Francis "Frank" Laws (b. - d. )
MSA SC 3520-11124
USCT Soldier, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, 39th Regiment
Biography:
Francis Laws was born a slave in Queen Anne's County. He was owned by Augustus McCabe, a farmer who resided on a property southeast of Centerville. Despite declaring $25,000 worth of real and personal estate value in 1860, McCabe only enslaved five African Americans.1 There is no record of Francis being purchased, nor is their confirmation that he had been passed down within his owner's family. Presumably Laws was one of the two males recorded in the 1860 Slave Schedule, which would have made him either 28 or 31 years old as of that year.2
Like many other enslaved blacks on the Eastern Shore, Francis Laws took the opportunity to gain his freedom through military service. He enlisted in Company I of the 39th Colored Troop Regiment, on March 31, 1864.3 Fellow Queen Anne's County natives Charles A.Wilson and James Taylor also served in the 39th. Augustus McCabe would officially manumitted his bondsman in the county land records on June 2, ultimately receiving $100 payment for the act.4 Laws spent much of the next year in the military hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, apparently from an undisclosed illness. He was released in March of 1865, then serving as a cook for the rest of his time.5 Francis would likely have joined his regiment in North Carolina that spring and summer, when they performed garrison duty following the April surrender of Confederate troops.6
Francis Laws was mustered out of the U.S.C.T. on December 4, 1865, but his whereabouts are unknown after the end of his military service.7
Footnotes -
1. Ancestry.com. 1860 Federal Census, Queen Anne's County, MD, District 3, p. 5.
2. Ancestry.com. 1860 Federal Census, Slave Schedule, Queen Anne's County, MD, District 3, p. 2.
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