In addition to an individual’s age and whereabouts, the ads tell a great deal more about the character and physical appearance of runaways than we are accustomed to learning from most source records. While many of the physical descriptions found in the ads are generic, some stand out. One was Michael Toole with “fore teeth like a hog’s tusks.” Irishman Daniel Dunleavy had a scar on his face “and marked with gunpowder all over it, by firing a blast in his hands”. A Black slave named Joe “has a remarkable seam on one side of his head, occasioned by the cut of a hand-saw.” Advertisements by men whose spouses “eloped” from them are included. Francis Brumfield reported that wife Elizabeth “eloped from my bed and board without any provocation” and forbad anyone to deal with her. Adam Strickstroke’s wife, Otillow, eloped and “carried with her my Bed, Furniture and several other Articles.” Black slaves and Indians listed in these advertisements are listed by race as well as by surname, when one is given.

In preparing this latest volume in the series, Mr. Boyle consulted more than twenty late 18^th-century newspapers from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, as well as from Maryland. Indeed, some runaways made their escape from places beyond their base in Maryland. The roughly 1,000 ads found here name close to 4,000 persons.

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Over 420 African Americans who were born free during the colonial period served in the American Revolution from Virginia. Another 400 who descended from free-born colonial families served from North Carolina, 40 from South Carolina, 60 from Maryland, and 17 from Delaware. At least 24 from Virginia and 41 from North Carolina died in the service. Over 75 free African Americans were in colonial militias and the French and Indian Wars in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Although some slaves fought to gain their freedom as substitutes for their masters, they were relatively few in number. By the same token, those who were not serving under their own free will are not included in this list. It was simply not their fight.

While the information on each of the free black veterans of the War for Independence varies, in most cases the author has provided the individual’s name, state and county, unit served in, military theater, some family information, often a physical description, pension applied for or received, sometimes other information, and the source. The case of Isaac Brown of Charles City County, Virginia, is illustrative of many of the descriptions found in the volume:

Isaac Brown was born in Charles City County and enlisted there in the Revolution for 1-1/2 years on 12 September 1780: complexion black, 5’2-1/2″ high, a farmer [Register & description of Noncommissioned officers & Privates, LVA accession no. 24296, by http://revwarapps.org/b69.pdf (p.45)]. He was taxable in Lower Westover Precinct of Charles City County in 1786 [PPTL, 1783-7], head of a Charles City County household of 10 “other free” in 1810 [VA:959] and 4 “free colored” in 1820 [VA:13]. He applied for a pension in Charles City County at the age of 69 on 19 May 1829, stating that he enlisted in Charles City County in the fall of the year 1780 and served in Captain Sanford’s Company in Colonel Campbell’s Regiment for 18 months. He was in the Battle of Guildford Courthouse, the Siege 14 of Ninety Six, and the Battle of Eutaw Springs. He owned 70 acres in Charles City County [NARA, S.39,214, M804, Roll 366, frame 240 of 893; http://fold3.com/image/11713004].

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Founded in 1837, The Baltimore Sun published numerous articles characterizing local, national, and international events relating to and impacting people of color. Beginning with the Reconstruction year of 1870, Margaret D. Pagan has performed the yeoman’s task of scouring the newspaper for all such accounts and summarizing their contents through 1927. To quote historian Donna T. Hollie, who wrote the Foreword to the compilation, “The author has selected articles for this publication which provide an expansive overview of experiences chronicling the African diaspora. For example, the reader will learn of the evolution of ‘Jim Crow,’ regarding housing and interstate travel.  Also included are summaries covering sports, lynching, entertainment, and political, educational, economic and religious activities. The accomplishments of well-known activists such as Frederick Douglass, and lesser-known ones such as Henry Highland Garnet, both Maryland born, are detailed.”

Genealogists searching for Baltimore connections will appreciate that Mrs. Pagan has also included references to marriage license applicants and obituaries. Obituaries, of course, sometimes provide details about the decedent’s family and organizational connections.  Among the more than 800 entries in this chronology, researchers will find references to James B. Parker, the African American who subdued Leon Czolgosz, President McKinley’s assassin; meetings of Baltimore’s Brotherhood of Liberty, the precursor to the Niagara Movement and founding of the NAACP; and efforts to install black teachers in Baltimore’s segregated schools for African Americans. For the researcher’s convenience, the author has included a comprehensive index to names and events referenced in her chronology. For all these attributes and Mrs. Pagan’s careful attention to detail, African American News in the Baltimore Sun, 1870-1927 must certainly be the starting point for anyone interested in black history and genealogy during the era under investigation.

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Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware is a work that will intrigue genealogists and historians alike. First and foremost, Mr. Heinegg has assembled genealogical evidence on more than 400 Maryland and Delaware black families (naming nearly 10,000 individuals), with copious documentation from the federal censuses of 1790-1810 and colonial sources consulted at the Maryland Hall of Records, county archives, and other repositories. In fact, the author has examined all extant court records for Maryland and Delaware for the period under investigation. No work that we know of brings together so much information on colonial African Americans, except Mr. Heinegg’s three-volume series volume on Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This second edition of Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware from the Colonial Period to About 1810 is nearly 60% larger than the original.

The author offers documentation proving that most of these free black families descended from mixed-race children who were themselves the progeny of white women and African American slaves or free blacks. In all, Heinegg proves that these families descended from 264 white women who had had 374 mixed-race children. He has also identified another 112 white women who bore 127 mixed-race children for whom no direct evidence of offspring could be found. While some of these families would claim Native American ancestry, Mr. Heinegg offers evidence to show that they were instead the direct descendants of mixed-race children.

Colonial Maryland laws relating to marriages between offspring of African American and white partners carried severe penalties. For example, one 18th-century statute threatened a white mother with seven years of servitude and promised to bind her mixed-race offspring until the age of thirty-one. Mr. Heinegg shows that, despite these harsh laws, several hundred child-bearing relationships in Delaware and Maryland took place over the colonial period, as evidenced directly from the public record. Maryland families, in particular, which comprise the preponderance of those studied, also had closer relationships with the surrounding slave population than did their counterparts in Delaware, Virginia, or the Carolinas. Mr. Heinegg recounts the circumstances under which a number of these freedmen were able to become landowners. Some Maryland families, however, including a number from Somerset County, chose to migrate to Delaware or Virginia, where the opportunities for land ownership were greater. For example, the freeman John Johnson, of Somerset County, patented 400 acres in Rehoboth Bay, Sussex County, Delaware in 1677. Other Maryland families who settled in Kent County, Delaware, included Butcher, Fountain, Gibbs, Grinnage, Lacount, Norman, Parsons, Plummer, Poulson, Proctor, Roach, Saunders, and Toogood.

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In his previous books, Phillips identified these children by name and listed their ages and dates of their court appearances. He searched all available birth and baptismal records and, where possible, cross-checked them with marriage and death records to identify the parents of 1,400 of these children. He also examined all available shipping records to identify 125 white slave ships and, if possible, the names of the captains who commanded them.

Since the publication of the trilogy, many records that were previously unavailable have been posted online. The parish registers for London and for Essex, downstream on the Thames, are now complete, as are the parish registers for Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset, thus enabling Phillips to complete his search for the birthplaces of the children. The marriage and death records for Bristol, where only the baptismal records were previously indexed, have now been examined, thus clarifying cases of mistaken identity. One more parish register from Ireland, previously omitted, is included here.

Dozens more captains of white slave ships have been identified from colonial records of Virginia. More than forty indictments for kidnapping have been found in the court records of London. And more than 100 white children sold into servitude along the Delaware River have been identified, some of whom have been matched with their baptismal or marriage records, despite the fact that the records from Philadelphia have not survived.

All of these records are compiled in this supplement. So far as is known, this completes the data set for the trilogy.

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The books track the movements of 170 white slave ships, identify with a high degree of certainty the parents of 1,400 children, and reveal what became of 200 survivors. The author has subsequently compiled records of kidnapped children sold in Pennsylvania and has traced the migration of dozens of runaways and their descendants through the Appalachian Mountains.

The epic poem is divided into 75 passages, in lyric poetry, with rhyme and meter. Some of the passages are, or will become, folk songs. The White Slave Children Trilogy, published in paperback by Genealogical Publishing Company, is also available in a hard-bound, cloth cover, stitched page edition directly from the author.

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Following a weakening of Maryland’s Lord Proprietor’s hold on land affairs during the period 1689 to 1715, his proprietary rights were restored. The Proprietor’s Rent Rolls and the Debt Books were the means by which he kept track of the yearly rents he was entitled to. The Debt Books, in particular, consist of a list of persons owning land with the names and rents of each tract that he or she owned. The surviving Debt Books are arranged by county, by year, and then by the name of the person paying the rent.

Since 2013 distinguished Maryland genealogist Vernon. L. Skinner has painstakingly abstracted the contents of all extant Debt Books, county by county. This volume is the last of five volumes pertaining to Baltimore County. It spans the period 1769-1771, with a break for 1767. Skinner presents the contents of the Debt Books in tabular form: liber and folio citation, with any pertinent date; name of the person paying the taxes; and name of the tract of land and amount of acreage.

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Following a weakening of Maryland’s Lord Proprietor’s hold on land affairs during the period 1689 to 1715, his proprietary rights were restored. The Proprietor’s Rent Rolls and the Debt Books were the means by which he kept track of the yearly rents he was entitled to. The Debt Books, in particular, consist of a list of persons owning land with the names and rents of each tract that he or she owned. The surviving Debt Books are arranged by county, by year, and then by the name of the person paying the rent.

Since 2013 distinguished Maryland genealogist Vernon. L. Skinner has painstakingly abstracted the contents of all extant Debt Books, county by county. This volume is the fourth of five volumes pertaining to Baltimore County. It spans the period 1765-1768, with a break for 1767. Skinner presents the contents of the Debt Books in tabular form: liber and folio citation, with any pertinent date; name of the person paying the taxes; and name of the tract of land and amount of acreage.

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Following a weakening of Maryland’s Lord Proprietor’s hold on land affairs during the period 1689 to 1715, his proprietary rights were restored. The Proprietor’s Rent Rolls and the Debt Books were the means by which he kept track of the yearly rents he was entitled to. The Debt Books, in particular, consist of a list of persons owning land with the names and rents of each tract that he or she owned. The surviving Debt Books are arranged by county, by year, and then by the name of the person paying the rent.

Since 2013 distinguished Maryland genealogist Vernon. L. Skinner has painstakingly abstracted the contents of all extant Debt Books, county by county. This volume is the third of five volumes pertaining to Baltimore County. It spans the period 1761-1764. Skinner presents the contents of the Debt Books in tabular form: liber and folio citation, with any pertinent date; name of the person paying the taxes; and name of the tract of land and amount of acreage.

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