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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: 466 Print image (87K) |
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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: 466 Print image (87K) |
| Adams-Butler 11/7/99 10:29 PM «-» ****+*+.***+** Vrf** A V * A1M»^*»*_r * «.*.*.•• ^>d-»«.*V ** ««»*» ^ VS *-» **-«^ «.*»>••* * * V* ••*• %S»*A^ ten shillings she was publicly whipped, made to wear a Roman T, and ordered to pay the owner, Timothy Hanson, fourfold the value [Dockets 1680-1725, General Court Records 1712-16, n.p.j. The same court also convicted Thomas Kersey "late of Murderkill Hundred" of felony and ordered that he receive similar punishment, but it did not state that they were related incidents. BUTLER FAMILY 1. Eleanor1 Butler, born say 1660, commonly called "Irish Nell," was a white woman imported to Maryland by Lord Baltimore. She was the servant of Major William Boarman of St. Mary's County in August 1681 when she married "Negro Charles," one of Boarman's slaves. The ceremony was conducted by a Catholic priest on the Boarman plantation. Nearly one hundred years later, descendants of local whites who attended the wedding reported that Lord Baltimore warned Nell on the morning of the wedding that the marriage would make her and her descendants slaves for life. Nell replied that she would rather many Charles than Lord Baltimore himself. The law then in existence enslaved white women who married slaves for the lifetime of their husbands and made slaves of their children. About a month after the wedding Lord Baltimore was apparently influential in passing a law whiqh released such white women and their children from slavery if their marriage was permitted or encouraged by their master. Since the law was passed after Charles and Nell's marriage, the children of Charles and Nell were kept as slaves by Boarman and his descendants. William Boarman's 16 May 1708 St. Mary's County will was proved on 17 June 1709. His inventory included an "Elderly Negroe man named Charles," an "old Irish woman," and six "malatto" slaves. In the will he gave his wife "Slaves Robert, Charles & Elliner," his son John Baptiste slave Catherine, his son Francis Ignatius slaves Ann and Margaret, his daughter Mary slaves Sarah and Henry, and his daughter Clare slaves Jane and Susannah [Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 33; Baldwin, Calendar of Maryland Wills, 111:140]. In 1762 two of their grandchildren, William and Mary Butler, sued Richard Boarman for their freedom, and the Provincial Court decided the case in their favor in September 1770, but the decision was reversed by the eourt of appeals in May 1771. However, in October 1787 William and Mary Butler's daughter, Mary Butler, sued in the General Court of the Western Shore and won her case. Charles and Eleanor's descendants can be traced from the testimony in the case held in the Provincial Court in which sixteen of their neighbors testified in the 1760s about what they knew about the family from first hand knowledge as well as what they had heard from deceased friends and relatives. On 27 May 1767, Ann Whitehom, a 76 year old woman, testified that Eleanor had three or four children and was about 40 years old when she died. One of her children was at Leonard Brooke's (which became Richard Boarman's) and another at Richard Brooke's in St. Mary's County [Cases in the n——-~~;~i ^•>~.._ ">*7i -n T~ TT... u—••„..., ii/:*).:^ TT~ TI. ~ D.../__ http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/Adams-Butler.htm Page 26 of 38 |