Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)

Elizabeth Darne (b. circa 1778 - d. circa 1845)
MSA SC 5496-013737
Slave Holder and Property Owner in Rockville, Montgomery County, Maryland

Biography:

Elizabeth Gassaway was born in Maryland around 1778 to Captain Charles Gassaway and his wife Ruth Beall.1 Elizabeth's siblings were Thomas, Mary (Polly), Rachel, and Charles.2 The Gassaways lived at Pleasant Hills near Germantown in a house that Charles Gassaway had built around 1763.3

Elizabeth had married William Darne sometime before 1803, the year their daughter Louisa was born.4 The Darnes' farm stood near Sugar-Loaf Mountain in northern Montgomery County,5 and Elizabeth asso inherited land in the area later known as Darnestown following her father's death, .6

William Darne owned nineteen slaves in 1840.7 On July 17, 1849, the same year as her husband's death, Elizabeth Darne's slave Rose ran away.8 In 1850, Darne owned four slaves, and had moved in with her widowed daughter, Louisa G. Beall. They resided between Darnestown and Rockville.9 In 1853, she sold two hundred acres of land to Alexander C.H. Darne. She was still living with her daughter by 1860, when the census listed Elizabeth Darne as eighty-two years old and owning $6,000 in real estate.10 That year, the census recorded them living next door to Dr. Charles J. Maddox, whose slave Charles had escaped in 1856.11 Maddox's residence appeared on Simon Martenet's 1860 map of Montgomery County.
 

1.     U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Elizabeth Darne, 1850, Montgomery County, Rockville District, Page 18, Line 40. [MSA SM61-142, M 1499-1].
        William Kenneth Rutherford and Anna Clay Zimmerman Rutherford. Genealogical History of the Gassaway Family (W.K. Rutherford, 1981) 33.
        Joshua Dorsey Warfield. The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland (Baltimore, MD: Kohn & Pollock, 1905) 382.

2.     Mary Gordon Malloy. Abstract of Wills, Montgomery County, Maryland: 1826-1875 (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007) 58.
        Elise Greenup Jourdan. Early Families of Southern Maryland. Vol. 6 (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, Inc., 2007) 202.

3.     "Pleasant Hills." Maryland Historical Trust, Inventory of Historical Properties. www.mdihp.net.

4.     Jourdan 264.
        1850 U.S. Federal Census Record (MD) for Elizabeth Darne, Montgomery County, Rockville District, Page 18, Line 40.

5.     "50 Dollars Reward." Frederick Town Herald 12 August 1820: 1. Maryland State Archives.

6.     "Pleasant Hills." Maryland Historical Trust, Inventory of Historical Properties. www.mdihp.net.

7.     Jourdan 264.
        U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Elizabeth Darne, 1850, Montgomery County, Rockville District, Page 18, Line 40. [MSA SM61-142, M 1499-1].

8.     "Fifty Dollars Reward." Daily National Intelligencer 3 August 1849: 1. Maryland State Archives.

9.     U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Elizabeth Darne, 1850, Montgomery County, Rockville District, Page 18, Line 40. [MSA SM61-142, M 1499-1].
        U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD), Elizabeth Darne, Slaves, 1850, Montgomery County, Rockville District, Page 4, Line 3. [MSA SM61-168, M 1505-5]

10.   U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Elizabeth Darne, 1860, Montgomery County, District 4, Page 75, Line 33. [MSA SM61-213, M 7223-1].

11.   Ibid.
        "$75 Reward." Montgomery County Sentinel 27 March 1856: 2. Maryland State Archives.
   

Researched and written by Rachel Frazier, 2010.

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