Edward Brannum (b. circa 1805 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-050597
Fled from Rockville, Montgomery County, Maryland, 1856
Biography:
Twenty-eight-year-old Edward Brannum, nicknamed Ned, escaped from his
enslavement in Rockville on July 5, 1856. The slaveholder Henry
Harding offered a $200 reward for Brannum's capture,
advertising in both the Baltimore
Sun and the
Montgomery
County Sentinel.1sHarding's
farm stood south of Rockville near the Cabin John Creek. At the time
of his escape, Brannum was one of eight other slaves on the farm: George (b. 1814), another Edward (b. 1828),
Fanny (b. 1832), Maria (b. 1834), Robert (b. 1838), Lewis (b. 1841), George (b. 1842), and Lucy (b. 1844).2 Harding's advertisements described Brannum as "five feet eight
inches high, bright mulatto, thick suit of straight black hair, very little
beard, grey eyes and light colored eyebrows. He is quite intelligent and
has a fine address."
Harding believed that abolitionists had assisted Brannum in fleeing, "most likely in a vessel freighted with coal from Georgetown, D.C."3 Considering the location and time period, Brannum may have escaped aboard the ship of the "Powder Boy," an agent who periodically worked with abolitionists William Still and Jacob Bigelow in transporting groups of runaway slaves to Pennsylvania.4 References to the Powder Boy appeared throughout many of Bigelow's letters in 1855 and 1856.5 Whether the Powder Boy was indeed assisting Brannum is unknown, but it is a strong possibility.
1. "$200 Reward." Montgomery
County Sentinel 12 July 1856. Maryland State Archives.
"Two Hundred
Dollars Reward." Baltimore Sun 10 July 1856: 2. Baltimore Sun Historical
Archive.
2. MONTGOMERY COUNTY, BOARD
OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, (Assessment Record, Slaves), 1853-1864, [MSA C1112-1].
Slaveholder: Henry Harding. Slave: Edward. Page 55, 1853.
Ibid. Henry
Harding. Slave: Edward. Page 131, 1855.
3. "Two Hundred Dollars Reward." Baltimore Sun 10 July 1856: 2. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive.
4. William Still. The
Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, PA: Porter & Coates, 1872)
183.
Bryan
Prince. A Shadow on the Household: One Enslaved Family's Incredible
Struggle for Freedom (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2009) 118.
5. Still 183, 187-188.
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