Susan Viney (b. circa
1822 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-8030
Fled from slavery, Dorchester County, Maryland, 1857
Biography:
Susan Viney escaped from her master, Samuel Pattison, on October 24, 1857, joining twenty-seven other slaves from the Cambridge District in Dorchester County. Immediately after she ran away, Pattison placed an ad in a local newspaper for Susan and the other fourteen slaves that had escaped from him the same night.1 She was accompanied her husband, Joseph and their four children, the youngest of whom was only 9 months old at the time. Though Joseph was owned by a Virginian named Charles Bryant, he was probably hired out to a Dorchester slave holder.2
Pattison lived in close proximity to the other affected owners. On November 4, 1857, the Easton Star reported that slaves belonging to Pattison and two other slave owners, Reuben E. Phillips and William Brannock, escaped on the same night. The newspaper also noted that a total of about forty slaves had run away from the neighborhood within a three-week period.3 It is possible that the members of the "Cambridge Party" used information passed along from the famous Underground Railroad agent, Harriet Tubman, who had also been owned by members of the extended Pattison family. Tubman had previously assisted Joseph Cornish, a possible relative of fellow Cambridge fugitive Aaron Cornish, in a successful flight to freedom in 1855.4 Regardless, the group's escape was very impressive, considering their size and the immediate attention they received.
The Vineys and the fellow freedom seekers faced numerous impediments to their progress, including harsh weather and a violent clash with "several Irishmen" in Delaware. Still, the large party were able to reach supportive agents in Philadelphia, where some details were recorded about the fugitives. Susan's husband asserted that Samuel Pattison "drank pretty freely," and had recently sold two of her brothers.5 It was such actions that likely motivated the Vineys to flee, though they faced the obvious difficulties of traveling with several young children. They were ultimately forwarded to St. Catharine's, Ontario, where the growing family of seven had settled by 1861.6 This area had become a refuge for many Maryland slaves, so Susan and Joseph were not alone in a new land. Fellow Cambridge fugitives Kit and Leah Anthony were living in the immediate vicinity. Susan's husband died of smallpox in 1876, though little else is known about their time in Canada.7
Footnotes -
1. "2000 Reward." 26 October 1857.
3. "More Runaways," Easton Star. 4 November 1857.
4. Kate Clifford Larson. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. Ballantine Books: New York, NY, 2004, p. 125.
5. Still, p. 101.
6. Ancestry.com. 1861 Census of Canada. Lincoln, Canada West, p. 146.
7. Ancestry.com. Ontario, Canada Deaths, 1869-1938. Lincoln, 1876 "Joseph Vinia".
Researched and Written by David Armenti, 2012.
Return to Susan Viney's Introductory Page
|
|| Search the Archives || Education & Outreach || Archives of Maryland Online ] Governor General Assembly Judiciary Maryland.Gov
|
