Charles Gray (b. circa 1790 - d. circa ?)
MSA SC 5496-002796
War of 1812 Escaped Slave, Calvert County, Maryland, 1814
Biography:
In July 1814, Charles Gray escaped slavery in Calvert County to British forces. Although enslaved on Dr. Isaac Rawling's farm, he was owned by Rawlings's son, Isaac Jr. of Tennessee. Rawlings succeeded in escaping with his wife Petty and her daughter Mary, both slaves of John Tucker, as well as Monday Goler (or Golden), a slave of Sarah Rawlings.1 Gray and his family arrived in Halifax between 1815 and 1818 along with the thousands of black refugees transported there by the British,2 settling on Windsor Road in Nova Scotia. An 1815 tally of the fifty-one residents on that road recorded Charles and his wife, but did not show their daughter.3 Perhaps she had married, passed away, or moved, but Mary's fate is currently unknown.
1. Claim of Isaac Rawlings,
Calvert County, Case No. 561, Case Files,. Ca. 1814-28, entry 190, Record
Group 76, National Archives, College Park.
1.
Claim of John Tucker, Calvert County, Case No. 554, Case Files. Ca. 1814-28,
entry 190, Record Group 76, National Archives, College Park.
2. "Halifax List," African
Nova Scotians: in the Age of Slavery and Abolition, Nova Scotia Archives
and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/.
Claim
of Isaac Rawlings.
3. "List of Blacks recently
brought from the United States of America and settled on the Windsor Road,"
Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/.
"Return
of Black Persons Lately Brought to the Province from the United States..."
Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/.
Return to Charles Gray's Introductory Page
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