Margaret Creek
MSA SC 5496-51712
Petitioned for Freedom, Baltimore County, Maryland, 1799

Biography:

Margaret Creek was a slave in the late 18th century. In 1797 Creek challenged her bondage by William Wilkins and submitted a freedom petition to the Baltimore County Court. The case was the second of four related freedom petitions concerning a decades long illegal enslavement surrounding Wye Island. Her attorney was Thomas Kell.

A 1681 Maryland law stipulated that "all Children borne of such ffreeborne women, soe manymitted & ffree as aforesaid shall bee ffree as the women soe married"; this legal discrepancy between mulattos borne of free mothers with slave fathers and mulattos borne of free fathers and slave mothers established a precedence that freedom passes through the maternal line no matter how many generations removed.¹ Creek claimed her grandmother, known was "Indian Mary" or "Indian Moll," was free and therefore her bondgage was illegal.

Margaret Creek v. William Wilkins

Creek v. Wilkins was filed in the Baltimore County Court. The 1800 federal census states that a William Wilkins resided in Annapolis and owned three slaves.² Attempting to prevent Creek's petition from going to trial, and bolster his argument, Wilkins' attorney unsuccessfully motioned that Creek "ought not to have or maintain her petition against him because he saith that the said Margaret Creek on the day of proposing [this petition] was a slave."³ During her 1799 trial, Creek likely used court records from the 1794 case Tom Carver v. Samuel Lloyd Chew. Over thirty persons from Queen Anne's County, especially those familiar with Philemon Lloyd's plantation on Wye Island, provided testimony during her son's freedom petition.⁴  Many deponents were longtime workers, family friends, white servants, or other persons familiar with the plantation; most claimed to have never heard of any servant entitled to freedom. 

Former Maryland Governor William Paca, who acquired half of Wye Island through marriage to his first wife Mary Lloyd Chew Paca, claimed no knowledge nor record from Philemon Lloyd's estate papers indicating that Tom's mother Margaret was descended from a free woman.⁵ One deponent named Ann Maria Chew knew Margaret and was a servant in Mary Lloyd Chew's stepfather's household in Annapolis but claimed the Dulaney's sent her away to Wye Island for misconduct.⁶ The widow Elizabeth Chew stated that a slave named Margaret was pregnant when her deceased husband (also named Samuel) acquired Margaret from Wye Island.⁷  The widow Elizabeth Chew went on to testify that Tom was Margaret's son and claimed "Margaret was a free woman, free as any body."⁸ She verified this fact with her late husband's sister Mary Hepburn of Upper Marlborough. Hepburn told her that "Margaret certainly is a free woman and no slave [because] her mother [Rachel] was the daughter of an Indian woman a native of this country" and brought up in the family of Philemon Lloyd Chew on Wye Island.⁹

The jury's verdict favored Margaret Creek and awarded her 1,783 pounds of tobacco.¹⁰ For a family tree of the eighteen slaves who claimed descent from Indian Mary click the "Images" link in Creek's introductory page.

Sources: 

2. Ancestry.com, United States Federal Census, 1800, Anne Arundel County, p. 3

3. COURT OF APPEALS (Judgments, Eastern Shore) S380-28 No. 19 Richard Jones vs. Robert Moody Jun. 1813, p. 56, 01/63/09/013  [MSA SC 4239-1-5]

4. Ibid., p. 11-33

5. Ibid., p. 34

6. Ibid., p. 17

7. Ibid., p. 22

8. Ibid., p. 35

9. Ibid., p. 35-36

10. Ibid., p. 59

Return to Margaret Creek's Introductory Page

 
 
 

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