Bailey was unable to "procure a living by personal labor" This first argument was based on a 1681 law and subsequent legislation and jurisprudence stating that the civil rights of children will be the same as their mother; since Bailey was born before Lucy's manumission, regardless of what Longfellow's manumission stipulated, she was a slave. The second argument was based on a large 1796 law that, in part, required manumitted slaves to be physically fit enough to provide a living for themselves and be under the age of 45; since Bailey was at birth dependent on others for care, her manumission was invalid.

The Baltimore City Court rejected both arguments. To the first argument it ruled that Longfellow's pre-emptive manumission of Lucy's children was valid. Anderson could not defeat the "deed in which the destiny of that issue has been freed by the only person whose rights were to be affected by it.” To the second argument it ruled that slaves were an "entirely a distinct property" and it was "undeniable that the owner of female slaves, had the same Kind of distinct interest or property in the future in their future increase that he had in the increase of his flocks and herds and might dispose of them prospectively as use or profits to another master or relinquish his ownership to them as they should be born." The court cited an opinion in the 1823 case Hamilton v. Craggs (1823), which incorporated the opinion of the 1781 Court of Appeals decision in Negro Jack v. Hopewell.

I asked Jennifer Hafner, my supervisor Emily’s office mate, to retrieve the opinion with her Lexis account. In two minutes I had Hamilton v. Craggs, commentary on several key precedent creating cases, and portions of Jack v. Hopewell. In Hopewell the issue was the last will and testament of William Cole dated February 7, 1732. He gave slaves to his wife Elizabeth and ordered them and their increase to be freed and given her lands upon her death. A later instrument granted his wife one of the slaves named previously in the will, who was petitioner's grandmother. The St. Mary’s County Court ruled against the strength of Cole’s will to declare Jack remained a slave. It was appealed to the General Court, which reversed the decision. It was then appealed to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the General Court’s ruling. Jack’s lawyer J.T. Chase argued that Cole unequivocally granted freedom to slaves not in esse (existence) and, he went on to say:

“[I]t is well established, that either real or personal property may be left to persons not in ease, and who, when born, may receive the benefit of it as fully as if they had been in existence at the death of the devisor”

He continued by reading a portion of another decision:

"...not only that thing may be devised which is truly extent, or hath an apparent being at the making the will, or at the death of the testator, but that thing also which is not is rerum natura while the testator liveth, as the corn which shall be sown or grow in such a soil after his death, or the Lambs which shall come of his flock of Sheep next year…Nor (he said), does any doubt exist respecting the power which every man possesses to give by will a life estate in a personal chattel, with a remainder over."

A lot of jurisprudence was cited in Hamilton v. Craggs. That case itself denied freedom to the son of a manumitted slave who birthed him after her manumission was recorded but years before it was in effect. Craggs also cited Negro Anna v. Woodburn Adm’r. of Burroughs (1817). Anna reached a manumission past the legal age of 45 but also inherited quite enough property for her maintenance. Anna’s lawyer argued that the spirit of the law emphasized that the age of 45 was little more than an arbitrary point where a slave may not be able to provide for themselves without support. Anna was over 45 but had sufficient property to meet the spirit of the law. The court saw differently and explained the age and maintenance conditions must be met before a manumission is valid regardless of “adventitious” circumstances. Despite this poor outcome the opinion was apparently useful to, or benign to Chase in support Bailey’s petition.

The Baltimore City Court awarded Bailey her freedom and $8.83.

Anderson appealed the decision to the Court of Appeals for the Western Shore, which reversed the lower court decision. Declaring "[the judgment] be revoked, annulled and held entirely as void and that the said John Anderson be restored to all things which by reason of the judgment to the foresaid he hath lost; and...that there should be a new trial." The results of this new trial are unknown because the Baltimore City Court dockets and minutes are not available for this period.

By the 1840 census Anderson's fortunes improved and his twenty person household included six free persons of color, probably farm laborers, and six slaves; he is listed as having two female slaves under 10 years old and one female slave between the ages of 36 and 55. Bailey would have been 24 in 1840. By the 1850 census Anderson owned a single eighteen year old female slave.

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives

Archives Radio

This past week was more eventful than usual inasmuch as I was involved with two events--a radio interview on the Eastern Shore and a presentation in Annapolis. On Thursday the 16th, senior Legacy of Slavery in Maryland employee Maya Davis and I traveled to Cambridge, MD in Dorchester County to be interviewed by Dr. Kay McElvey on WCEM-AM 1240. A little over two months ago the Maryland State Archives help desk forwarded an unsolicited interview request from the station's administrative assistant; my supervisors Chris Haley and Emily Oland-Squires recommended (and I agreed) Maya join me because she was with the program longer than anyone.

Cambridge Radio

Since Maya works in a separate office, I do not know her well personally. During the one hour and ten minute drive (which became 1 1/2 for unknown traffic congestion reasons) she talked about the various internships and projects she performed for work and school. One of them included a survey of various sites associated with Harriet Tubman who was from Dorchester County. The Eastern Shore's highways were nearly level with the expansive cultivated scenery unlike the Western Shore where landscaping, walls, and trees give the feeling of being boxed in. It was pleasant to see many names of families and roads familiar to me through examinations of the Strong and Martenet maps on the LOSIM Website.

Despite my fears of tardiness we arrived moments before Dr. Kay herself. Although it was a warm day regardless, the woman before me radiated her own warmth as we shook hands and started our pre-interview; her information packet about me included a clipping from a periodical concerning my first public presentation on Kent Island in February. She was so friendly yet officious that I felt like we learned equally as much about her in just ten minutes of talking. Once we entered the studio she and the technician ran us through the time blocks for content and commercials, what aspects of ourselves or LOSIM's work would be covered, and the meaning of time signals given by the technician behind the sound-proof glass.


The hour went incredibly fast and it is difficult to remember what exactly was said over the air. It felt more like the three of us were simply continuing our conversation from earlier. At some point Dr. Kay proclaimed I had an excellent voice and, just barely over her breath, claimed she would tap me for a play she was involved with. I took the lead by providing LOSIM work samples including runaway ads pertinent to the Cambridge, MD area. She had me read two; the first concerned a runaway from a community Dr. Kay lived in while the other was a $3,100 reward for two dozen escaped slaves whose owner's were thoroughly researched last year. Since it would not make great radio to simply read the slave owner case studies which I brought, we closed with a discussion about the broad definition that LOSIM uses to fit under the Underground Railroad umbrella and the importance of identifying slave agency.

Dr. Kay was concerned that too few black children understand slavery partly because they see it as a source of shame and degradation. The majority of the slaves researched by the LOSIM however were fighting against their bondage or the bondage of others--demonstrating the opposite perspective of blacks as the beneficiaries, pawns, or victims of the white male establishment. I closed the interview by borrowing a page from my former colleague's David Armenti's book and played up the value of local resources to education local populations. On the Eastern Shore, where people are very proud of their local cultures and ways, that could make all the difference.

Know Your Rights

Saturday May 18 was my final presentation for LOSIM. Arranged earlier this year, Allison Seyler, Tanner Sparks, and I presented on Maryland slave and slave ownership history as they concerned the legal system. I again talked about Indian Moll and her descendants' claims against John P. Paca, the son of a Founding Father William Paca, but also shared the stories of Negro Adam (1789) and the descendants of Edward Green (1808).

Whereas the descendants of Moll used over a century of precedent stemming from a 1681 law stipulating that the civil rights condition (slave or free) follows the mother, I presented Adam as a slave attempting to use Delaware law to be freed. The court records do not say how he argued for his freedom but my research into secondary sources and finally the laws of the General Assembly of Delaware yielded two key laws that would work to Adam's advantage. These laws, in 1787 and 1789, heavily restricted interstate slave trade and horribly punished citizens who broke the law and Delaware-based merchants who participated in even the international slave trade. Adam lost his petition because the defense convincingly argued that, although he lived with his mistress in Delaware for several years and she still resided there, he was legally entailed to the unsettled estate of her late husband.

In the case of Edward Green I used his 1801 manumission by Edward Strong to highlight Maryland's efforts to regulate manumissions at the county and agency level. Because Green's manumission did not contain the required information and was entered into evidence, the defendant appealed the case on a technicality. Thankfully for Green's descendents the appeals court sustained the lower court's ruling and they were freed. My regret about the Green case study is that I will probably never learn why his descendents submitted his manumission into evidence; as far as I know there is no legal consequence of having a free male relative.
Allison Seyler spoke of the resurgence of slave owner petitions to retrieve slaves following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Using the case study of Edward Prigg, Allison explored the role Maryland played in the most significant piece of pre-Dred Scott slave jurisprudence in Prigg v. Pennsylvania. Prigg was hired by the widow of miller John Ashmore to retrieve Margaret Morgan who, having never been claimed a slave by Ashmore's estate, had moved to Pennsylvania where she had several children with a free black. In violation of Pennsylvania's personal liberty laws, Prigg disregarded their civil rights under the presumption they were chattel and brought them to Maryland. Pennsylvania demanded he return for punishment and Maryland refused to extradite him. The United States Supreme Court voided Pennsylvania's charge against Prigg but did not demand states or municipalities assist slave catchers if prohibited by law. This safety valve eventually closed with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857; people in free states felt they were losing sovereignty to slave interests in the national government and people in slave states were reminded of the looming danger to property and way of life in a country half free and half slave.

Tanner Sparks presented on his work with the United States Colored Troops, a topic I've previously written about. This time he showed different pension paperwork that included a 1901 medical examiner's description of whip scars on pensioner and Grand Army of the Republic member Robert Riley. Tanner has worked with scores of USCT research subjects but never previously encountered such detail.

The audience surveys which followed the presentation were very encouraging. Of the fifteen, the two most negative comments I found were 1) despite running nearly two hours with Q&A it was "too short" and 2) we talked too quickly. A handful of people (3) wrote that they learned only a little, a grade below "Learned A Lot" (12) but a grade above "Nothing New" (0).

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives

Centreville

 Like one of my favorite Presidents of the United States, the under-sung James K. Polk, I pulled off quite a bit of work in just four expressions of the sun’s effect on the Earth. In four years Polk facilitated one of the grandest land grabs in American history by seizing swaths of Mexico and settling the Oregon question, and managed to satisfy northern and southern, slave and free, interests at the national level by lowering tariffs but re-establishing a national bank, balancing slave and free lands, and would have been a model for future presidents keeping the balance of power; in four days I co-presented a public program at the Centreville Public Library in Queen Anne’s County, joined my colleagues to visit the War of 1812 exhibit at the Maryland State House, and significantly re-wrote, re-researched, and substantiated my Robert Moody case study in preparation for another talk in Centreville next week.
 
Centreville

Eastbound

 

The audience mills about

Tanner and I took our show even further afield on February 20 when we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and gave a similar presentation to a crowd of 19 during the lunch hour. Just like in Stevensville I felt a moment of ignorance when locals spoke of their surroundings, apparently expecting me to know what they were talking about. One man spoke of a yellow brick home that previously belonged to an Eastern Shore judge who resisted Union laws and was manhandled because of it. My ears perked when he said the judge’s name was Carmichael, the same surname of a lawyer common in my freedom petition project. Although names are oft repeated in this region, I knew the lawyer William Carmichael had a son Richard Bennett who served as a judge. I asked the librarian about this home in hopes she knew its famous former resident. She brightened and said it was “Adam’s home”; my confusion must have been obvious because she quickly explained that she meant Adam Goodheart, the contemporary author of the popular history book 1861. Upon returning to Annapolis I checked the Maryland State Archives biography of Richard Bennett Carmichael, which confirmed my suspicion.

R.B. Carmichael

It stated “In February 1861, he served as chair of the Resolutions Committee of the Southern Rights Convention held in Baltimore. Under his leadership, the delegates unanimously adopted resolutions recommending that "if a disruption could not be avoided, Maryland should cast her lot with Virginia and the South." He received national attention in 1862 when his outspoken pro-Southern sentiments led him to be charged with treason. In late May 1862, Secretary of State William H. Seward ordered General John A. Dix, in Baltimore, to send federal troops to Easton to arrest Carmichael. When Dix's men arrived at the Talbot County Courthouse in Easton, Carmichael refused to recognize their authority. The agents pistol-whipped him and forcibly dragged him from the bench in the middle of court proceedings, stirring indignation throughout the Eastern Shore and the South.”

Since his father was the lawyer for many of the slaves who are subject to my upcoming presentation, this will add some interesting local interest.


  War of 1812

Barney spots the fleet
with his "excellent glass"

Barney's appointment

In many ways the war of 1812 is Maryland’s war. Its most emotionally resonating events occurred in Maryland; the Star Spangled Banner was composed during the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore and the British soldiers fought in Maryland before reaching the capital, land formerly belonging to Maryland, and burned it. This month saw the debut of a Maryland State Archives exhibit in the State House. The Capital Gazette did brief but decent write-up about the exhibit. My favorite part of the exhibit as a whole is the astounding mural version of a painting by historical painter Richard Schlect, which depicts Major William Barney spotting the British fleet on their way to Baltimore. They easily could have chosen Annapolis instead and its people sighed in relief.

Robert Moody

I resumed working on case studies. After the thrill of the Negro Susan’s kidnapping from Virginia and the politics of Robert Moody and the Paca family, it was disappointing when my newest subject Negro Adam was so plain; the judge dismissed his petition, which seems based on flimsy probate rules and his mistress having left the state. In preparation for my return to Centreville, I finally decided to turn the single Robert Moody case study into four (see previous posts “Moody Moments” and “Perils of Leadership…”). Meaning rather than briefly describe the three petitions that Moody’s lawyer William Carmichael submitted into evidence in 1812, I chose to compose one for each petitioner. This also meant I needed to go back to supportive records like censuses, court records, and land records to flesh out details about these slaves and their owners.

 This occasioned a visit to the Prerogative Court records. From a record keeping standpoint the Prerogative Court was excellent; a centralized department of the provincial government that tracked wills, inventories, and other necessary things that are the life blood of historical scholarship and genealogy. Following its abolition in 1777 most records of this type were retained at the county level; this makes quite a headache if you are searching for a name but do not know the county. In this case I examined the 1760 will record of Philemon Lloyd Chew, the man whose free Indian servant caused so much fuss when her descendents sued their owners for freedom. The records do not circulate to the general public because of their age so PDFs of the deteriorated pages were microfilmed, scanned, and are accessible online. Unfortunately the book containing the will I needed was 1700 pages long and so was the PDF. Fortunately the page number of the book (473) was near the page number on PDF (474) however my computer struggled to load the complete image or even scroll. Instead I examined the original record.

 As I expected the record was, probably after scanning, sent to conservation for stabilization and re-binding. The original pages were encased in a non-reactive, mostly transparent white sheath that prevents harm from human debris but also allows rebinding without further damaging the original pages. Unfortunately the will of Philemon Lloyd Chew was less than a page and told me information I already knew or was not relevant to my research. Unfortunately again Chew did not have an estate inventory that may have spelled out the names servants or slaves. I checked various indices for other slave owners and slaves associated with the Moody case studies but I was flummoxed by Negro Tom Carver. I realized much to my embarrassment that Carver was not awarded a settlement in his 1794 petition and thus apparently did not win. It was not a horrible assumption because sixteen of his relatives went on to free themselves with at least one, his cousin (Moody), submitting Carver’s transcript into evidence.

I reexamined my notes at the beginning and end of Carver’s transcript in Moody’s petition’s judgments record. A newly remembered reference, which confused me when I first read it and hoped would make sense by the end, stated that both Carver’s attorney and his owner Samuel Lloyd Chew’s attorney consented to have the damning testimony of Elizabeth Chew submitted into evidence for the General Court of the Western Shore; she was the linchpin of Carver’s defense. She stated unequivocally that Carver was free because his mother Margaret was the granddaughter of a free Indian woman named Mary. Even more confusing, the transcript (which I corroborated with the General Court of the Western Shore’s docket and vide minutes) stated that Carver’s attorney asked the petition to be dismissed.

I brought this record to Owen Lourie who was similarly bemused. He stated the judicial system at the time was very cordial, with lawyers often making side deals as friends rather than as opponents. It was very possible that Carver’s attorney agreed to drop the petition, which was certain to succeed, if Chew manumitted him in a separate agreement. This would have insulated Carver’s freedom so not to cascade across most of his family tree and affect Chew’s family’s slave interests. This hypothesis is somewhat supported by William Carmichael’s statement upon entering Carver’s case, and thus Elizabeth Chew’s testimony, into evidence: The transcript was not intended to argue a relationship of Moody to Tom’s mother Margaret, and thus his connection to Indian Mary, but rather to establish a “pedigree.” Assuming Carver did settle out of court I suspect Carmichael would not need to be so timid.

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives

Perils of Leadership: The Law Takes Slaves from a Maryland First Family



In school I learned that historians use archives to compile evidence or find illustrative examples of a much longer case they are making. Genealogists, who are historians with a narrower interest, meanwhile consult indexes or other records looking for very particular items (usually names) and then move on. In the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland project at the Maryland State Archives we perform a hybrid type of work that, on the ground anyway, resembles genealogical research—only in reverse.

 Genealogists often start their research with the names of their extended family in hand and work from there. Although case studies built around runaway ads start with names and locations just as genealogists do, the richest case studies start by examining attractive records themselves like a historian might. Freedom petitions from the Schweninger Collection, United States Colored Troops muster rolls and court cases on slave crimes have a wealth of information about slaves and former slaves; these are not stepping stones but rather the origin of our work. From here we use these names to search the indexes just like genealogists would. But rather than assemble a family tree, we are using state and municipal records to expose a history of an exploited racial class, like a historian would. If the groundwork of LOSIM is genealogy reverse, the collectivities of research that LOSIM compiles are itself the long case that historians make.

William Paca's portrait by Charles Wilson Peale

Coincidentally, the raw Schweninger Collection was compiled in a similar manner as a genealogist looking for the names of ancestors. Since it is a research collection of sources rather than a collection of Dr. Schweninger’s notes or compositions, it is reminiscent of a fishing trawler scooping up any and all information it can about slaves (voluntarily or involuntarily) involved in court cases. From these resources I think I made an original discovery about one of America's founding fathers, Maryland Governor William Paca.

It was with a certain giddy excitement that I read Robert Moody’s freedom petition. [See the post “Moody Moments”; January 13, 2013] The blossoming research geek within me was challenged by the dearth of corroborating materials in the census, court and probate records, but stimulated by the implications of the unspoken subplot unfolding before me.

Robert Moody was a slave of Richard Jones in the early 19th century. In May, 1803 Moody challenged his bondage by Jones and submitted his freedom petition to the Queen Anne's County Court. Following multiple continuances, the case was heard in May, 1812; using transcripts from three successful cases spanning courts across Maryland, Moody and his counsel William Carmichael successfully petitioned for his freedom by proving his descent from a free Indian woman named Mary or Moll. His case is an example of the complex legal environment of slavery and the legal means to escape it.

The State of Maryland officially discouraged activities that created familiarity and racial or class equality between whites and blacks but these laws were not unbending and ultimately aided Moody. A 1681 law governed the relationships between white servants and slaves by carrying a penalty of 10,000 pounds of tobacco for any priest marrying a "ffreeborne Englishe or white woman" and an African slave. This same law however stipulated that "all Children borne of such ffreeborne women, soe manymitted & ffree as aforesaid shall bee ffree as the women soe married"; this legal discrepancy between mulattoes borne of free mothers with slave fathers and mulattoes borne of free fathers and slave mothers essentially transferred freedom through the maternal line no matter how many generations removed and, if proven, invalidated bondage.

Moody vs. Jones

As of 1810 Richard Jones owned approximately sixty-two slaves in his Queen Anne's County property, including Moody. Attempting to abort the petition process, Jones' attorney argued that Moody "ought not to have or maintain his Petition against [Jones] because he saith that the said Robert Moody on the day of proposing the petition...was a slave" and was willing to verify this. Moody's attorney William Carmichael responded that Moody was a "free man and of free condition, and not a slave" and thus not precluded. Perhaps little more than a gesture in the dramaturgical interplay of the court room, Jones' attorney simply reiterated his argument that Moody was in fact a slave. By neglecting this opening gambit he would probably harm his own case.

Carmichael presented records of three cases as evidence that Moody was legally entitled to freedom: Thomas Carver against Samuel Lloyd Chew, Rachel Baker and others against John Paca, and Margaret Creek against William Wilkins.

Carver vs. Chew

The 1794 case of Carver vs. Chew relied on the testimony of Queen Anne's County residents, especially those familiar with Wye Island, but also crossed the Chesapeake into Annapolis and Herring Bay. In retrospect this connection to Annapolis should have made me suspicious that this case was bigger than I anticipated. Over thirty persons, many of whom knew Philemon Pike's plantation on Wye Island for years if not decades, gave testimony regarding an Indian servant named Moll or Mary, whom Carver claimed was his great-grandmother. Many deponents were workers, white servants, or other persons familiar with the plantation; most claimed to have never heard of a woman named "Indian Moll" and lent credence to Samuel Lloyd Chew's claim.

The widow Elizabeth Chew, quite possibly the step-mother of the defendant, stated that a slave named Margaret was pregnant when her deceased husband (also named Samuel) acquired her from Wye Island. Crucially for Moody, Elizabeth testified that Tom was Margaret's son and claimed "Margaret was a free woman, free as any body." She verified this with Samuel Chew's sister, one and the same of Samuel Lloyd Chew's aunt, Mary Hepburn of Upper Marlborough. Hepburn told her that "Margaret certainly is a free woman and no slave [because] her mother [Rachel] was the daughter of an Indian woman a native of this country" and brought up in the family of Philemon Lloyd on Wye Island. Chew acquired Margaret through his marriage to Henrietta Maria Lloyd, the only daughter of Philemon Lloyd. Henrietta Maria was probably the birth mother of Samuel Lloyd Chew, the defendant. Since Philemon Pike and Philemon Lloyd occupy the same time and space in this reference case, they are likely the same person or at least blood related.

Baker and others vs. John Paca

Moody's case was first filed in 1803, the year after his mother Betty, the daughter of a "yellow woman called Rachel [Baker]," was freed along with at least fifteen other slaves in a case against John Paca. Since I am new to Maryland, the name “Paca” did not mean too much. I knew it shared the name of a Maryland politician however that meant little. Unlike my native Midwest where families scatter across the landscape, Maryland names remain geographically confined. For example, Baker and Moody shared an attorney, William Carmichael, but research into him would be difficult. The name Carmichael is everywhere in Queen Anne’s County and William is perhaps the most common name during this historical period; furthermore, families tend to name children after a beloved relative. I suspect his son is R. B. Carmichael, a Queen Anne’s County politician and judge. It’s a start but without knowing William’s approximate birth year it is nigh impossible to know whether the records I am looking at pertain to him or someone else.

I made the connection to William Paca through an incredible coincidence; I clicked a link from the Legacy of Slavery’s official Twitter account. @LegacySlaveryMD—“Ratification Day! OTD in 1784, Congress meets in Annapolis to ratify the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/treaty/treaty.html”



A living history portrayal of Paca by Marcos Salaverria:
Photo by Joshua McKerrow - The Capital

The link took me to an MSA Web page where I spotted a link to a biographical page for Governor William Paca. I clicked that link, satisfying my itch, and checked his partial biography. I immediately noticed his wife’s maiden name—Mary Lloyd Chew. Whatever the tendency for Marylanders to share surnames across many generations, Paca’s first wife had two names frequently mentioned throughout Moody's petition. It went on to say that Paca had a son named John and died in 1799 (the year before Baker’s petition was filed) at “Wye Hall” in Queen Anne’s County. This all could still be a coincidence however; "John" was also a common name and the Wye River after which the island was named is fairly extensive and many places would be entitled to its moniker. I clicked the link to Mary’s biography and was hit again with even more names—Philemon Lloyd and Henrietta Maria. Her extended biography stated that Philemon Lloyd Chew died childless in 1770 and Wye Island was split between Paca (by virtue of his wife Mary) and his other sister Margaret Chew Bordley. Unbeknownst to me I had read a complicated tale of genealogy and probate concerning some of Maryland’s most prominent political families.

Wye Island - J. G. Stong's Map of Queen Anne's County, 1866, MSA SC 5080-1

I realized that Moody’s owner Richard Jones probably purchased him from William Paca himself. Since Moody claimed the same lineage as Rachel Baker and her family but was not listed as a co-petitioner in their 1800 filing, his sale probably happened before 1800 when William was still alive; this was corroborated upon a re-reading my notes. The 1802 verdict found Rachel and her co-plaintiffs were descended from a free Indian woman named Mary or Moll and the judge ruled them to be of free condition. They were also awarded $39.48 and one-third cents. Moody's attorney William Carmichael, who also represented Rachel Baker et al., placed a record of this case into evidence.

Creek vs. Wilkins

Moody and Carmichael also entered into evidence the 1799 Baltimore County case of "Negro Margaret Creek against William Wilkins." Attempting to abort the petition process, Wilkins' attorney argued that Creek "ought not to have or maintain her petition against him because he saith that the said Margaret Creek on the day of proposing [this petition] was a slave" but her attorney Thomas Kell argued otherwise. The jury found Margaret to be free and awarded her an astounding sum of £1,783.

Verdict




Paca House, a home and garden that attracts many Annapolis tourists:
Photo by Joshua McKerrow - The Capital

The jury at Moody's trial was convinced by the evidence from these three petitions and found in favor of Moody against Richard Jones. They awarded him the sum of $105.63 and one-third cents compensation. Jones' attorney argued that Moody did not adequately prove that the Margaret Creek from the Wilkins petition was the same Margaret from the Samuel Lloyd Chew petition; he filed an exception. To challenge this exception, a "mulatto man with wooly head" named Cesar Boose testified that Jones purchased Moody from William Paca fourteen or fifteen years earlier and that John was William's representative. The defense counsel "objected to the admissibility of the witness alleging him to be a negro [and] precluded by the Act of Assembly"; the defense likely cited a law similar to an 18th Century act stating that "no Negro, or Mulatto Slave, Free Negro, or Mulatto born of a White Woman...[or] or any Indian Slave, or Free Indian Natives...be admitted and received as good and valid Evidence in Law, in any Matter or Thing whatsoever...wherein any Christian or White Person is concerned." The court however ruled that it was incumbent upon the defense to prove whether Boose "was a negro slave [or] free negro descended from a slave." Although it is not stated explicitly, it appears that Jones excepted the evidence presented through the three preceding freedom petitions in addition to Cesar Boose's testimony.

Judgments Affirmed

The case was given to the Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore the following month, June 1812. It was entered into the docket in the low triple digits so a continuance was was issued for the next session. The case appears again on the Court of Appeals Docket in June, 1813, which states the court's decision: The Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore affirmed the Queen Anne's County Court judgments for all exceptions, however Judge Buchanan broke from his colleagues and dissented on the fourth exception. Jones' exceptions to the Queen Anne's County Court judgments were not numbered but it is likely that exception four concerned Boose's testimony. The dissent was probably recorded in the more detailed Judgment Records, which are lost; since no catalog entry for a book containing Judgment Records for 1813 exists, the record was probably lost before its transfer to the then-named Maryland Hall of Records.

The fate of Robert Moody is unknown however there are other free persons by that surname in the Queen Anne's County certificate of freedom index.

Ygolaeneg or, Genealogy Backwards

Rather than start with the name "William Paca" or "John Paca" like his descendants might, I started with a record that happened to include a court exhibit concerning his son. Although William and John Paca's names are crucial in proving Robert Moody's case, their names are lost in conventional indexes since they are not technically the co-defendants. It took the work of Dr. Loren Schweninger, his fellow researchers, and follow-up from the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland team (you know, me) to make this connection; I’m currently awaiting a book edited by Dr. Schweninger to see if he also made this Paca connection.

The successful petition of Rachel Baker and her extensive family represents a sizable exodus from a Maryland first-family perhaps not seen again until Henrietta Ogle's slaves fled to British ships in the War of 1812. Currently there are two researchers at least partly dedicated to studying just these slaves. One of them, Chuck Weisenberger, used his Comegys Bight Scholarship to fund a summer research trip to the National Archives in London. If memory serves, he examined naval and Canadian provincial records to find as much information as possible about Ogle's slaves. It's an intriguing contrast that Paca's slaves escaped with the law on their side while Ogle's slaves escaped extra judicially.

Woe to be a Maryland first family.

--Alex Champion, Maryland State Archives

Moody Moments

The past week at the Maryland State Archives is something of a blur of constant activity book-ended by dull moments while reading 200 year old court records concerning a slave named Robert Moody.

Oral Histories

Under the new terms of my fellowship’s placement at the Maryland State Archives I continue working on oral history interview processing. Although I’ve worked under these terms for four and a half months at Maryland compared to the three months at Chicago for the summer institute, the remote work for The HistoryMakers is a once weekly affair rather than a daily concern so it remains ever fresh in my mind. In order to meet a request from Dr. Ed Papenfuse this past December, an information-dense interview in November, and frequent distractions on my designated day to work on interviews, I fell behind schedule. So in addition to working over break and on weekends, I devoted Monday and Tuesday to polishing one interview and beginning another.

Leah Ward Sears

My (mostly) completed interview is Leah Ward Sears, a judge appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court at the ripe old age of 36. I could tell, simply by the way she talked about the upbringing of her parents and herself, that she placed great importance on family as an institution. This certainly rang true in two important court cases from the Superior Court where she exercised significant independent judgment; one involved parents who disagreed on whether to take their comatose daughter off life support and another case involved a couple who took a weekend to regret forfeiting their child. In the first case she essentially sided with the mother, who wanted to keep the daughter alive, by saying the family needed to agree; the daughter died of natural causes a few days later and the family unit survived. In the adoption case she decided that the father did not relinquish his rights to the child and returned it to the couple. Although proponents of family tend to be on the conservative side of most issues, Sears was quite obviously a liberal. She named her daughter “Brennan” after the US Supreme Court justice because, or so she claimed, “Thurgood” was not a proper name for a girl.

Leah Ward Sears Sears’ emphasis on the family without adopting related political baggage of the family values circle reminded me of my former American history professor, John Sharpless. A colorful man, Sharpless was prone to tangents and told often elaborate stories that always put his classes behind schedule. One such story was his unsuccessful run for Congress in 2000 against (now Senator) Tammy Baldwin. As smirking curmudgeons and astute observers often do, he ran as a moderate of with whatever party he was aligned. During candidate boot camp in Washington, one of the trainers cautioned candidates against using the Republican shibboleth “family values” to rally the faithful. He summarized her remark thusly: “Family is not a value, it’s an institution, and for some people it is sheer hell.” Sears believes in the importance of family as a sanctified and stabilizing force in society, which we must struggle to sustain, but she understands the difference between an institution and values.

Vel Philips

Throughout her interview she emphasized the patience and compassion necessary for the robes and warned viewers of her constant efforts to be worthy of her position. The second interview I’m working on is Vel Philps. She is a prominent judge and politician from Wisconsin and was approximately 83 during the interview. It is clear from the interview that an unexpected remodeling problem at their intended filming spot forced them into a building with heat only high enough to keep the pipe water from freezing. She wears a thick lady’s dress coat and hugs herself for at least three of the five tapes. By the second tape she is visibly drowsy but soldiers on, blaming the cold but admitting that warmth often does the same thing.

Maryland State Archives

On Wednesday the MSA was graced with the presence of a film crew for a genealogical show in the style of "Who Do You Think You Are?" with a celebrity primarily famous for a character in one of the Fox network's earliest and most successful shows. It would be out of place to say who this actor or actress was or describe the brief disruptions caused by their filming in the research room; shooting on location creates unavoidable headaches but I'm nevertheless glad the MSA will be represented on national television.

Wye Island

I resumed examining judicial records from the Scwhweninger Collection. This time I’m examining an 1812 judicial paper concerning a freedom petition by Robert Moody and submitted to the Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore; Robert Moody’s name only appears in a few pages at the opening and closing of the 60+ page document because it contains literally a dozen exhibits and transcripts from cases dating back to 1793. Moody was using successful suits where no less than twenty slaves freed themselves because they were descended from an Indian native named Moll or Mary. The bulk of the writing could be summarized thusly: Can I have a continuance? Sure. Can I have a continuance? Sure. Can I have a continuance? Sure. No, I never heard of a girl named “Indian Margaret” on Wye Island.

The hope is to find the delicious tidbits. For example, it did not matter that the court heard from a dozen people who claimed to know nothing about a black and Indian mulatto slave--because the mistress of the house admitted that she was. Strangely, she kept this information between herself and the previous owner rather than free her—but whatever. With the exhibits and depositions continuing almost seamlessly into each other, and a complex genealogy unfolded before me, it was difficult to know where one case ended and another began. I constantly reminded myself that every scrap of paper was relevant to Robert Moody’s freedom petition.

Although the jury found that Moody was not a slave, the appeal successfully argued that Moody did not satisfactorily prove he was the son of one of these freed slaves. Strangely, the court allowed the testimony of a mulatto. In the delicate language of their day the clerk slyly described his degree of blackness and hence the credibility of the defense’s objection to him as a witness. According to Maryland law, slaves were not allowed to testify in cases where white people were affected. The judge—and I just LOVED this—stated it was incumbent upon the defense attorney to prove he was a slave.

At close of business on Friday I had not yet found supporting records for his fate. I checked the Queen Anne's County Court Judgment Record series for potential 1813 retrial information but there seems to be none available. Perhaps due to some absent minded book binding over a century ago 1813 may well be misplaced within three volumes spanning the first quarter century of judgments. The year 1812 for example is, bizarrely, placed at the center of a volume spanning 1818-1822; the volume for 1814-1818 is apparently complete but does not possess my needed 1813 judgments. I will need to check for the 1813 judgments in the volume ending in 1811 before I am certain enough to give up my search. The fear that this year may not exist--or that I am checking the record series in error due to the complex legal avenues and jurisdictions in the document--actually kept me awake on Saturday night.

Outreach
 

Kent Island

My first speaking engagements for the Maryland State Archives Legacy of Slavery in Maryland project are looming. I studied a taped presentation given by my colleagues David Armenti and Ryan Cox this summer and was impressed by their grasp of the subject matter and ease of public speaking. For the Progressive Ed Summit, I’ve decided to emphasize how students can use the LOSIM website and teachers can strategically use primary sources to stimulate critical thinking.

During this week I was on something of a creative hot streak. My colleague Tanner consented to the name for our February 5 presentation on Kent Island--“Pistols and Petitions: Queen Anne’s Slave Self-Emancipation in the 19^th Century” and my division colleagues accepted one of two names I proposed for our May 18 presentation—“Know Your Rights: Lost Slaves, Proving Freedom, and Earning Pensions in 19th Century Maryland”; the idea for the latter came to me at the close our LOSIM’s weekly meeting. It was difficult to determine a theme because the only thing our respective topics had in common were petitions; petitions by slaveholders to recover chattel, petitions by slaves for their freedom, and petitions by veterans and widows to earn government pensions for United States Colored Troops service. As the meeting broke up, almost out of nowhere, The Clash came to mind.

At the core of every petition, whether slave, former slave, or slaveholder, the petitioners were exercising their rights under the contemporary law. Although I would like to say my suggested titles were selected because of their quality, I suspect they were chosen simply because I was the first one to offer any. I’ll take what I can get…

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives

Dr. Schweninger, I Presume: Maryland Slave Petitions

Dr. Loren Schweninger

This past week I returned to the depths of the Dr. Loren Schweninger Collection. This artificial collection, which I’ve previously talked about, is one of the results of over a decade of research and grant funded support to remove the mask of slave history in government records. The product of this effort at the Maryland State Archives is a scanned microfilm collection of (primarily) court documents concerning free blacks and enslaved Marylanders who challenged enslavement through legal avenues. Although greyscale scans of the microfilm scans are legible, I found that scanning the original documents provided a richer and easier to read picture: All document images in this blog are from these new scans.

At the time the Race and Slavery Petitions Project was launched in 1991, Dr. Loren Schweninger was a member of the Department of History at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The project located, collected, organized, and published all pertinent legislative petitions from the fifteen slave states and the District of Columbia.

Schweninger’s petitions project received multi-year grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. In 2000 the project received a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a Digital Library on American Slavery. Many counties and Baltimore City are expressly cited in the austere Schweninger HTML finding aid but Queen Anne’s County—the subject county of my first presentation this February—is not. The DLAS allows me to selectively choose cases originating from a specific county without examining every image linked in the finding aid.

Dr. Schweninger found fifteen pertinent instances or references to slave petitions in the COURT OF APPEALS (Judgments, Eastern Shore) S380 series alone. Until the Constitution of 1850 (the official printer of its debates was William McNeir, the subject of my last research project) Maryland divided much of its governance between the Eastern and Western Shores because of an archaic custom dating back to colonial period resentments. Although Annapolis was the seat of state government, offices like the Treasurer and the Court of Appeals had separate jurisdictions for each side of the bay. By using the DLAS I was brought to “George Walls v. Henny Hemsley and her children” in series S380. The preliminary description and citation of the case was intriguing but ultimately misleading. Filed on May 1, 1815, the petition description reads:

“Henny Hemsley and her children state they are unjustly held in slavery by George Walls, who is currently in Maryland, but who is a resident of Kentucky. The petitioners claim they are entitled to their freedom because they are ‘descended on the female line from a free woman named Susan.’”

Upon examining the source I realized the petition was a ghost. The original petition, unfound or perhaps lost, existed with other documents as a transcript in series S380 for the June term 1817. Since the transcript carried full legal weight, any distinction between the original petition and the transcript was moot. Besides, this transcript summarized several documents probably otherwise trapped inside the QUEEN ANNE’S COUNTY COURT (Judgments) or (Judgment Record) series. The DLAS indicated that the petition was “granted; appealed; reversed; affirmed”; I interpreted this to mean the freedom petition was granted, appealed by George Walls, reversed by the Court of Appeals, and then reaffirmed following the slave Hemsley’s own appeal.

The story given in the petition was, to say the least, astounding and horrifying.

Henny Hemsley was a mulatto slave with three children. In 1815 Hemsley's counsel William Carmichael petitioned the Queen Anne's County Court to release her and her family of bondage to George Walls of Kentucky. Hemsley's petition claimed that she and her daughters Susan, Juliana, and Priscilla were "descended on the female line from a free woman named Susan" and, since slave status was passed matrinlineally, entitled to their freedom. The case hinged on the testimony of witnesses Greenberry Griffin and John Denny.

Greenberry Griffin gave testimony of how the elder Susan was illegally enslaved. In the weeks leading to the surrender of British forces at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, Griffin travelled with Captain James Sweat to the James and York rivers in Virginia. Following the surrender, Griffin saw Susan "selling cakes and beer without controul" at the Gosport Shipyard and thereafter repeatedly on the shore of the York River until Captain Sweat left the area. Several men took Susan aboard Sweat's vessel and sold her to him; she was a replacement for another black woman who was released because of her "cries and screams." Captain Sweat informed her that he would make her his wife. She protested the kidnapping and claimed she was a free woman and already married to a white man in Virginia. Although Griffin testified that he did not remember sharing this story with other persons, he admitted hearing others talk about it.

These snippets describe Captain Sweat's motives for the kidnapping and Susan's protests

A second witness named John Denny lived in the immediate neighborhood of Captain Sweat and, since Captain Sweat and his brother Bartus were deceased, testified to what the community knew of Susan. He recalled hearing Susan telling his mother that she was "free in Virginia and to have been stolen from thence by Captain Sweat." Upon being asked if Susan's kidnapping was common knowledge, Denny claimed it was the "reputations of the neighbourhood that...Susan was a free woman."



"Judg.t Reversed on 1.st Exception and aff.d on 2.nd June Term 1817"

The jurors ruled in Hemsley's favor. Walls' counsel made two exceptions and appealed the decision on the grounds that the judge 1) allowed John Denny to use neighborhood gossip regarding Susan in his testimony and 2) did not allow declarations by Susan's deceased owner John Gibson to be admitted as evidence. The Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore affirmed the Queen Anne's County Court's decision regarding the former owner Gibson but reversed the decision regarding Captain Sweat's neighbor, Denny. It ordered a "new trial...in the same manner as if no trial had taken place or any appeal had been prosecuted." After checking the recto of the judgment transcript I immediately realized that the “…reversed; affirmed” description provided by the Digital Library on American Slavery referred to these two exceptions and not the ultimate verdict. That meant Hemsley and her daughters may well have been freed!

Unfortunately I did not find information confirming nor denying that the Hemsleys were freed. I found no census information of other corroborating sources for them, Captain Sweat, George Walls, or Susan’s former owner John Gibson nor an account of this new trial in the Queen Anne’s County Court series. Since an index for the court does not exist, I scanned individual court dockets for every term from October 1817 to October 1819; I found nothing. I chose a new tack and looked for manumission records instead. I found nothing in the land records where manumissions were often recorded. Fortunately I remembered that Queen Anne’s is one of four counties that have a freedom records index. The freedom records indices span several record types covering manumissions written in state records, wills, land records, and Certificates of Freedom; the Certificates of Freedom were applied for by free colored persons who wanted proof that they were not slaves; such a document would have prevented or ended Susan’s captivity by Captain Sweat. Index 39 had certificate citations for Henny and her daughters Juliana and Priscilla. Henny successfully applied for one on April 30, 1836 and her daughters followed up on May 13.

From these certificates I learned that Henny was not even five feet tall and, despite being described as a “mulatto” (their emphasis) in the Court of Appeals transcript, she was nevertheless called “dark.” Her daughters were similarly short but described as “light.” Priscilla had a scar on her forehead and another on her right ankle “occasioned by a burn.” Given their ages at application time I learned that Henny was probably born in 1791, Juliana in 1814, and Priscilla (called “Priscy” in her record) in 1815—the same year Henny petitioned for freedom. I found no such certificate for her daughter Susan but, since her name seems to always precede her siblings’, I suspect she was the eldest.

There were a number of gaps in the narrative that I am sorry I cannot fill. Given the record keeping practices of the time or twists of fate, I know nothing of Captain Sweat and Henny’s mother Susan beyond the Court of Appeals transcript. The Certificates of Freedom state the Hemsleys were freed on May 1, 1818—the first term of the Queen Anne’s County Court—but I found no record that the retrial ever took place. With a specific date in hand I checked the May 1818 docket a third time but still found nothing.

Census information for the Hemsleys was difficult to find because, as women, their identities were obfuscated by the socio-sexual conventions of the 19^th century. Until 1850, censuses only recorded the head of the household’s name and the number of other persons by age, sex, and caste (i.e. slave or free). The only ways I could quickly locate Henny and her daughters were if I knew the name of any husbands they had or they never married at all. There was never a reference to Henny’s paternity. Given Captain Sweat’s intention to make Susan his wife I could have ruled him in or out if he died after or before Henny’s birth year. The paternity of Henny’s daughters is almost certainly white.

Perhaps to ameliorate my disgust for the chain of events that brought Henny to the Court of Appeals I imagine she had a consensual arrangement with her owner but, upon his death or insolvency, petitioned for her and her children’s freedom so they would not leave their home state. I cannot prove this of course but it is a more pleasant scenario.

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives

Research Methods 101:Case Study--William M’Neir, Printer, Annapolis

 

In my most recent post I referred to a research activity concerning an Annapolis printer named William McNeir.  During the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland weekly meeting on November 28, my supervisors Emily and Chris explained that they were looking for a way to accommodate a request from State Archivist Dr. Ed Papenfuse; because it would improper to use Department of Education grant funded personnel to pursue a newspaper research project, and most of LOSIM research archivists are paid by that grant or otherwise engaged, fulfilling the request would be politically sensitive or interruptive. I am paid by the The HistoryMakers: Mentoring, Training and Placement fellowship and was not yet deep into the Schweninger Collection (an interesting topic for later) so I volunteered.

Since most of these events took place over seven days, my telling is condensed and may not be perfectly chronological.

Initial Findings

 Emily and Chris’ assignment began with a simple question: Is the newspaper “The Carrolltonian, or, Spirit of Seventy-Six” newspaper published by Annapolis by William M’Neir directly related to “The Carrolltonian.” Several papers bore a title with that moniker, presumably based on the name of the far western country estate that Charles Carroll utilized like a title to distinguish him from his identically named father. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the longest surviving, and only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. He mainly lived in Annapolis and Doughoregan Manor. In the ongoing saga of Maryland’s transition from colony to consolidated state, nearly a dozen counties were carved from original ones or successive iterations. Carroll was formed in 1837 from Frederick and Baltimore counties. Although named after Charles Carroll of Carrollton, his usual country estate Doughoregan was in northern Anne Arundel. He died in 1832, seven years before northern Anne Arundel broke off to form Howard County.

Given the fact that the two Carrolltonian papers shared different names, publishers, and occupied different places in both space and time in years and miles respectively, I safely concluded the newspapers were unrelated. Moments after this conclusion I read an e-mail string forwarded by my supervisor that brought me up to speed: Ed wanted a write up on M’Neir because he was the official printer of the 1850 Maryland constitution. With some suggestions from him and Jane McWilliams, a published authority on Annapolis history, I looked in Google Books, Internet Archive, and Archives of Maryland Online for a list of imprints. I found references in the state House of Delegates and Senate proceedings for payment resolutions, and bibliographic records for imprints starting in the mid 1820s but none after 1854. I learned from Jane, and an PDF attachment from an uncited genealogy book for which no one claimed responsibility, that his wife died in 1856 and shortly thereafter he left for Philadelphia.

Building the Narrative

I approached my M’Neir research in the same manner I did my first case study—using Ancestry.com and checking microfilmed and scanned indices for probate and land records. While still effective, this approach eventually slowed me down and cost me at least a day of productivity. Checking Ancestry.com, I found 1840, 1850, and 1860 census records for census references to him and his family. I also found a death abstract reference to his death in Philadelphia in 1864.

Next I used the MSA website Guide to Government Records and looked for wills and other municipal or state records that William, his father Thomas, or his grandfather Thomas created over the normal business of their day. I was disappointed to find so very little and despondently ventured to MDLandRec to view land record indices; this turned into my greatest mistake.

Indices

Although it is better to have any index than none at all, the clerk who composed it did so in the least helpful and indecipherable manner. The preferred indices have every name written in alphabetical order. This meticulous clerk needed to compose an interim index of names as he encountered them in the land records before carefully re-entering them in a second, final index. Less desirable indices begin the same way: Write down names in groups based by the first letter of each party’s surname and the instrument (like a mortgage) taken as he found them but, unlike the preferred method, cease indexing without making a union alphabetical index; therefore a researcher must scan every entry (in my case, “M”s) to satisfactorily conclude research. 

Whichever clerk created this land record index chose the latter method and wrote in the most indecipherable script. Although my ability to read 19^th century clerical cursive increased since my placement at Maryland, this handwriting was so poor that I literally scrutinized every “M” name between about 1790 and 1839 in Anne Arundel County. Halfway through I realized it was easier to look for the name “William” or “Wm” and write their liber (book) enumeration and folio (page) number if the surname was short enough to be “M’Neir.”

After explaining this method to Jane McWilliams she was sympathetic to my plight with the land record index.

“But, you aren't reading that dreadful pre-1839 AA Co. land record index, are you? It is awful! Better in the original than on film, which is just about illegible…”

She recommended checking the Chancery Court indices and the “NEH Lot Histories.” Following a few conversations with my fellow LOSIM researchers and Emily Squires, I was introduced to previously unknown print references and was reintroduced to the checklist of indices webpage on the Guide to Government Records site. Since Annapolis is a treasured city with intense historical and genealogical interest, and LOSIM is concentrating on the Eastern Shore, I was ignorant of the resources available for Annapolis only research. One of these, the National Endowment for the Humanities Lot Histories, co-created by one Jane McWilliams, are loosely bound books arranged by lot and parcel number for all of Annapolis up to the early 1800s. I quickly learned this was how she provided land references to Thomas M’Neir despite the illegible script.

I returned to the checklist of indices page and, rather embarrassingly, learned of a dozen card indices unavailable online or otherwise confined to books written in that tight script. Although the blame for not using these resources earlier falls squarely on my shoulders, I expect the non-descriptive names for each index served as barrier to intellectual access.

The first card index I checked was Index 106, or “(Maryland Gazette, Annapolis Items, Index), 1745-1820.” I found four references to a Thomas or George McNeir but sadly none for William. Although I did not know which Thomas McNeir was referenced in the Gazette, I learned he was a tailor, he died around 1801, and he either had a wry sense of humor or was a bit of a jerk; a 1794 runaway ad asks readers to apprehend George M’Neir, an apprentice tailor to Thomas M’Neir, for the princely sum of $1. Since this ad was placed five years before printer William’s birth, and the 20 year old George M’Neir was probably not apprenticed to his 28 year old brother Thomas, I could safely conclude that tailor Thomas was William’s grandfather. An interesting note: The language of the runaway ad resembles dozens of slave runaway ads I have seen on the LOSIM website.

"so that I get him..."

 

"so that I get him." Many runaway ads are phrased identically

 

 

I also spotted the reference to Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s marriage announcement.

For those who are curious—an advertisement in “The Carrolltonian” proves that as of 1827 George M’Neir was one of two tailors/merchants in Annapolis.

In order to verify family information from the genealogical text that sourced printer William’s great-granddaughter for most of its content, I checked several more indices that did not yield much pertinent to William. These included:
 

• Index 27, or “(Church Records, Marriage Index), 1686-1958,” which replicated much of the information I derived from print resources,
• Index 47, or “(Oaths of Fidelity, Index), 1778,” which included a reference to one Thomas “McNear,”
• Index 48, or “(Pension Records, Revolutionary War, Index), 1778-1861,”
• Index 70, or “(Land Records, Annapolis, Index), 1699-1817,” a delightful index created by, or contributing  to, the NEH Lot Histories tomes,
• Index 1, or “(Probate Records, Colonial, Index), 1634-1777,” and

• Index 3, or “(Probate Records, Index), 1777-1854, incomplete,” which painted a complete picture about tailor Thomas’ estate.

By far the most useful index was 59 “(Chancery Records, Index), 1668-1807, 1817-1851”; with the references gleaned from this card index I determined at which paper he worked before starting his own printing company, the span of time he served as Justice of the Peace, some land he purchased from a deceased person’s estate, and a few minor but still interesting activities with the state.

In my time with the card indices I encountered various ways that index creators placed names beginning with “Mc” or “Mac.” Although printer William spelt his name “M’Neir” in print, overwhelmingly it was spelled “McNeir” by everyone else. The already unnerving, seemingly random ways that “McNeir” was spelled by clerks and the McNeirs themselves (McNier, McNear, McNair, etc) was compounded by its placement in the index drawers.  Some indices place “Mc” in a literally alphabetical order between names that begin with “Ma” and “Me,” consequently separating “Mac” from “Mc.” Others, like Index 1, arrange the cards as if the “a” in “Mac” is absent and interfile both spellings. Index 70 seems to split the difference and has an interfiled section for “Mc” or “Mac” between “M” and “N.”

My final resource of the week was the chattel records. Since the book index was unscanned and I did not wish to ceaselessly scroll through microfilm, and ventured into the stacks and wrote down any references to printer William. It was in this index, and subsequent research into the books and pages they cited, that reminded me about a philosophical tenet of chattel slavery and this scene from, of all things, Soylent Green.

Next time: An explanation.

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives