Henry H. Smith (b. circa 1811 - d. circa ?)
MSA SC 5496-002278
Escaped from Fell's Point, District 2, Baltimore City, Maryland,
1832
Biography:
Henry H. Smith fled with William Little from Fells Point in Baltimore on a Sunday in 1832, during a cholera epidemic. Smith was African American and about twenty-one years old. Both Smith and Little worked as indentured apprentices under the confectioner William Williams, who operated a store on Lancaster Street. He advertised in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston newspapers the day after their escape, describing Smith as "quick in answers, very artful, and from the information received, he has decoyed the said William Little away."1
A search of the Maryland State Archives' collection of Baltimore manumission records, which begins in 1829, yielded no references to Henry H. Smith. If Smith was still enslaved, he was not a slave of William Williams, who listed no slaves in the 1830 census.2
Smith and Little’s escape is a rare example of a blacks and whites fleeing
together. While their fate remains unclear, running away as a pair increased
the risk of capture.
1. "$20
Reward." Daily National Intelligencer 20 September 1832.
1.
"Epidemics in Maryland." Medicine in Maryland, 1752-1920. http://www.mdhistoryonline.net/mdmedicine/index.cfm?action=epidemics.
2. BALTIMORE CITY REGISTER
OF WILLS (Certificates of Freedom) 1829-1864, [MSA T629-1].
2.
U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for William Williams, Baltimore
County, Baltimore City Ward 2, Page 49, Line 17 [MSA SM61-84, SCM 67-1].
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