Levin Jones (b. 1766 - d. 1830)
MSA SC 5496-51914
Property Owner, Dorchester County, Maryland
Biography:
Levin Jones was a slaveowner located near Vienna, Dorchester County, Maryland. He married Nancy Jones (1769-1819) on August 20, 1789.1 They had six known children, William, Allafair, Elizabeth, Sarah, James, and Mary.
In the 1820 Census, Levin Jones was the head of a household of twenty four individuals, including four slaves and eight free African-Americans.2 These people are not named in the census, but it is likely that a number of these free people were former slaves who Jones had manumitted at certain ages.
In two documents from 1795 and 1805, Jones manumitted a total of ten slaves. These were delayed manumissions for all but one woman, Sarah, meaning the majority of slaves manumitted by Jones were freed when they reached a certain age. In 1795, Jones manumitted six slaves; Sarah, George, Jack, Judah, Rachel, and Jacob.3 The men were to be free at age thirty one. For George, that meant he was "to be free at the expiration of four years," twenty-year-old Jack was to wait eleven years, Judah had two more years as a slave, and Jacob would be freed in twenty four years. Of the two women, Sarah was freed immediately by the manumission, and Rachel was "to be free in six years." Usually the terms for delayed manumission for men and women were different, and it is unclear what age Jones had set for the women. In 1805, Jones freed another group of slaves; Joshua, age 16, George, age 14, Peggy, age 20, and Jack, who was nine months old.4 Joshua would be freed in nine years, George in ten years and six months, Peggy in two years, and Jack would be free at the age of twenty five. Delayed manumissions were a way of "ensuring loyalty from enslaved people, who could eventually join the growing freed and freeborn black population."5 However, Jones did not offer the same assurance of eventual freedom to all of his slaves.In January of 1825, Jones' slave, Sam, ran away. Jones described Sam as "about twenty years of age well made, of a very dark complexion, nearly black; he is about 6 feet high, of a pleasant countenance when spoken to." 6 Jones offered a fifty dollar reward for his recovery if Sam was found outside of the state, and he offered thirty dollars if Sam was captured within Maryland. His advertisement ran in April 1825 and appeared three times in the Cambridge Chronicle and the Philadelphian newspaper "The Columbian Observer". The vague description may have helped Sam in his escape and the ad was run all three times that Jones had paid for, which suggests that Sam had not yet been recaptured; however, it is unknown if he ultimately made it to freedom.
Levin Jones, his wife, Nancy, and their children were buried in the Jones Family Cemetery in Cambridge, Maryland. 7
Footnotes:
1. Robert Barnes. Maryland Marriages 1778-1800. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc., 1978) 122.
5. Kate Clifford Larson. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2004), 8.
6. "Fifty Dollars Reward." Cambridge Chronicle. April 2, 1825. Cambridge Chronicle.
7. "Levin Jones." Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=73492771
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