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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 364 Print image (81K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 364 Print image (81K) |
| Samuel Burris Underground Railroad Station Master Bums ran a station on the Underground Railroad in Delaware during the 1840s. When the pro-slavery supporters learned of his deeds, Burris was captured and as a punishment auctioned off as a slave. Little did they know that the highest bidder at the auction was sent there by Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington, to buy Burris and to return him to freedom. Scarce Katz, William Loren. Eyewitness: A Living Documentary of the African-American Contribution to American History. New York: Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, 1995. 166-67. Frederick Douglas s (c. 1817-1895) Abolitionist, Editor, Ambassador Ex-slave, abolitionist, orator, journalist, public servant, editor, lay preacher, ambassador to Haiti, marshal! and recorder of deeds of Washington, D.C., Frederick Augustus Bailey Washington Douglass was born in February 1817/1818 on the Holme Hill Farm, on Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County, Maryland. He did not have day-to-day contact or affection from his mother, seeing her only four or five times during his life because she was hired out as a slave on another plantation, and she died when he was only seven or eight years old. Douglass knew first-hand the horrors and atrocities associated with slavery, as he saw other relatives and slaves savagely whipped. The brutality of slavery made him hunger for freedom, even though he was not treated very harshly by his owner, when his treatment is compared to that of other slaves. He did, however, suffer from hunger, cold, beatings, severe frostbite, and was forced to be degraded by having to eat from a trough like a pig, and to compete for table scraps with the dogs. Luckily, he was chosen to go to Baltimore to live with his master's relatives and to be a houseboy and companion to their young son, where he obtained the rudiments of an education. The rudiments were all that he needed, as Douglass was able to carry on alone. In 1832, he was passed to another master and forced to return to Tuckahoe, where he found that his sister, Sarah, and over fourteen other relatives had been sold South to a harsher form of slavery. After enduring harsh, brutal treatment, Douglass and some other slaves attempted to escape, an effort foiled by slave informants. As a result, Douglass was assigned to a slave breaker, who treated him cruelly until Douglass fought back. He was eventually returned to Baltimore, where he obtained work as a caulker on ships. He was beaten up several times, due to the fear of economic competition. In Baltimore Douglass met his future wife, Anna Murray, a free black woman, also from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In 1832 she gave Douglass money to help him escape. Dressed in a sailor's uniform and with someone else's freedom papers, he escaped to New York. Upon hearing that Douglass had arrived safely, Anna Murray hurried to New York, where they were married by Rev. James C. W. Pennington, a fellow fugitive from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The couple changed their surnames to Douglass and |