Isaac Moore
MSA SC 3520-18341
Biography:
Isaac Moore was an African American man who was lynched near Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland on July 22, 1868. Nothing is known about Moore's early life or his family background. He may have been born free, rather than enslaved, but that is speculative. By the 1860s, was living in Harford County. [1]
Confirmed information about Moore's life begins in the early 1860s. In the spring of 1861, he was convicted of raping an African American woman named Anna Harris. Instead of prison, the court ordered that Moore be sold as a slave for a term of ten years out of Maryland, a common punishment for African Americans convicted of crimes. Where Moore was sent to serve is not recorded, but he was able to return to Maryland within a few years, amid the upheaval of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. [2]
In August 1866, Moore was accused of assaulting and attempting to rape six different women, likely white, in two incidents. In one case, according to press accounts, Moore attacked three women driving in a carriage near Havre de Grace. Moore was arrested soon after, and stood trial in Cecil County, where the cases were presumably moved because an impartial jury could not be found in Harford. Most of the women involved refused to testify, likely because of the stigma applied to women in rape cases; one reportedly left the state to avoid appearing in court, according to newspaper coverage. Without witnesses, Moore was acquitted in five of the cases, and convicted of assault--but not intent to rape--in the sixth case in January 1867. He was sentenced to serve one year in the Harford County Jail. [3]
Moore was likely released from jail in early 1868. On the morning of July 22, Moore was again accused of attacking a nineteen-year-old named Fanny Oldfield, the daughter of William and Hannah Oldfield. Oldfield ran a millenary shop in Bel Air, and was traveling there from her parents' house in the Fountain Green area, a trip of about two miles. According to newspaper accounts, Moore and another man named Ben Preston dragged Oldfield away from the road, then assaulted, robbed, and attempted to rape her. Oldfield eventually escaped, and a contingent of white men captured Moore in Bel Air soon after. [4]
Moore was brought to the Oldfields' house to be identified by the accuser, at which time he was nearly carried off by a mob. However, the county sheriff "resisted the crowd...quite nobly," and was able to return Moore to jail safely. Later that afternoon, Moore was taken to be formally charged before a magistrate. While he was being transported, the mob seized Moore, while preventing the sheriff and his deputies from protecting him. A noose was placed on Moore's neck and he was taken to the spot where he was accused of attacking Oldfield, on the road to Churchville, near the bridge over Bynum's Run, close to the house of Charles Giles. [5]
When the crowd arrived at the spot, Moore, by now stripped of his clothing, confessed to the crime and named Preston as his accomplice. Newspaper accounts reported that Moore said he had been watching Oldfield on the road for several days waiting for an opportunity to attack her. Moore was then hanged by the mob from sassafras tree at the scene. Preston was arrested soon after, and the sheriff was able to bring him to jail, though the mob attempted to lynch him as well. [6]
In the aftermath, one of the county newspapers noted, "[i]t is, of course, to be regretted that [Moore] did not receive his punishment in due course of law." However, "the aggravation was so great, that the assembled multitude thought such a fiend was unfit to live, and the safety of the community appeared to them to require that [Moore] be summarily dealt with." The newspaper reported that Moore had also "been guilty of many like offenses against persons of his own color...and persons white and black unite in recognizing his guilt and the justness of his punishment." This comment was perhaps an effort to lessen criticism of the community, if not to repair relations with the county's African American residents. No proceedings were ever taken to investigate the perpetrators of the lynching. No information about Ben Preston's fate is known. [7]
Special thanks to Henry Peden and the Historical Society of Harford County for generously providing research.
Notes:
1. There were multiple people named Isaac Moore in Harford County during this period. One, who was an adult by the 1840s, was enslaved. Another, born around 1846, was free. An 1861 newspaper article about the Isaac Moore who was lynched does not mention that he was enslaved, but that does not rule out the possibility that was enslaved anyway. Indictment, Richard H. Hollis, 1843, November Term, Harford County Court, Historical Society of Harford County (hereafter HSHC). Hollis was charged with providing a gun and boat to an enslaved man named Isaac Moore, which was illegal. Indenture, Isaac Moore to John McGaw of Robert, 1850, Harford County Court, Chattel Records, HSHC; "Court Proceedings," National American (Bel Air, Md), 8 March 1861.
2. "Court Proceedings"; "Outrage and Robbery," Aegis and Intelligencer (Bel Air, Md), 24 July 1868.
3. State v. Isaac Moore, Cecil County Circuit Court, Criminal Docket, 1867, January Term, cases 30-34 [MSA T2955-11]; Cecil County Circuit Court, Minutes, 1866-1869 [MSA T3110-4]; Southern Aegis & Harford County Intelligencer (Bel Air, Md), 30 November 1866; "Affairs in Harford County," The Sun (Baltimore), 25 August 1866; "Outrage and Robbery."
4. U.S. Federal Census, 1870, Harford County, Maryland; The State Gazette and Merchants and Farmers' Directory for Maryland and District of Columbia (Baltimore: Sadler, Drysdale & Purnell, 1871), 601.
5. "The Lynch Law Case in Harford County," The Sun (Baltimore), 24 July 1868; "Outrage and Robbery"; Simon J. Martenet, Map of Harford County, 1878, Library of Congress, MSA SC5339-16-8.
6. "The Lynch Law Case in Harford County"; "Outrage and Robbery"; "The Execution Last Friday," Aegis and Intelligence (Bel Air, Md), 19 March 1875.
7. "Outrage and Robbery."
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