Biography - Anne Catharine Hoof Green (c 1720-1775), “Printer to the Province” of Maryland

.
Anne Catharine Hoof Green (c. 1720-1775), “printer to the Province” of Maryland from 1767, until her death, was apparently born in Holland, & brought to Pennsylvania as a small child.

On April 25th, 1738, she married in Christ Church, Philadelphia, to Jonas Green, a journeyman printer from Boston, whose family had been prominent in the trade since the mid-17th century. Green, who had found employment in Philadelphia with Benjamin Franklin & Andrew Bradford, moved by the following October to Annapolis, Md., where he soon became printer for the Province of Maryland. Beginning in 1745, Green became publisher of the weekly Maryland Gazette, one of the earliest colonial newspapers. He was also register of St. Anne’s Church (Anglican), an alderman of the city of Annapolis, & postmaster. He made his political mark in his fight against the Stamp Act.

1769 Anne Catharine Hoof Green 1720–1775) Printer & Publisher by Charles Willson Peale, (1741-1827) The words "ANNAPOLIS Printer to . . . ," which appear on the paper held by Green, are a reference to the fact that the Maryland legislature had chosen her to succeed her husband as the colony's official printer.

In her husband's newspaper, Mrs. Green occasionally advertised the sale of "Choice good Coffee” & “very good Chocolate” at the post office, which was evidently their home. In Annapolis, the Green's rented a house on Charles Street. At the time it was a small 2 story house with a kitchen & 2 bedrooms. During the early 1740s, the owner of the house expanded the property to contain a print shop, post office, & room enough for the growing family.

The printing house was probably in a detached building. The following excerpt from Riley's Ancient City, p. 119, seems to give support to this supposition. Riley has been discussing the smallpox ravages in Annapolis in 1756 and 1757. "The family of Jonas Green," he writes, "was afflicted to such an extent that many of his customers were afraid to take the Gazette, lest they would catch the disease. Mr. Green, whilst he expressed a doubt as to paper carrying the disease, subsequently stated that people 'need not fear to catch the small-pox from the paper, as it was kept all the time a good distance from the house, and beside the disease was now eradicated from his premises.'"

The rearing of a large family probably occupied much of Mrs Green's time, since she bore 14 children. The parish register of St Anne's Church in Annapolis, lists 6 sons & 8 daughters: John b. 18 October 1738, died infancy; Rebecca b. September 1740, married 2 December 1757 to Mr. John Clapham; Jonas b. 12 February 1741, died in infancy; Catherine b. 4 November 1743, died in infancy (her godfather was Samuel Soumaien, the silversmith); Marie b. 7 January 1744/5 died in infancy; Mary b, 9 January 1745/6; William b. 21 December 1746, "being named Willian after the Duke of Cumberland only;" Anne Catharine b. 19 January 1748, died October 5; Frederick b. 20 January 1750, "just as the Guns were Firing on account of the Birth of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales" (one of his sponsors was the celebrated Dr. Alexander Hamilton of Annapolis, author of Hamilton's Itinerarium); Deborah b. 19 January 1752, died October 9 (her godmother was Mrs. Susanna Soumaien); Elizabeth b. 10 November 1755, died October 2; Jonas b. 29 August 1755, died of smallpox 26 December 1756; Samuel b. 27 April 1757; and Augusta, b. 4 April 1760.

She was probably taking an active part in the family printing business some time before 1767, for upon her husband’s death in that year her press produced the Acts & Votes & Proceedings of the assembly of 1767 on schedule, & the Maryland Gazette continued without a break.

On April 16, 1767, the following notice appeared in the Maryland Gazette: On Saturday Evening last died, at his late Dwelling-House, Mr. Jonas Green, for 28 years Printer to this Province, and 21 years Printer and Publisher of the Maryland Gazette: He was one of the Aldermen of this City. It would be the highest In-discretion in us, to attempt giving the character he justly deserved, only we have Reason to regret the Loss of him, in the various Stations of Husband, Parent, Master and Companion.

Immediately after the announcement of the death of her husband, Mrs Green wrote: "I Presume to address You," she wrote in an appeal to the public,"for your Countenance to Myself and numerous Family, left, without your Favour, almost destitute of Support, by the Decease of my Husband, who long, and, I have the Satisfaction to say, faithfully served You in the Business of Provincial Printer; and, I flatter myself, that, with your kind Indulgence and Encouragement, Myself, and Son, will be enabled to continue it on the same Footing...I am willing to hope, that the Pains taken by my late Husband, to oblige his very extensive Acquaintance, and the Character he deservedly bore, of an honest, benevolent Man, will recommend to your Regard, Your grateful and faithful humble Servant, A. C. GREEN.

On Jan. 7, 1768, shortly after his 21st birthday, the Maryland Gazette appeared under the name of Anne Catherine Green & William Green. With the death of William in August 1770, Frederick replaced him; on Jan. 2, 1772, when he was not quite 22, his services were recognized in the colophon as Anne Catherine Green & Son.

Mrs Green did not shy away from her new leadership role. Throughout the spring & summer of 1768, week after week the columns of her newspaper were filled with letters written by two angry Marylanders. The heated controversy was between "C. D." (Walter Dulany) and "The Bystander" (the learned but unscrupulous Bennet Allen, rector of St. Anne's Parish.) Finally, Mrs. Green & her son William refused to publish more letters of "The Bystander," unless the rector would indemnify them against suit & openly declare his identity. Allen declared that the Greens, as Jonas Green had been, were under the thumb of the Dulany family & complained strenuously of his exclusion from their newspaper, while his enemies were permitted still to use its columns.

Mrs. Green's son-in-law, John Clapham, came to the support of his wife's family in a long letter in the Maryland Gazette of September 22, 1768: "Mr. Allen's Treatment to Mrs. Green, left a widow, with large Family, he never can justify. On the 27th of May, he called at the Printing-Office, and endeavoured to intimidate her, by threatening to knock up her press, if ever she published any more pieces against him: Accordingly, next Morning, a Manuscript...was privately stuck up at the Door of the Stadt-House, the General Assembly then sitting, and the Office of Provincial Printer vacant, by which (tho' not intended) he did her real Service; for she was so happy, soon after, as to be unanimously chosen (printer for the province). It is generally supposed, had he acted a contrary Part, and given her a Recommendation to the Public, she wou'd not, for that very Reason, have received so general a Mark of Friendship and Approbation."

Jonas Green’s pay allowance as Maryland's public printer had terminated with his death. Finally, the Assembly voted that Mrs Green should be appointed to the position. She would be allowed the sum of "Nine hundred and forty-eight dollars and one half a dollar;" and further, that for her future services as public printer she receive 48,000 pounds of tobacco annually for those years in which there was a session of the Assembly, and 36,109 pounds of the current medium (tobacco) for the years in which no session was held. These were the same terms of payment as had been accorded to Jonas Green in the year 1765. Throughout her 8 years of service to the Province as public printer, Mrs. Green's allowance remained unchanged. In addition, the Assembly gave her the task of supplying “book Notes & Manifest” for the tobacco-inspection warehouses; & in 1770, she was paid for printing the bills of credit authorized by the Assembly of 1769.

She also published a yearly almanac & printed a few political pamphlets & some satirical works. Her most ambitious undertaking, apart from the newspaper & public business, was Elie Vallett’s Deputy Commissary’s Guide (1774), a book of 133 leaves detailing the procedures & forms to be used in probating wills & settling estates. Her issue of The Charter & Bye-Laws of the City of Annapolis has been described as “a beautifully printed little volume of fifty-two pages, which for typographical nicety could hardly have been surpassed by the best of her contemporaries in the colonies” (Wroth).

Until Aug. 20, 1773, when William Goddard began publishing in Baltimore of the Maryland Journal & Baltimore Advertiser, the Maryland Gazette was the only Maryland newspaper, & its role in reporting the political events leading to the Revolution was an important one.

Mrs. Green printed communications from the Northern colonies showing the increasing protest against the Townshend Acts & the establishment & success of no importation agreements. Through her columns John Dickinson’s Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer reached the Maryland public. Accounts of the Boston Tea Party & the Boston Port Act of 1774 aroused great excitement. Green covered issues regarding independence, drawing upon local controversies. She covered was the famous, local Antilon/First citizen debate between Daniel Delaney & Charles Carroll. Carroll had argued for independent legislation & citizenship privileges.

By informing the people of plans & protests elsewhere as well as at home, the Maryland Gazette no doubt unconsciously helped to push the revolutionary cause. During such turbulent times a printing firm that depended heavily upon public business for its support might have made enemies it could ill afford. But Mrs. Green opened her columns to both sides to fan argument; & she was generally careful not to print libelous attacks on individuals, even when the authors were men of influence.

After her death (presumably in Annapolis) her son Frederick took over the business & continued to observe her rules, even though his comments & selection of materials reflected more & more radical views. During the Revolutionary War, from December 25, 1777, to April 30, 1779, the Maryland Gazette suspended publication. After its resumption, it continued to be published by sons & grandsons without interruption, until its final cessation 60 years later in 1839.

Little is known of Anne Catharine Green as a person. The Maryland Gazette’s obituary couched in the language of conventional praise, credits her with “a mild & benevolent Disposition” & exemplary “conjugal Affection” & “parental Tenderness.” As a printer & patriot, she excelled. Anne Green was an avid supporter of the Revolution & the Maryland Gazette consistently contained attacks on British Rule. The Maryland Gazette was the provinces only source of news during this period, and its pages were debated heavily. Under Anne's direction the paper became a force in the community, helping push the nation towards liberty and revolution. She made the Maryland Gazette a forum for discussion & a valuable, if not always impartial, source of information during a critical period in American history.

This posting based, in part, on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971
.

Biography - Marylander Ann Teresa Mathews 1732-1800 Founder of the 1st US Roman Catholic Convent

.
Marylander Ann Teresa Mathews (1732-1800), founder with Frances Dickinson (1755-1830), of the 1st Roman Catholic convent for women in the United States, was born in Charles County, one of 3 children of Joseph & Susannah (Craycroft) Mathews. Her father, who was descended from a Catholic family prominent in 17th-century Maryland, died when she was 2, leaving the family a 345-acre farm, a sparsely furnished house, & 2 slaves. Her widowed mother kept a deeply religious household, for her daughter, Ann, her son Ignatius, & 3 of her son William’s children entered religious life.

Although Maryland was originally settled as a refuge for Roman Catholics, since the 18th-century in Maryland, Roman Catholics were not permitted to hold public mass, & those who wished to train for a life in the church necessarily went abroad. Thus in 1754, Ann Mathews sailed to Hoogstraeten, Belgium, to enter the English monastery of the Discalced Carmelites, a contemplative order springing from the works & influence of the mystic St. Teresa of Spain. Its severe rules included a ban on shoes, hence the name Discalced. On Sept. 30 of that year she took the habit of the order & the name Bernardina Teresa Xavier of St. Joseph, & on Nov. 24, 1755, at age 23, she made her profession. Staying on at the convent, she served as mistress of novices before being elected prioress in 1774.

The Original Residence at Carmel Monestary & Chapel in Charles County, Maryland

Mother Bernardina began to think of founding an American carmel, as the Revolution had removed the disabilities of Roman Catholics in Maryland. Encouraged by some of the prominent Catholics in her state, as well as by her brother Ignatius, a Jesuit priest, she made plans for such a move with a former Charles County neighbor, Mary Brent, who as Mother Mary Margaret of the Angels had become prioress of the English carmel at Antwerp. Unfortunately Mother Margaret died in 1784, but Mother Bernardina’s nieces, Ann Teresa & Susanna Mathews, arrived that year at Hoogstraeten to make their professions & to join in the venture. Indispensable support came from the Rev. Charles Neale, a relative of Mother Bernardina & confessor to the Antwerp carmel. It was 1790, however, before sufficient money & the necessary authorizations were gathered for the founding of an American carmel. On April 19, 1790, 4 nuns, accompanied by Father Neale, left Hoogstraeten for the Maryland. They included Mother Bernardina, now 58, her two nieces, & Frances Dickinson.

Frances Dickinson, born in London, had assumed the Carmelite habit at Antwerp on May 1, 1772, when only 16, & with it the name Clare Joseph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Her letters & a diary show that she possessed self-awareness & a sense of humor. By July 20, 1790, the nuns were at Chandler’s Hope, Father Neale’s childhood home in Charles County, on a hill overlooking the Port Tobacco River. Here, resuming their religious habit & practices, they established the first convent within the United States. As Chandler’s Hope quickly proved too small for their purposes, Baker Brooke, a Maryland Catholic offered them 886 acres & a newly built house a little farther up the Port Tobacco Valley. On Oct. 15, 1790, the 4 nuns moved to their new quarters, which they dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary, & Joseph.

At the outset the nuns faced a critical decision, Maryland’s Bishop John Carroll had hoped that they would be willing to modify the rules of their order enough to allow them to teach. He gained a dispensation from Rome in 1793, but they asked not to make use of it & set themselves instead to the task of training newcomers to a life of prayer & contemplation. By 1794, a 2nd building was ready & four novices were admitted; by 1800 there were 14 nuns; & by 1818 the number had jumped to 23. The new arrivals brought family slaves & other property which, becoming part of the convent’s resources, made it nearly self-sufficient. In the Maryland countryside, there was less time for contemplation than in Belgium, but the nuns kept the Psalter before them, as they spun yarn from the wool of their own sheep to weave into cloth for their habits.

When Mother Bernardina died 1800, Bishop Carroll made Clare Joseph temporary prioress until her death 30 years later. For many years the little community flourished. In a letter to England in 1807, Mother Clare Joseph spoke of plentiful crops, of the pleasant & healthy situation, & of the advantages of its isolation “suitable to our eremitical Order.” In 1818, Archbishop Ambrose Marechal wrote with pride to Rome of the piety of the nuns.

A long & expensive lawsuit over their land (1818-29), however, brought financial difficulties; & the death in 1823, of Father Neale, was more than a spiritual loss, for the plantation began to be insufficient for the support of the convent. Mother Clare Joseph died there in 1830; & in 1831, the carmel moved to Baltimore.

Most of the later carmels in the United States have sprung from this convent or its branches, so that Ann Mathews & Frances Dickinson established the Carmelite order in the United States. Although in Baltimore the nuns were finally obliged for a time to teach in order to maintain themselves, Carmelite traditions & training in the contemplative life had been well established during previous 4 decades.

As they left in 1831, according to an almanac published by the nuns, there was a tradition in southern Maryland, that the faithful would pray for the return of the nuns. In 1933, the people of Charles County began to restore the original monastery residence, and the nuns did return in 1976. The monastery in Charles County, Maryland, is still the active home of the discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Carmel of Port Tobacco, who do not teach or have contact with the public.

This posting based, in part, on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971
.

Agriculture in 18th-Century Maryland

.
Agriculture in 18th-Century Maryland

In the half-century century leading up to the American Revolution, tobacco exports from the Chesapeake tripled, marking an important evolution in Maryland's agriculture. Tobacco prices, which in the unstable market economy of seventeenth-century agriculture had fluctuated wildly, became relatively stable, and tobacco reigned supreme. In 1723, Britain dropped its re-export fees on tobacco, and France opened its market to Chesapeake-grown leaf, through the hands of British brokers. Though tobacco prices declined slowly and steadily, the result was relative stability. Profit from growing tobacco came from lowering costs rather than from rising prices.

Maryland's population during this same half-century also tripled, and presumably many newly arrived families entered the staple-crop business. More importantly, the slave population tripled, and virtually all of those hands went to tending this labor-intensive commodity. According to one estimate, a single worker could manage two and a half acres (roughly 6,800 plants), and produce 2,500 pounds of leaf.

Tobacco plants were so labor intensive because each plant needed close tending, first to keep down moisture-robbing weeds, then to pick off insects and pinch back smaller top leaves so that a few grew large. From seedbed preparation, to transplanting seedlings into hoed-up mounds, through the daily routine of picking and pinching, to cutting the mature plants, splitting their stalks and hanging them on poles in a barn to dry, no other crop required so much attention. Although a planter could employ his entire family in this work, and perhaps afford a white servant too, slaves provided a labor source that was more readily exploitable. As the eighteenth century progressed, slave-owning expanded and became entrenched, particularly among planters of modest means in southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore, who borrowed money from tobacco agents to buy a slave or two, who then represented the most valuable assets of the owners' estates. By the first U.S. Census in 1790, slaves numbered over one hundred thousand, making up about a third of Maryland's population, and most of the labor force in the tobacco economy.

Most Maryland farmers, however, did not own slaves, even if they aspired to do so one day. Some farmers were too old, some too young, and some too unlucky to reach a position where they could undertake the economic gamble slaves represented. Still others, like the Quakers who moved from Pennsylvania to the Eastern Shore, rejected slavery on moral grounds. But for the German and Scots-Irish farmers who came to the Monocacy Valley in the 1740s, slave labor simply did not meet the most pressing need. Plowing and harrowing fields for small grains, growing and hackling flax, pruning orchard trees, making brandy, and keeping livestock fat and healthy enough to sell required more skill than the extensive menial labor slaves typically performed. And, as the countryside became more settled, problems with growing things grew more challenging.

Increasing settlements meant that more land was occupied, reducing the amount of new land available for tobacco. Increased populations also meant that people, farms, crops, and livestock were closer together, making it easier for diseases to spread among animals and crops.

Sometime shortly before or during the American Revolution, wheat growers in Maryland began to experience the same fungal disease that had wiped out that crop in New England earlier-stem rust. Puccinia graminis can live on the barberry, a dense, spiny hedge, during the winter. The fungus spread its spores to wheat fields in summer, shriveling the kernels and turning the straw a rusty brown. Hard winters retarded the disease, but when a damp spring turned hot and dry after a mild winter, stem rust spread easily and could cause almost total crop loss.

Farmers knew that the barberry was implicated, but it was so common there was little chance of eliminating it. If they planted crops later to escape the disease, farmers ran the risk of insect damage from the highly destructive gall midge, Mayetiola destructor, that went by the more popular name "Hessian fly." Just as wheat plants ripened, the midge's larvae ate through the straw, causing the berry head, the part of the plant where the wheat itself grows, to fall off. Some believed this insect arrived in the bedding of Hessian soldiers, but whether it did or not, it coincided with stem rust to make growing wheat increasingly troublesome.

Horse glanders, an infectious and contagious respiratory disease; cattle fever, spread by ticks; and gapes, a worm affliction of poultry, all seem to have appeared in Maryland about the time of the Revolution. Glanders had been known in Europe since Roman times, and may have arrived with British cavalry mounts, as American observers claimed. Cattle fever originated from a protozoan, Babesia bigemia, that first infected ticks in the lower South, and then fed upon the blood of tick-infested cattle. Over time, cattle in the lower South developed resistance to the protozoan, but when drovers moved livestock from Georgia and the Carolinas up the Piedmont trails to supply Washington's army, the ticks spread the fever to susceptible animals.

Gapes existed worldwide from various nematodes whose larvae first took up residence in earthworms, snails, slugs and flies but ended up in the trachea of poultry. As Andrew Wiesenthal described it around Baltimore in 1799, "gaps" destroyed 80 percent of local chickens and turkeys on old established farms. As a professor of anatomy, he noted how the birds strangled, and used a feather to extract the worms from a chick's throat, but mentioned that no remedy existed.

In the eighteenth century, crop epidemics and livestock epizootics, or widespread diseases, emerged for the first time in Maryland, not just from the responsible pathogens appearing for the first time but because farmers had created an agricultural landscape significant enough to be vulnerable to contagious diseases. As the state's population increased from over 300,000 in 1790, to more than 400,000 in 1820, and more than a half-million in 1850, the challenges farmers faced from disease increased as well, forcing strategic changes, again and again.

Written by G. Terry Sharrer for the Maryland Online Encyclopedia.
.

Fugitive Slaves in Maryland

.
Fugitive Slaves in Maryland

African Americans used the act of running away as part of a broader system of resisting the physical and psychological manipulation of slavery. In most instances, slaves left plantations or work sites without permission but with the intention of returning in order to visit relatives or friends on nearby plantations, or to protest a harsh punishment. At other times, though, runaways attempted to escape slavery permanently. Those who ran hoping never to return understood that they risked their lives. Fugitive slaves plagued slaveholders from the first years of slavery in Maryland until its last days.

Although laws requiring slavery for black women and their descendents did not appear until the Assembly's 1664 session enacted "An act concerning Negroes and other slaves," Maryland's first lawmakers did recognize that some people were made to work against their will and that such people frequently ran away. Along with the earliest legal references to slavery in Maryland, therefore, were attempts to control runaway servants and slaves through legislation.

If the American Revolution (1776-83) had an immediate impact on slave escapes it could only be found in the greater opportunities to escape created by the chaos of war. Revolutionary-era newspapers contained many notices for runaways. Although they spoke of "liberty," few slaveholding Maryland patriots saw any contradiction in denying it to their slaves. Indeed, John Hanson, the Marylander who served as president of the Continental Congress, spent much of the last years of the war pursuing Ned Barnes, an enslaved man who had fled Hanson's plantation.

A variety of factors moved fugitive slaves to attempt a permanent break: persistent brutality by an owner or overseer, relocation away from immediate family or relatives, a reduction in privileges such the ability of hired slaves to keep small portions of fees, a worsening of work conditions, and numerous other individual concerns. After 1800 the most common motivation was probably the threat of sale to the Deep South. Many blacks risked flight rather undergo the perils of the domestic slave trade.

Most runaways were young men fleeing alone. Young women without children ran more often than those with children. The months of April through October saw the most escape attempts, but no single week of the year emboldened more runaways than the days between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day because owners were distracted and supervision was relaxed. Though some made clandestine use of railway and water vessels, most runaways fled on foot. While at large and on the move, runaways stayed close to roads, rivers, and other normal routes, and traveled mainly at night. Many made use of family and friends on nearby plantations, or in towns and cities. Fugitives also generally helped themselves to provisions (food, clothing, sometimes money) before leaving, but when these ran out, they foraged in the woods, relied on the kindness of people encountered along the way, and even pilfered barns and storehouses to survive. Many fugitives even found short-term employment from whomever might be willing to hire a person of undetermined status with no questions asked.

Maryland fugitives generally tried to reach urban environments (Washington, DC, Frederick, Baltimore, Philadelphia) where they might disappear into free black populations. As northern states abolished slavery during the early 1800s, however, Maryland runaways and others sought to reach free territory, including, by the 1830s, Canada, where they believed the threat of recapture was much less.

Although creativity, perseverance, and good fortune were traits of successful runaways, those pursuing fugitives were not without advantages. For example, because of indifference and unreliable support in recapturing runaways early on, by the late seventeenth century Maryland laws mandated that sheriffs, constables, and even citizens cooperate in recapturing fugitives. Federal support came first in the late eighteenth century and was greatly strengthened in 1850 by the Fugitive Slave Law. Any black person found without direct white supervision was treated as a runaway unless she or he could provide a legitimate reason. Advertisements alerted the public to fugitives' names and physical characteristics, when and from where they had run, whom they knew in the area, and most importantly, what the owner would pay for their return. Even in the northern free states, local marshals taking fugitives before a magistrate received a greater reward ($10) if an apprehended black turned out to be an escaped slave than if he or she was free and could prove it ($5). Marshals who failed to arrest a fugitive slave, or permitted one to escape, were fined $1,000.

Most runaway attempts were unsuccessful, and the price of failure could be terrible for runaways and for those who attempted to help them. Punishments for free blacks and whites convicted of aiding runaways could be severe. Even unwitting ship captains and train conductors faced fines or jail for not knowing who traveled with them. Every town and hamlet in the state had a jail, and many had slave pens designated specifically to house runaways. Once captured, most slaves were returned to their legal owners, who might administer a variety of punishments. Many runaways, especially repeat offenders, were sold at auction to South-bound slave dealers, never to see their families again.

The Abolitionist Movement of the mid-nineteenth century, with its "underground railroad," focused the nation's attention on slavery to a much greater degree than earlier attempts to end the institution had done. Before the national debate gave way to sectional conflict and civil war, fugitives from slavery found both more allies and more obstacles in their path. Wartime measures such as the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia (April 1862) and the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1863), did not directly affect Maryland blacks, but they did encourage slaves to flee, creating what scholar W. E. B. DuBois called a "general strike" of the enslaved workers. By May 1863, the federal government had also begun to recruit black soldiers, the United States Colored Troops (USCT), for the Union army. Recruiters promised freedom to slaves who enlisted, further encouraging flight.

In the two centuries of slavery in Maryland, many runaways managed to remain at large and might be said to have succeeded in becoming free. Yet freedom for runaways seldom brought peace, as fugitives always lived in fear of recapture and return to slavery.

The National Park Service's Underground Railroad Theme Study (1998) estimated the number of successful escapes for the nation for the years 1790-1860 at 100,000, or about 1,500 per year.

Written by David Taft Terry for the Maryland Online Encyclopedia.
.

Free Black Men and Women in Maryland

.
Free Blacks in Maryland

From the seventeenth century on there was a growing free black population in Maryland. This population grew quickly in the antebellum years. African Americans were usually emancipated for diligent work, good conduct, familial connections, or commendable service. At other times white owners experienced a change of heart, an attack of conscience, or, in the case of Quaker meetings, freed their slaves in following their religion.

The methods for manumission in Maryland included court actions, instructions in owners' wills, self-purchase, purchase of one's own family member's freedom with money earned when hired out, governmental decrees, or rewards for military service. In Maryland, according to acts of 1697 and 1692, the law declared that children followed the condition of their mother. Thus, when children were born to a free mother, they were free also.

In 1752, the population of Baltimore County included 166 mulatto slaves, 96 free mulattoes, 4,027 black slaves and eight free blacks. The census of 1790 recorded that about eight thousand free blacks lived in the state at that time. The free black population was concentrated in northern and western Maryland.

In 1830, the free black population was just under 53,000, about 12 percent of Maryland's population, according to the U.S. Census. That meant that about one-third of the entire Maryland African American population in Maryland was free.

Free blacks generally were not accorded the same privileges as white citizens. Maryland changed its laws relating to free blacks depending on the political climate. For a brief period some free blacks had the right to vote, but the law was later rescinded. Blacks could not carry firearms or testify against whites in court.

Free blacks—especially children—lived under the threat of being beaten or kidnapped by whites who would sell them into slavery. One reason whites formed the Maryland Abolition Society was to try to protect free blacks from kidnappers. Maryland passed and repealed several laws prohibiting blacks from assembling or carrying firearms. Maryland county governments often vacillated about the right of free blacks to hold and bequeath property. Whites often sought to restrict the type of work blacks could do because they did not want to compete with them. At various times the Maryland Assembly tried to pass laws prohibiting blacks from reading abolitionist literature, operating boats, obtaining licenses for pedaling, participating in certain trades, or having or driving hacks, carts or drays. There was also an effort keep free blacks from owning dogs. Slaveholders' motive for many of the laws, particularly those prohibiting free blacks from owning conveyances, was to prevent them from aiding runaway slaves.

In spite of numerous restrictions, free blacks in Maryland formed their own churches, schools, benevolent societies, and businesses. By 1847 there were at least thirteen black churches in Baltimore alone. Many churches were a part of larger denominations which met periodically in various states to discuss both religious and political matters.

The 1850 Census indicates that over 50 percent of Maryland free blacks could read and/or write. Free persons of color worked as domestics, small farmers, innkeepers, street vendors, ship caulkers, stevedores, sailors and boatmen, draymen, barbers, teamsters, blacksmiths, and liverymen. Blacks who had purchased their freedom were usually able to do so because they had earned money with their skilled labor.

Some free blacks, like astronomer Benjamin Banneker and preacher Daniel Coker, were able to record their own experiences. Banneker published an almanac and aided in the survey of the Federal District, later to become the District of Columbia. Coker became one of the first emigrants to return to Africa with the American Colonization Society.

Written by Debra Newman Ham for the Maryland Online Encyclopedia.
.