From the Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society: Potential Case Studies

I’ve expanded my record stripping to include all five counties (Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Talbot) of the Eastern Shore that are covered in the U.S. Department of Education grant. Interesting individuals that I’ve encountered so far and are potential case studies:

-         Samuel Harrison, a wealthy landowner and slave owner in Talbot County, who manumitted over 100 slaves (most gradually) in his will. Many of the manumitted slaves were over the age of 45 and some were disabled, two conditions that  outlawed manumission.

-         A couple of cases of freed slaves whose manumissions were conditional on their emigrating to Liberia. I need to dig deeper, but it does not appear as if these particular people emigrated despite this condition.

-         Ebenezer Welch, a slave owner in Kent County, freed his “negro children” in his will.

-         James A. Jones, an African American butcher from Kent County and a delegate to the 1852 Colored Colonization Convention, who was pro-emigration but did not emigrate.

I’ve found many heartbreaking cases but the case of the boy Asbury is particularly sad because poor records management was the cause. Robert Butler of Queen Anne’s County gradually freed his slaves in his will, stating the date that each was to be free. However, in the case of Asbury, Butler’s will was torn in the space that specified Asbury’s term of service, leaving it as 18?7.

As a result:

Transcription: “Note: The Administrator feels himself at a loss to know the exact time of service of Negro Asbury, last the will of the testator was so badly defaced and torn that the figure between 8 and 7 was entirely obliterated and he has substituted the figure six as the most probable.”

The administrator may have guessed correctly, or may even have shortened Asbury’s term of service. Yet, it is unfortunate that his time in servitude had to be decided so arbitrarily due to a hole in paper.*

* Maryland State Archives Special Collections (Maryland State Colonization Society Papers) Extract of the will of Robert Butler,1834. MSA SC 5977, Reel 13249 p. 19. (http://mdhistory.net/msa_sc5977/scm013249/pdf/msa_sc5977_scm13249-0019.pdf)

Week Four at MSA

The current phase of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland program, which is funded by a Department of Education grant, is focused on five counties of the Eastern Shore (Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne's, and Talbot). To support our research of this region, I'm beginning to strip US census records for data about African Americans living in Dorchester County. This information forms part of a database that helps us cross-reference enslaved and free blacks in various state, local, and federal records.

As you know, another project I'm working on is the records of the Maryland State Colonization Society. One of my goals will be to find out who was being successfully recruited to emigrate, what their motivations were, and what the socio-political environment was like in Maryland. As the below letter from a recruiting agent shows, the Society was very particular about recruiting "the right kind" of black person to Liberia. The Society was focused on recruiting industrious, tee-totaling Christians. However, in correspondence from Liberia, Society officials frequently complain about the emigrants' lack of industry. None of the secondary sources that I've read have interrogated this label of laziness, accepting this as an apt description of many of the emigrants. On the other hand, scholarship on freed people in the United States has interpreted this perceived resistance to long-term work commitments in other ways such as a desire to be mobile in order to find dispersed family members or an attempt to avoid exploitative working arrangements. I hope my work with the Society's papers will uncover more of the voices of the black emigrants who exiled themselves from their native United States in hopes of a better future for themselves and

families.¹

From the first paragraph: "The visit of Jackson to this neighborhood has produced a happy influence in behalf of Colonization, and quite a disposition to emigrate on the part of the [illegible] people of color; The probability now is, that we have twenty, at least, from hereabouts, (and these too), of the right kind. By tomorrow we shall have, as many names as it is desirable should go this fall from one portion of our state." (emphasis added)

In my free time, I went to a wonderful panel about race in America organized by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I had the opportunity to meet Spencer Crew, former director of the National Museum of American History and former president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Dr. Crew, a professor at George Mason University, is teaching a course on the Underground Railroad and I hope the Legacy of Slavery website will offer him useful primary sources for Maryland. I also met Nell Irvin Painter, professor emerita at Princeton, who signed my copy of The History of White People.

Nell Irvin Painter, Rex M. Ellis, and Spencer Crew at the NMAAHC panel "America in Black and White"

1.  John H. Kennard to Dr. Easter, October 9, 1838, Maryland State Colonization Society Papers. Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 5977. http://mdhistory.net/msa_sc5977/scm013227/html/msa_sc5977_scm13227-0008.html

Maryland State Colonization Society: A Very Brief History

One of my main projects will be working with the recently digitized records of the Maryland State Colonization Society. I’ll be creating case studies and writing biographies in order to inform researchers and other members of public about the rich information within the records. Here’s a very general overview of the society’s purpose and history.

The Maryland State Colonization Society (MSCS) was founded in 1817 as an auxiliary of the national American Colonization Society (ACS) with the goal of raising money for the parent organization. After ACS founded Liberia in 1822, MSCS was also tasked with recruiting free African American colonists for settlement. After Nat Turner’s 1831 Rebellion, MSCS was reorganized and funded by the Maryland General Assembly. According to the Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, Nat Turner’s actions led to increased restrictions on slaves and free blacks throughout the slave states. The Maryland General Assembly hoped that MSCS would help remove free blacks from the state and prevent the eruption of a rebellion similar to Nat Turner’s. The state also passed new laws prohibiting manumitted slaves from remaining in Maryland or for free blacks to settle in the state. In 1833, Maryland decided to found its own colony in Liberia at Cape Palmas. With funding from the Maryland General Assembly, MSCS agents canvassed the state to recruit colonists. Often, following in their footsteps were blacks and white abolitionists who dissuaded freedpeople from emigrating. Instead, they encouraged freed people to fight for equal rights in their native United States. In the end, only approximately 1,150 free blacks settled in the Maryland colony by the time that MSCS sent out its last expedition in 1861.¹

Liberia became an independent nation in 1847, and the Maryland in Liberia colony was annexed to the new nation as Maryland County in 1857. MSCS ceased operations in 1863, leaving the organization’s papers in the care of Dr. James Hall, the Society’s General Agent, business manager, and editor of the Maryland Colonization Journal. In 1877, Hall donated the records to the Maryland Historical Society. The papers were microfilmed in 1970 and digitized in 2011.

1. Hall, Richard. L. On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834-1857. (Baltimore, Md.: Maryland Historical Society, 2003), 346.