Safe reveals deeds of freedom for slaves
The antique documents were tied up by a ribbon and kept in an old safe for years, first in the general stores thatDannyDyer’s family ran in Accokeek, Md., and later in his house nearby.
He wasn’t certain what they were. “Deed of Manumission,” many of themsaid, and named dozens of men, women and children. Unsure what manumission was, he looked it up. It was the act of freeing a slave. “Good God,” he thought. What Dyer had in his safe in Prince George’s County was a trove of paperwork that recorded the freeing of scores of slaves, many belonging to Maryland’s first families, decades before the CivilWar.
The papers showed that some slaves were granted freedom that did not take effect for 20 years. Others were freed by purchasing themselves. Still otherswere freed outright.
A 6-year-old slave, Pheby Ann Tyler, was bought by her father, John, of Washington, for $70. A slave woman and her children were manumitted by her husband, who had probably bought them to free them.
A sampling of the documents, which Dyer loaned for study to the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, has been put on display this monthat themuseum’sVisitor’s Center. They have neverbeenmadepublicbefore. “The collection to me is absolutely mind-boggling,” said the museum’s director, LaurieVerge.
Colleen Walter Puterbaugh, the Surratt House research librarian who has studied and transcribed the 30 documents, said, “We immediately knew that it was really a treasure. ... (The papers tell) a story. It’s only the first layer of that story. And it really hints at a lot more drama going on.”
One deed was executed onOct. 23, 1838, by awealthy widow, Elizabeth W. Snowden. Her in-laws had built Montpelier, a grand Georgian mansion inLaurel, Md., and owned thousands of acres in Prince George’s County.
For generations, the Snowdens were known in the area for their elegant home by the Patuxent River and for their hospitality. George Washington lodged there several times. So did first ladiesMarthaWashington and AbigailAdams.
At one point in the early 1800s, the family owned 141 slaves.
Elizabeth Snowden’s husband, Nicholas, died in 1831, at age 41, leaving her with 12 children and a large plantation, according to records provided byMontpelier.
An inventory taken after his death listed about 60 slaves, mainly by their first names, ages, and monetary value, along with horses, cattle, sheep, corn, tobacco, potatoes, a “pleasure sleigh” and 23 champagne glasses.
Seven years later, Elizabeth, a native of Philadelphia who noted that “natural freedom is the right of all men,” freed 30 slaves, according But for most of them, the freedom was effective only in the future.
She ordered Henny, 43, freed in 1839; Hazel, 41, freed in 1840; and their four children freed over the next 20 years.
Their child Let, then 9, would not be free until 1851, when he was 22. Nace, then 11, would not be free until 1853, when he was 26. Daughter Ann Elizabeth, 5, would remain a slave until 1855, when shewas 22.
And daughter Sarah Jane, then 1, would stay a slave until 1859 — two decades after her father got his freedom.
Puterbaugh, the research librarian, theorizes that Snowden may have meant well in keeping the children in slavery.
Many manumission laws discouraged masters from freeing slaves who couldn’t to Dyer’s documents. take care of themselves. The aim was not to be benevolent, but to protect communities from the burden of caring for them.
“It may have been more for their safekeeping than for any monetary gain,” Puterbaugh said in an email. “For the most part, the girls were freed when they reached the age of 22 and the boys when they reached 26 ... (perhaps) considered the age of maturation at the time.”
Jenny Bourne, an economics historian at Carleton College, agreed.
“Relatively altruistic owners might not free young children until they could support themselves,” she said in an email.
Thehuge safe had been in the Dyer country store/gas station/post office in Accokeek as far back as the horse-and-buggy days.
The store, on Livingston Road, was a local gathering place and makeshift repository. “It was the only game in town,” Dyer said. “At the time, there was nothing around.”
Whenitmoved across the street in 1947, the safemoved with it. Then, when the Dyers got out of the store business, the safe moved into his house next door.
Therewere, among many other things, land deeds, records of the sale of horses and cows, and themanumission papers, which span the years 1781 to 1858.
The safe appears to have served as a kind of safedeposit box in rural Maryland, and Dyer thinks such documents were put there in connection with a greatgrandfather’s job as a sheriff in the county.
“I have no idea how long they’ve been in there,” he said in an interview at Surratt House recently. “My father didn’t seem to know. He said, ‘Well, theywere just here. They’ve here.’ ”
As Dyer examined the handwritten documents, he was puzzled: “I started looking, and said, ‘What is this? What the hell is manumission?’ I didn’t know what it was. So I looked it up.”
He realized the papers’ historic and emotional value, but he wasn’t sure what to do with them. He did a little research. But then years went by, family events came, and the issue of the papers fell into the background, Dyer said.
Recently, his son began dating a daughter of Laurie Verge, the director of the Surratt House Museum. The elder Dyer and Verge had gone to high school together.
A year and a half brought his papers museum.
They nowreside in a gray archival box in the museum’s JamesO. HallResearch Center, where they will stay for the foreseeable future.
The stories they tell are part of American history.
On Aug. 31, 1818, a Prince George’s County slave named Nathan, 31 years old and of good “bodily strength,” bought himself from his owner, a widow, Ann Berry. The price: $220 — thousands of dollars in today’smoney.
On Oct. 1, 1806, Aaron Jones, 35, purchasedhimself under a different arrangement.
His owner, Ann Sprigg, priced him high — $400 — but set up an installment plan: For his freedom, Jones would pay Sprigg $100 each year for four years.
Sprigg charged no always been ago, he to the interest.