Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)

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John Kyle (b. circa 1826 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-0425
Fled from slavery, Baltimore County, Maryland, 1846

Biography:

John Kyle fled Hampton Plantation, near present-day Towson, Maryland, during March 1846.  He was nineteen years old and described as nearly black with long legs, and a right eye sore from Scrofula.  Kyle left with a fellow Hampton slave, Davy Jones, on Saturday March 28.  The pair likely hoped to get a few days head start before they were missed.  An advertisement for their capture and return first appeared in the Baltimore Sun the following Monday.1  Neither Kyle nor Jones appears in extant jail dockets for the State of Maryland, and surviving Hampton records make no mention of either man after 1846.

When John Kyle and Davy Jones ran together in 1846, they did so against the backdrop of a long-standing tradition of resistance through flight.  Surviving plantation records contain references to some sixty slaves who ran from Hampton.2

1 "One Hundred Dollar Reward," The Sun, 31 March 1846.
2  Lancaster, R. Kent.  "Chattel Slavery at Hampton/Northampton, Baltimore County," Maryland Historical Magazine 95 (Winter 2000): 409 - 427.


 

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