Notley Maddox (b. ? - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-9480
Slave Owner, Prince George's County, Maryland
Biography:
In the period between 1839-1842 six slaves ran away from Notley Maddox's land in Prince George's County, Maryland. On October 5, 1842, he wrote in a runaway slave ad, "I have now five males and one female that have left me without cause known to me."1 One slave, Alfred, ran away from Maddox, on March 17, 1839, just a few days after his brother, Jerry, who was also owned by Maddox, ran away. The three brothers possibly fled to their father, Peter Johnson. He was free, and lived in Washington, D.C. 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 Aged twenty-three and twenty-one when they left, Alfred and Jerry also took stolen clothing with them.
A little over two years later, on May 15, 1841, three more slaves absconded from Notley Maddox. The three siblings, two brothers and a sister, were John, Dumpty and Louisa. 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, and was also skilled as a carpenter and joiner, and considered to be a great mechanical man. In addition, John worked at the Potomac Fisheries for several years, and it is probable that he could read and write. Maddox thought the 5'10" John could be recognized because shortly before he ran, he had one of "the side of one of his hams recently hurt so as to cause a ridge protuberance."3 John was also distinguished 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 slightly shorter than John. Their sister, Louisa, age thirty, had "strong intellect"4, and had stolen both good clothes and cash from Maddox. Louisa had a free husband named Jim Butler, who may have been her inspiration to run. In a runaway advertisement on the 19th of May, Maddox implied that his slaves had acquired free papers with good imitations of official seals, and were in all probability using aliases. 5
The following year, Alfred and Jerry's younger brother, Sam, ran away. Sam, age twenty, left on August 28, 1842, possibly to go to his father's home in Washington, D.C. Sam was well acquainted with the city and surrounding areas, having worked as Maddox's vegetable man, a position he probably assumed after John ran away. Hanson, alias "Frank", a "rather dark mulatto", ran away on September 26, 1842 at the age of twenty.6 Hanson had often been sent to the Washington, D.C. market with vegetables, likely replacing Sam as the vegetable man.
Notley Maddox lived in Prince George's County, close enough to Washington, D.C. that he asked people attempting to contact him to write to 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 people enumerated in his household.
1. "Runaways-One
Thousand Fifty Dollars Reward," Daily National Intelligencer, 5
October 1842.
2. "Forty
Dollars Reward," Daily National Intelligencer, 23 March 1839.
3. "Nine
Hundred Dollars Reward," Daily National Intelligencer, 19 May 1841.
4. "Ran
Away From the Subscriber," Daily National Intelligencer, 2 September
1842.
5. "Nine
Hundred Dollars Reward,"Daily National Intelligencer, 19 May 1841.
6."Runaways-One
Thousand Fifty Dollars Reward,"Daily National Intelligencer, 5 October
1842.
Return to Notley Maddox's Introductory Page
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