John (b. circa 1814 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-9007
Fled from slavery, Prince George's County, Maryland, 1841
Biography:
On May 15, 1841, three siblings, John, Louisa, and Dumpty absconded from their master, Notley Maddox. John, age twenty-seven, took with him a large amount of cash that he had stolen from Maddox, as well as a variety of clothing, and a new trunk. John worked as Maddox's vegetable market man, was also skilled as a carpenter and joiner, and considered to be a great mechanical man. In addition, John worked at the Potomac Fisherier for several years, and it is probable that he could read and write. Maddox thought the 5'10" John could be recognized by a ridge protuberance on "the side of one of his hams recently hurt."1 John could also be recognized by a scar on his leg from a cat, and another under his left eye. John's brother, Dumpty, about twenty-three years old, was shorter than John. Their sister, Louisa, age thirty, had "strong intellect"2, and stole a lot of good clothes and cash from Maddox. Louisa had a free husband named Jim Butler, who may have been her inspiration to run. Maddox, in a runaway advertisement on the 19th of May, 1841, implied that his slaves by this time had acquired free papers with good imitations of official seals, and were in all probability using aliases.
Notley Maddox lived in Prince George's County, close enough to Washington, DC that he asked people to contact him at the Washington post office and for anyone capturing the slaves to lodge them in the jail in Washington. The reward he put up for the return of all his slaves reached over one thousand dollars in an October, 1842 newspaper ad in the Daily National Intelligencer. In 1840, Maddox owned fourteen slaves, and had a total of twenty-two people enumerated in his household.
1. "Nine Hundred Dollars Reward," Daily
National Intelligencer, 19 May 1841.
2. "Runaways-One Thousand and Fifty Dollars Reward," Daily
National Intelligencer, 2 September 1842.
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