Maryland Black History: Naming the Enslaved

Naming the Enslavers & Enslaved Project Volunteers Visit the MD State Archives

On January 22, two intrepid MoCoLMP volunteers drove to Annapolis to see what we could find out about the enslaved and enslavers from the early 1860s in Montgomery County. The Archives library has resources that aren’t available online—such as the original of the Montgomery County Board of County Commissioners Assessment Record, Slaves, 1853-1864, shown below.

The Maryland State Archives in Annapolis. We registered and were each given desks with computers for research, and a large table for original sources.

Archivists kindly left the requested ledger on one of the desks assigned to us. Opening and turning the pages of this enormous book and seeing the neat handwriting of clerks tasked with recording the value of human beings considered property was a powerful and emotional experience. Names were found that were not included in the 3,348 we transcribed from the 1867 Slave Census—a resource that helped kick off our research. It is a census produced because former enslavers hoped to be paid by the state for the human “property” that had been emancipated in Maryland on November 1, 1864. (They were not paid.)

Name: Mona, Age: 6, Value: $100.

Name: Charlotte, Age: 12, Value: $200.

Name: Kitty, Age: 30, Value: $300.

Our task now is to try to find out what happened to those persons—were they taken to D.C., as some were—to be manumitted under the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862, which allowed enslavers to be paid up to $300 for freed enslaved persons? This act resulted in the freeing of 2,989 enslaved persons.

Were they manumitted in Maryland? Were they moved to other properties owned by the enslavers? Who were they and where did they go?

Our task is to record the names of persons enslaved in Montgomery County between 1860-1864. Ledgers, wills, land records, manumissions…. So many resources, with many now online and some in physical form at the Archives.

If you are interested in helping us in our search, we need volunteers to help name the enslaved in several historic districts: the Colesville/Sandy Spring; Gaithersburg/Laytonsville; Germantown/Clarksburg/Damascus; and Poolesville/Beallsville/Barnesville.

Please contact us for more information!