Louisa (b. circa 1811 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-9009
Fled from slavery, Prince George's County, Maryland, 1841
Biography:
On May 15, 1841, three slaves absconded from Notley Maddox. These three slaves were the siblings Louisa, John and Dumpty. The sister, Louisa, age thirty at the time, was described as "handsome, with strong intellect."1 She stole good clothes and cash from Maddox upon her escape. She had a free husband, named Jim Butler, who may have inspired her to run. One of Louisa's brothers, John, age twenty-seven, stole a large amount of cash from Maddox as well as a variety of clothing, and a new trunk. John worked as Maddox's vegetable market man, also skilled as a carpenter and joiner, and considered to be a great mechanical man. In addition, John was hired at the Potomac Fisheries for years, and it is probable that he could read and write. Maddox thought the 5'10" John could be recognized by a scar on one of his buttocks. John carried also had a scar on his leg from a cat, and another under his left eye. The other brother, Dumpty, about twenty-three years old, was a little bit shorter than John. Maddox, in a runaway advertisement on the 19th of May, 1841, implied that his slaves all had acquired free papers with good imitations of official seals, and were probably using aliases.
Notley Maddox lived in Prince George's County, close enough to Washington, D.C. that he asked people people attempting to contact him to write him at the Washington, D.C. post office and for anyone capturing the slaves to lodge them in the jail in Washington, D.C. 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. "Ran Away from the Subscriber," Daily National Intelligencer, 2 September 1842.
Return to Louisa's Introductory Page
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