Sam (b. circa 1822 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-009127
Fled from slavery, Prince George's County, Maryland, 1842
Biography:
Sam ran away at age twenty, on August 28, 1842. He was well acquainted with the Washington, D.C. area, and possibly fled to the residence of his free father, Peter Johnson, who lived in that city. Sam's brothers, Alfred and Jerry, also ran away from Notley Madox. Sam was Maddox's vegetable man, likely replacing Maddox's former vegetable man, John, who ran away during the prior year. Another slave, Hanson, alias "Frank", a twenty year old "rather dark mulatto,"1 ran away soon after Sam on September 26, 1842. Hanson had often been sent to the Washington, D.C. market with vegetables, likely replacing Sam.
Sam's brothers, Alfred and Jerry, ran away in 1839. Alfred, another
slave of Maddox, ran away on March 17, 1839, just a few days after his
brother, Jerry. Maddox believed that they may have been hired as free men
"by some gentlemen of the Potomac fisheries, or public works in or about
the District of Columbia."2 Alfred was
age twenty-three and Jerry was age twenty-one when they left, and they
took clothes with them as well. Notley Maddox lived in Prince George's
County, close enough to Washington, D.C. that he asked people 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 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. "Runaways-One Thousand
Fifty Dollars Reward," Daily National Intelligencer, 5 October 1842.
2. Ibid.
Return to Sam's Introductory Page
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