Thomas Neverson (b. circa 1816 - d. circa 1869)
MSA SC 5496-047804
Property owner, Rockville District, Montgomery County, Maryland
Biography:
Thomas Neverson was born into slavery around 1816 in Montgomery County. The name of his slaveholder is unknown. Despite the frequent (but not constant) derivation of slaves' surnames from those of slaveholders, none of Maryland's slaveholders bore the Neverson name, aside from one instance in 1790, when the slave holder Abraham Neverson lived in St. Mary's County.2
He acquired his freedom sometime between 1840 and 1848, since he did not appear in the county's 1832 census of free blacks or its 1840 census of free residents. Neverson began purchasing land as a free man in 1848.1 By the middle of the 19th century, the Neverson surname appeared almost exclusively in an small, extended family in the Quince Orchard and Rockville area, of which Thomas Neverson was the head.
In 1848, Thomas Neverson purchased and mortgaged forty acres of land from Aquila and Elizabeth Fisher for $190.3 likely used funds that he had saved through his work as a farm laborer. According to John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, throughout various Southern states "black workers could command between $75 and $150 a year in the 1820s and 1830s and up to $20 a month during the 1850s."4 However, 1850 social statistics for Montgomery County showed that a farm laborer earned approximately $8 a month, or $96 per year. A day laborer earned only $0.75 to $1.25 per month, or just $9 to $15 per year.5
Although unmarried, Neverson shared his residence with several siblings, nieces, and nephews. In 1850, Neverson's household included his brothers Samuel and James (b. 1827 and 1819), James' wife Rachel (b. 1820), and James and Rachel's children, James T. and Samuel T. (b. 1843 and 1848). All three adult men worked as farm laborers and were attending school.6 Two Joseph Neversons, ages thirty-five and sixty, were also enslaved nearby.7 Considering the scarcity of the Neverson surname outside Thomas's family, the two enslaved Neversons may have been his relatives. The younger Joseph Neverson was enslaved by the family of John W. Anderson, from whom the slave Alfred Homer fled in 1856.
In 1853, Aquila Fisher transferred Neverson's mortgage to William Braddock, a storekeeper in Rockville, with Neverson still owing the original sum.8 Around 1858, the late William Braddock's estate foreclosed on Neverson's mortgage.9 Unfortunately, the papers containing the details of Braddock vs. Neverson (equity case no. 134) no longer exist. The land was resold in May 1860 to the farmer Hanson H. Ricketts.10 The foreclosure on Neverson's land forced him to move, and in 1860, Thomas and his brother Samuel were living at the joint home of two other African American families: John and Anna Bowen and their eight children, and the married couple Benjamin and Jane Richardson.11
The 1860 census recorded Neverson as still $150 in real estate since the court did not enter the foreclosure in its land records until May 1861. In December of 1861, “Thomas Neverson, col’d” still appeared as one of the current landowners neighboring Frederick A. Tschiffely's seventy-six-acre purchase.12 However, Neverson's loss was clear by 1865, when Simon J. Martenet's map of the county labelled Neverson's former property with the name "Ricketts."
Despite the loss of his farm, Neverson remained involved in promoting the welfare of the African American community in which he lived. Following the emancipation of Maryland's 87,189 slaves on November 1, 1864,13 the importance of both education and community remained a strong concern among many African Americans in the county. Although Neverson and his two brothers had learned to read and write by 1850, literacy was rare, not only among those who had just received their freedom, but also among the established free blacks of the area. In September of 1868, Neverson joined Garey Green, Enoch George Howard, Carlton Mason, James Ricks, and a large number of other African Americans in petitioning the establishment of a schoolhouse for the black children of the area. The resulting Quince Orchard Colored School was constructed on one acre of land near Rockville around 1874.
In 1868, Thomas Neverson helped establish a new church near the school's property. That April, Neverson, George W. Johnson, and Charles Beander purchased three acres of land for an African American Methodist Episcopal Church for which they served as trustees. Samuel Neverson acted as a church leader.14 The three men purchased the land from Aquila and Elizabeth Fisher, who had sold Thomas Neverson his property twenty years earlier. The church property's eastern boundary bordered the Bowens and Richardsons' land, with whom Neverson had lived in 1860. Although a structure already stood on the property, the church, eventually known as Mount Pleasant, constructed a new building in 1888. The purchasing of land for both a church and a school in the same year showed a deliberate, cooperative effort by African Americans in the Rockville area in pursuing a better life for both themselves and their children.
Thomas Neverson died intestate just two years after the property's purchase,
passing away in March 1870 from pneumonia.15
1. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Abraham Neverson, 1790, St. Mary's County, Page 14 [MSA SM61-17, M 2053-1].
2. Jerry M. Hynson. Free African Americans of Maryland 1832. Including: Allegany, Anne Arundel, Calvert, Caroline, Cecil, Charles, Dorchester, Frederick, Kent, Montgomery, Queen Ann's, and St. Mary's Counties (Westminster, MD: Family Line Publications, 1998).
3. MONTGOMERY COUNTY COURT (Land Records), Liber STS 3, Folio 402, 1847-1849, [MSA CE 148-41], Indenture, Aquila Fisher and Elizabeth Fisher to Thomas Neverson, April 8, 1848.
4. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999) 134.
5. U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, (Census Record, MD), 1850, Social Statistics, [MSA S1184-6]. Montgomery County, Rockville District.
6. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Thomas Neverson, 1850, Montgomery County, Rockville District, Page 20, Line 34 [MSA SM61-142, M 1499-1].
7. MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMISSIONER
OF SLAVE STATISTICS (Slave Statistics), [MSA CM750-1]. Slave Statistics
for Mira Anderson, May 8, 1867. Slave: Joseph Neverson, age 35.
MONTGOMERY
COUNTY COMMISSIONER OF SLAVE STATISTICS (Slave Statistics), [MSA CM750-1].
Slave Statistics for Robert G. Davidson, May 25, 1867. Slave: Joseph Neverson,
age 60.
8. MONTGOMERY COUNTY CIRCUIT
COURT (Land Records), Liber JGH 2, Folio 488, 1853-1853, [MSA CE 63-2],
Release of Mortgage, Aquila Fisher and Thomas Neverson, October 22, 1853.
MONTGOMERY
COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records), Liber JGH 2, Folio 489, 1853-1853,
[MSA CE 63-2], Mortgage, William Braddock to Thomas Neverson, October 22,
1853.
9. MONTGOMERY COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records), Liber JGH 8, Folio 382, 1860-1862, [MSA CE 63-9], Deed, Estate of William Braddock to Hanson H. Ricketts, December 13, 1860.
10. Ibid.
11. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Thomas Neverson, 1860, Montgomery County, District 4, Page 56, Line 32 [MSA SM61-213, M 7223-1].
12. MONTGOMERY COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records), Liber JGH 8, Folio 358, 1860-1862, MSA CE 63-9, Deed, Aquila Fisher to Frederick A. Tschiffely, December 18, 1861.
13. Joseph Thomas Wilson. Emancipation (Hampton, VA: Normal School Steam Power Press Print, 1882) 213.
14. City of Gaithersburg. Gaithersburg: History of a City (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, Inc., 2002) 81.
15. U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, (Census Record,
MD). 1870, Mortality, [MSA S1184-13]. Thomas Neverson, Fourth District,
Montgomery County, Page 296, Line 20.
Researched and written by Rachel Frazier, 2011.
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