Parker Johnson (b. circa 1834 - d. 1866)
MSA SC 5496-003400
Accomplice to slave flight, Rockville District, Montgomery County,
Maryland, 1864
Biography:
On March 9, 1864, the Montgomery County Circuit Court tried thirty-year-old Parker Johnson for “enticing and abducting away negroes belonging to James M. Dawson, Jr."1 One of ten slaves on Nathaniel Clagett's farm south of Darnestown, Johnson had helped an unspecified number of slaves to escape from James Dawson's farm,2 roughly five miles northwest of Clagett's farm.3 Both farms stood near the Great Seneca Creek. Dawson's brother, Americus, and his father, James M. Dawson, Sr. appeared as witnesses in the trial.
The court, which valued Johnson at $400, sentenced him to eight years in the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore. He began his sentence on March 23rd, and received a prison occupation at Murdock & Co.,4 a cooper shop. Workers at Murdock earned wages for sawing oak and cedar staves and heads, drying the pieces in kilns, and then constructing wooden buckets using wire looms.5 They also manufactured corn brooms and woven goods.6 Johnson joined ninety-nine other inmates working in Murdock's that March, although the numbers varied from month to month.7 Charles Murdock and later A. T. Murdock ran the shop, which operated under the contract labor system, a source of revenue for both the Maryland Penitentiary and for the various contractors.8 The dangerous combination of wood and furnaces resulted in annual fires, most of which were accidental.
Parker Johnson applied unsuccessfully for a pardon on May 2, 1865.9 He died suddenly on August 6, 1866, only two years into his eight-year sentence. The prison's record did not state the cause of his death, although it coincided with the widespread illnesses at the prison that summer. On June 21st, J. H. Idden, one of the Penitentiary's deputy keepers, had reported "two cases of Typhoid fever" in the hospital, "and through the prison a great many complaining of Diarrhia...."10 On August 16th, Idden reported to the Board of Directors that despite "the improved condition of the health of the prisoners, there has been a great deal of loss in all the shops... Every attention has been paid to the Sanitary Condition of the Prison by having the filth promptly removed..., the sewers cleaned out, and using disinfectants."11
On November 1, 1864, Maryland slaves received emancipation through the state's new constitution. In 1867, Maryland slaveholders who had sided with the Union requested federal reimbursement for the slaves. Nathaniel Clagett listed Parker Johnson as forty-one years old and healthy,12 even though Johnson had died a year earlier. Apparently, Clagett was determined to extract compensation for the labor he had lost through Johnson's imprisonment and death.
Nathaniel Clagett's mother and sister also owned slaves with the Johnson
surname. The statistics listed thirty-eight-year-old Otho Johnson as one
of Elizabeth Clagett's slaves, while sixteen-year-old Ruth Johnson and
her eighteen-month-old baby were Susan E. Clagett's slaves. However, Parker
Johnson's relationship to Otho Johnson, Ruth Johnson, and Ruth's infant
is unknown.
1. MONTGOMERY COUNTY, CIRCUIT COURT, (Docket), March Term 1864. [MSA T961-22]. Continued on Page 2.
2. Montgomery County District
3, Simon J. Martenet, Martenet and Bond's Map of Montgomery County, 1865,
Library of Congress, [MSA SC 1213-1-464]. Huntingfield Map Collection.
U.S. Census
Bureau (Census Record, MD) for James M. Dawson, Slaves, 1860, Montgomery
County, Medleys District, Page 14, Line 34 [MSA SM61-239, M 7230-2].
3. Montgomery County District 4, Simon J. Martenet, Martenet and Bond's Map of Montgomery County, 1865, Library of Congress, [MSA SC 1213-1-464]. Huntingfield Map Collection.
4. MARYLAND PENITENTIARY, (Prisoner Record), 1862-1869, [MSA SE65-6]. Parker Johnson, Prisoner Number 5941. Page 9.
5. Ibid.
6. "Fire at the Penitentiary."
Baltimore
Sun 17 October 1859: 1. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive. Enoch Pratt
Free Library.
"Fire at the
Penitentiary." Baltimore Sun 5 May 1860: 1. Baltimore Sun Historical
Archive. Enoch Pratt Free Library.
7. "Destructive Fire—The Maryland Penitentiary—Incendiarism." Baltimore Sun 24 April 1857: 1. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive. Enoch Pratt Free Library.
8. MARYLAND PENITENTIARY, (Minutes), 05/21/1863-04/01/1891, [MSA S368-1].
9. SECRETARY OF STATE, (Pardon Docket), 1862-1869, [MSA S1110-1]. Parker Johnson, May 2, 1865, Montgomery County.
10. Wallace Shugg. A Monument to Good Intentions: The Story of the Maryland Penitentiary, 1804 – 1995 (Baltimore, MD: Maryland Historical Society, 2000) Pages 44-45, 121.
11. MARYLAND PENITENTIARY, (Minutes), 05/21/1863-04/01/1891, [MSA S368-1]. June 21, 1866.
12. MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMISSIONER
OF SLAVE STATISTICS (Slave Statistics), [MSA CM750-1]. Page 112 (page 132
in original record).
Return to Parker Johnson's Introductory Page
|
Tell Us What You Think About the Maryland State Archives Website!
|