Hezekiah Brown
MSA SC 3520-13950
Reportedly lynched (but not killed) in Howard County on Dec. 12, 1884.
Biography:
Hezekiah Brown, a school teacher and itinerant preacher originally from
Port Republic, Calvert County, was reported to have been lynched
in "the wildest part of Howard"1 County on Saturday, December
12, 1884. Contemporary accounts refer to a clergyman near the Clarksville post office saying that Brown
was married to a white woman named Fannie Schultz, a widow, who lived with Mrs. John N. Rhodes. It was reported that Brown and Schultz may have been married by a black minister four miles west of the Clarkesville post office. Newspapers reported that "his offence [sic]
was miscegenation."2 It was reported that a band of thirteen
masked men captured Brown and hung him from a tree near Washington Road, near
the Columbia Turnpike on December 12 in the Baltimore American
as
well as The Sun.
On December 14 and December 15, the Baltimore
American and The Sun reported that Brown in fact was not lynched.
The
Baltimore American stated that the rumor of the lynching was untrue
and that Brown was "seen Saturday, and is alive and kicking."3
Brown was quoted in the same paper saying, "I would like to know who started
this thing against me. Somebody who don't like me must have got it
up and sent it to the papers. The idea that I would marry a White
woman is simply absurd. There are too many colored ladies in the
United States for me to do that. As regards my relationship with
this woman Schultz, they have only been those of a gentleman. I have
only known her about a month."4 In the newspaper accounts, Brown is reported to have mentioned that he
preached several times at Asbury Chapel, and Schultz would hear him
preach and mingle with the blacks as though she was one of them.
The newspaper reported that Schultz was excluded from the white community
because of her ties to the blacks in the area. Brown also is reported to have said that
Schultz wrote him asking permission for her eight-year-old son to attend
the Asbury Chapel school where Brown was teaching, a request Brown granted.
The account quotes Brown continuing to say, "I never made any pretence [sic] of love to the woman, and never
led her to believe that I cared for her."5
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1. Baltimore American, 13 December 1884.
2. Ibid.
3. Baltimore American, 14 December 1884.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
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