Cinderella Brogden (b. circa 1824 - d. circa 1850)
MSA SC 5496-000287
Escaped from District 2, Anne Arundel County, 1848
Biography:
Born around 1824, Cinderella Brogden was enslaved on the farm of George F. Worthington in Anne Arundel County. The farm stood near Brotherton, a postal village about ten miles northwest of Annapolis, near the Severn River.1 Her husband, Abraham Brogden, was a free black who lived in Baltimore City, and worked in Anne Arundel County.
On Thursday, December 21, 1848, Cinderella fled her enslavement with the help of her husband. Thomas D. Marriott, a friend of the Brogden family, wrote that Cinderella "was about to be sold (under execution) for her masters debts, when Brogden ran off with her," a clear motivation for the escape.2 According to Marriott, Cinderella would have been sold outside of Maryland. Worthington's overseer, Edward H. Brown, immediately suspected Abraham, and placed a runaway advertisement in the Baltimore Sun the following Saturday, December 23rd. The advertisement stated that "She has a husband living in Baltimore by the name of Abram Brogden, who is supposed to have taken her away from home."3 Brown set the maximum reward for Cinderella's return at 100 dollars, and noted that she took a variety of clothes with her when she fled. She was apprehended and admitted to the Baltimore jail on December 22nd, just one day after she had fled, and a day before her runaway advertisement appeared in the newspaper. While she was held in jail, the Baltimore Sun ran the advertisement, and eight days later Cinderella was given back to her owner, Worthington, by the order of H.R. Robbins of the Baltimore jail.4 Cinderella's owner planned to sell her South, but she passed away in December 1848 before he could do so. Three years later, thanks to petitions by Annapolis residents who were sympathetic to his motivations, Abraham received a pardon from the governor in 1851.5
Cinderella was not the first Brogden to escape from George F. Worthington's
farm. In 1852, Eliza "Brogdon" fled, prompting a runaway
ad in the Baltimore Sun.
Worthington described Eliza as intelligent and literate, and "may have
papers prepared by herself."6
1. "One Hundred Dollars
Reward." Baltimore Sun 23 December 1848.
1.
R.S. Fisher.
Gazetteer of the State of Maryland (Baltimore, MD:
James S. Waters, 1852) 58.
1.
Anne Arundel County District 2, Simon J. Martenet, Map of Anne Arundel
County, 1860, Library of Congress, MSA SC 1213-1-117.
3. "One Hundred Dollars Reward." Baltimore Sun 23 December 1848.
4. BALTIMORE CITY AND COUNTY JAIL (Runaway Docket) [MSA C 2064-2]. Cinderella Brogden, #1268.
6. "$50 Reward." Baltimore
Sun 2 November 1852.
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