Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)
Joshua Saddler (b. circa 1785 - d. 1880)
MSA SC 5496-51331
Fled from slavery, Caroline County
Biography:
Joshua Saddler was born in Caroline County, a slave to an unknown owner. Much more so than the rest of the Eastern Shore, this municipality experienced an early decrease in slave holding, which had made the institution nearly irrelevant by the Civil War. Enslaved African-Americans accounted for only about 15 % of the county's population by 1820, and there was already nearly an equal number of free blacks.1 Like the northern counties that were adjacent to the "free" state of Pennsylvania, Caroline bondsmen had a relatively short journey to Philadelphia and New Jersey, where they could be hidden within the substantial free black and Quaker populations. Shore owners had come to recognize this escape route by the 1820's, exhibited through the correspondance of major figures like Henry Hollyday and Thomas Emory, who continuously received news of alleged fugitives in that area.2 Joshua Saddler was only one of dozens who decided they could no longer bear such a depraved existence in Maryland, and utilized this geographic advantage in order to find freedom.
Little is known about his life as a slave, but Saddler was born sometime around 1785. He had married a woman named Hannah, who may have been free-born, and they had several children while they still were living in Caroline County.3 Both were "light mulattos," a trait which may have facilitated the escape and subsequent assimilation in a new community. However, Saddler's light skin did not necessarily result in any better treatment during his enslavement. Planters that owned their mulatto offspring would often keep them in bondage, or even sell them just as if there was no blood relation. Hannah's familial origins are also unclear, but her death certificate stated that the mother's name was "Amy Carnish," possibly a version the common Eastern Shore surname "Cornish."4 However, this individual could not be located in Caroline County records, or the Federal Census.
There is scant evidence of the circumstances of Saddler's escape. The available records are somewhat ambiguous regarding his arrival in New Jersey. The Federal Census indicates that his children were born in Maryland as late as 1835. However, Joshua appears on New Jersey Farm Account Ledger in May of 1834, while his oldest daughter Ann was married in the state later that year.5 Her husband Jefferson Fisher was also a former resident of Caroline County, who is most likely the free-born man recorded in the county's Certificate of Freedom records.6 Therefore, we can assert that he likely escaped from Caroline County in the early 1830's.
Joshua's son Nelson Saddler would go on to serve in the Civil War, with the 11th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops, enlisting in Rhode Island. In 1894, his sister Henrietta Saddler Hankinson participated in a deposition in order to prove that Nelson's wife was eligible for his pension. Within that document, Hankinson states that "my father was a slave and long before my birth he ran away and came to New Jersey and some Quakers paid his owner some money for him."7 Several other oral histories contend that Saddler was taken in by a Quaker named Evans, near Mt. Holly, New Jersey. This is verified through the aforementioned account ledger, which belonged to Josiah Evans of Evesham, Burlington County.8 However, there is little evidence to confirm that Evans, or any other white man, paid for Saddler's freedom.
Saddler first appears in the census in 1840, with his wife and four other "free colored persons" under 23 years old. These likely included his children Nelson, Ann, Malissa, and Henry, at least two of which were also born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.9 Hannah and Joshua had another Maryland-born son, John, who was married and living with his family in the same New Jersey county. In May of 1842, he bought a deed for 5 acres of land from Jacob Rowand, in what was then Gloucester County. The former slave paid $200 for this plot. Jefferson Fisher would ultimately buy a small piece of property from Joshua Saddler, adjacent to the original family homestead. Joshua and Jefferson would continue to work for Evans until at least 1852.10 By this time, a distinct African-American community had developed in and around the Quaker population in that area. At least three black families in the immediate neighborhood had Maryland roots, and several others were from Virginia and Delaware.11 However, former slaves were not necessarily safe once they reached New Jersey, nor were southern slaveholders ignorant of the popular destination.
A significant fugitive case, involving former Queen Anne's County slave Nathan Mead, reached the state Supreme Court in 1836. He had been living in Burlington County, just north of Gloucester, since the late 1820's. Mead, who had changed his name to Alexander Hemsley, was exonerated despite his former owner's seemingly legitimate proof of ownership. Hemsley would move to Canada shortly after the trial, but continued to hold positive feelings toward his former home where "no one disturbed me" for those first 8 or 9 years.12 Saddler was beginning to settle in to the new community as word of the case was spreading through Maryland. Though black migrants continued to flood the southern portion of the state, flight would become increasingly difficult in subsequent years. New Jersey would certainly lose its popularity as a destination for freedom-seekers after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.
Combined free black population of Gloucester and Camden(carved out of the former in 1844) counties was 2,850 in 1850, from just 1,631 ten years earlier. However, this figure would dip to just over 2,700 in 1860, a drastic shift from the rapid increase that had been occuring previously. Transient, part-time New Jersey resident Harriet Tubman was representative of this movement of free and fugitive blacks, who no longer felt safe from slave catchers so close to the Mason-Dixon line. By 1870, the two counties boasted more than 5400 "colored" residents, predominantly African-Americans.13 Joshua Saddler's immediate community reflected this trend, as his family was now surrounded by blacks born as far away as Michigan. Nearly twenty percent of the Haddon Township was populated by blacks and mulattoes according to that year's census.14
Hannah Saddler died in 1877, and Joshua would pass soon after in 1880.
Both death certificates confirmed their Maryland birth, also alleging
that each had lived over 90 years.15
New Jersey State Archives. Death Records, Atlantic - Hudson County, 1876-1877, "Hannah Saddler."
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