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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: 389 Print image (94K) |
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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: 389 Print image (94K) |
| Anthony and Mary Johnson (Seventeenth Century) Colonial Planters No one knows for certain when the first African-Americans came to America. We do know that the record of African-Americans in America began with a passage in John Rolfe's letter in 1619 which staled that 20 odd Negroes were brought into Virginia by a Dutch man of war. What is certain is that in the muster roll of 1624, twenty-three African servants were listed and among them was a Negro man named Anthony1 and a Negro woman named Mary (Hotten 241), who were serving under different masters. They possessed both family and given names, which helped to identify them in Accomack and Northampton County court records and documents in the seventeenth century. These records showed that they owned property, had families, and had legal transactions with the white community.2 Anthony probably came to Virginia in the ship the James in 1621, according to a variety of sources, and Mary came in the Margaret and John in 1622.3 The census of 1624 listed them as not yet married to each other, but by 1651 their status had changed from that of servants to that of landholders. Between 1625 and 1652 very little is known of their status in society. Numerous sources confirm that by 1654 Anthony and Mary had been inhabitants of the county for about thirty years.4 In July of 1651, Anthony Johnson received 250 acres of land,5 which made the Johnsons perhaps the wealthiest Negroes in Virginia (Brewer 576), since by the late 1650s the Johnsons owned at least 800 acres of land (Breen and Innes 14-16). Often referred to as "the Black Patriarch of Pungoteague Creek,"6 Anthony Johnson and Mary continued to accumulate land, which translated into power. For all intensive purposes, the Johnsons could have been "Black Englishmen." Economic security acquired through the possession of land meant that the Johnsons had a degree of power and standing in the community. They traded with other Negroes as well as whites, and sued and were sued by whites as well. The Johnsons appeared to have been treated with the same judicial deference as white English freemen. Maybe the most famous law suit which involved the Johnsons was over the ownership of John Casor (Cassaugh), the Negro servant of Anthony Johnson. Casor claimed that he was an indentured servant when he entered Virginia, but Anthony Johnson had kept him a slave. The case is important because it may have been the first recorded instance of a free black owning another black as a slave, servant, or indentured servant, in Virginia or America. The case concluded with Casor being reenslaved with Anthony Johnson,7 and when the Johnsons migrated to Maryland, Casor accompanied them as their servant. The Johnsons moved to Maryland's lower Eastern Shore (which formerly belonged to Virginia) when it was opened for settlement, in order to reap the benefits of the new frontier. Their move was a result of boundary disputes between the colonial governments of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. The Johnsons, their son, John, and his wife, Susanna, were the first free blacks known to have lived on the lower Shore of Maryland. They settled in an area called Manokin and appeared in a Maryland land patent dated 1665. The patent does not specify the arrival date for the Johnsons (accompanied by John Casor); it merely showed that they were in Somerset by 1665. By 1666, according to Somerset County court records, Anthony Johnson had purchased land in Somerset, known as Tony's Vineyard, and was referred to as a planter, he also began to accumulate cattle and hogs.8 Anthony Johnson died between September 1666 and 1671,9 and his son, John Johnson, served as the head of the family. John Johnson purchased land in his own right, and named it Angola, according to Maryland Provincial Patents (Liber 20, 224-25), with common boundaries with land owned by his mother and late father. From court records it was determined that the Johnsons did not accumulate outstanding 29 |