When did Johns Hopkins purchase James Jones and when was he manumitted?

Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact answer to either question for lack of documentation. However, Johns Hopkins did not pay taxes on enslaved "property" in 1846 (see https://osf.io/zra5f/), and James Jones’ first appearance in a city directory as a free Black resident was in 1858. His first appearance on the federal census as a free Black occurred in 1860. So, we can assume Jones was purchased and subsequently freed between 1846 and 1858. His manumission records were probably destroyed when Baltimore purged a large number of historic documents, including the city's chattel records, for lack of space.

Could James Jones be one of the men enumerated in the 1850 census slave schedule?

It is possible but there is no evidence that confirms this speculation. One of the slaves listed in the 1850 slave schedule is a 25-year-old male, and Jones was recorded on the census as having been born between 1820 and 1825 (his birthyear was actually 1819 as noted on his grave marker). If he was purchased by Johns Hopkins and brought to Baltimore before 1850, Jones could be one of the enslaved men enumerated in the 1850 slave schedule. The ages of enslaved individuals were often misenumerated in census documents. However, no documentation has been found to prove this.

Do we know where James Jones was born and who sold him to Johns Hopkins?

His grave marker and death certificate confirm that James Jones was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1819. We have no more concrete evidence that identifies James Jones' exact birthdate or location of birth, nor do we have documentation regarding when or from where he was purchased by Johns Hopkins. But there are some important clues. The Sun obituary noted above states:

“The man James [Jones] was once a slave of Mr. Hopkins, he having purchased him of a Mr. Tayloe in Virginia, at whose house he observed such qualities in the then colored youth as induced him to bring him to Baltimore, where subsequently he gave him his freedom years ago, doing a good part by him, and the man remaining faithfully in his service ever since.” 

Who was “Mr. Tayloe in Virginia”? 

Mr. Tayloe was almost certainly one of five wealthy brothers who were contemporaries of Johns Hopkins.

The Tayloes were a prominent family in Mid-Atlantic colonial and antebellum America that owned many properties and plantations in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and, later, Alabama. The primary family estate, the Mt. Airy plantation (located near Warsaw in the tidewater region of eastern Virginia), like the family's numerous other farms and enterprises, was maintained by a large enslaved workforce. The estate was owned by John Tayloe III, and when he died in 1828 the vast Tayloe family landholdings and chattel property were dispersed among his many children, with Mt. Airy going to his second son, William Henry Tayloe. 

Besides William Henry, four other Tayloe brothers inherited considerable land, money, and people from John Tayloe III: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, Edward Thornton Tayloe, George Plater Tayloe, and Henry Augustine Tayloe. Although any one of this quintet of siblings could have sold James Jones to Johns Hopkins, the most likely candidate, I think, is Willian Henry Tayloe (1799-1871), hereafter WHT.

Is there evidence that Johns Hopkins knew or conducted business with the Tayloe family beyond the purchase of James Jones?

No. But both families had deep roots in Virginia and Maryland. The Tayloe brothers' maternal relatives, the Ogle family, lived almost adjacent to Whites Hall, just across the Patuxent River in Prince George's County. Their plantation mansion, called Belair, which was built in 1745 by Samuel Ogle, the Provincial Governor of Maryland, still exists. We also know that WHT conducted business with Johns Hopkins' maternal relatives in Virginia, the Janneys. WHT's grandfather and father - John Tayloe II and John Tayloe III - built part of their fortune from iron foundries and flour mills they operated in Prince William County, Virginia, along the Occoquan river, where many members of the Janney family also lived and worked.

Johns Hopkins frequently conducted business in this part of Virginia and visited his relatives there. In one of her letters, Johns Hopkins' mother Hannah Janney Hopkins described a trip to Occoquan. Even though the Occoquan foundries shut down in the late 1820s, the Tayloe family continued to own land and mills in this region up to and even after the Civil War. WHT owned one of these properties, known as Deep Hole farm, on the Potomac near the mouth of the Occoquan river. 

In 1837, Samuel Hopkins Janney, Johns Hopkins' first cousin, wrote from Occoquan to WHT at Mt. Airy:

Occoquan, June 17th, 1837

Mr. Wm Tayloe

Dear Sir,

Mr. Wm H. Smoot requests me to say to you that he is willing to take the amount for [illegible] barrels from you in corn at Deep Hole @ 80 cents/bushel which he says you offered to do when you were here last. At the same time I will take 100 bushels for which I will pay when you come up or when I receive it if you require it. Smoot’s barrels amount to about 110 bushels.

Yours,

Saml H. Janney

This letter suggests an ongoing business relationship between WHT, Samuel Hopkins Janney, and Janney's associates in Occoquan. In a second letter, WHT is contacted by Asa M. Janney about renting a Tayloe family mill on the Occoquan to one of Janney's millers. It is also possible that WHT conducted business directly with the Janneys and the Hopkins in Baltimore as the Tayloes often sent shipments of corn and wheat from Mt. Airy out along the Rappahannock up the Chesapeake to the Inner Harbor. Their schooners would have docked near Hopkins and Brothers' store.

What are some of the other reasons that WHT is most likely the owner-seller of James Jones to Johns Hopkins? 

WHT owned a large number of slaves, who lived and worked on the Mt. Airy plantation, adjacent estates, and other properties in Virginia such as Deep Hole farm. He frequently sold enslaved people both in Virginia and to planters in Alabama (more on this later). 

A couple other facts lead us in the direction of WHT as James Jones' likely master:

1. James Jones named one of his sons William Henry Jones. It may seem strange that a former slave would name a child after the person who held him in bondage, but the practice was not uncommon. In fact, at least two other people enslaved by WHT - Winney Grimshaw and Martha Harwood - each named a child William Henry. 

2. James Jones adopted a son between 1870 and 1880 named Joseph with a surname, More, that is among a limited number of names associated with WHT's slaveholdings.

3. Based on the 1870 census, Jones is a surname that appeared frequently in the communities surrounding Mt. Airy and WHT's plantations in Alabama, especially Hale County, after emancipation. Because Jones is such a common last name, it is difficult to be certain that these Joneses are former slaves of WHT or of the other Tayloe brothers. However, many were also born in Virginia. And one free Black living in 1870 in Richmond County, Virginia, had a unusual first name - Lawson Jones. Lawson is a another common surname of WHT's enslaved families.

What happened to WHT's enslaved people leading up to the Civil War and after emancipation?

WHT freed very few of his bound laborers before he was forced to. Some who lived in Virginia remained there, but most were moved to Alabama before the Emancipation Proclamation and the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy. 

Why Alabama? Beginning in the 1830s, WHT, along with his four brothers, began purchasing land in the Canebrake region of Alabama to establish cotton plantations. Using slaves transported from Virginia to pick and process the cotton, and a team of overseers to run their operations, the Tayloe brothers would become the largest absentee landowners in antebellum Alabama. The brothers treated their Alabama acquisitions just as they did their slaves, as investment properties. One brother, Henry A. Tayloe, told another brother in a letter dated January 5, 1835, that his "object is to make a fortune here [in Alabama] as soon as possible by industry and economy, and then return [to VA] to enjoy myself." 

Had James Jones remained a slave of William Henry Tayloe he very likely would have been forcibly relocated to one of WHT's cotton plantations in Alabama. WHT and his brothers also sometimes sold their "surplus" laborers to other planters in the Canebrake. James Jones escaped this fate. Many others, undoubtedly some of his relatives, did not. 

Among the slaves removed from Virginia to Alabama during this period was a man named "Uncle" Jim Lawson. Lawson, who was born in Maryland around 1821, was removed from Virginia and taken to Alabama to work at a plantation named Windsor owned by WHT's older brother, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, in 1845 - about the same time that James Jones may have been acquired by Johns Hopkins. Lawson remained at Windsor after the Civil War, where we was photographed in 1915 by Essie Collins Matthews (see below). Did James Jones and Jim Lawson know each other? It's possible.

Go to James Jones Part II: From Servant to Freeholder

Note on Sources: The information for this essay has been collected from two primary sources and two books. There are two collections of original Tayloe family papers from this period, one (the largest and most relevant) is located at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond and the second (smaller and slightly less relevant but still useful) is held at the University of Virginia. The first collection is scanned and available on Family Search at https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/752708?availability=Family%20History%20Library though many of the images are very difficult to read. 

The two secondary sources I have consulted are (1) A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia by Richard S. Dunn and (2) Irons in the Fire: The Business History of the Tayloe Family and Virginia's Gentry 1700–1860 by Laura Croghan Kamoie. Both are indispensable resources for understanding the history of the Tayloe family and their business dealings from the eighteenth century through the Civil War. Dunn also has a website where some of his data can be accessed.

Revision Log:

1/29/22: Added information about the Ogle family and the Belair Mansion near Whites Hall. Made other minor edits.

6/12/22: Added note and image of JHJ's entry in Wood's 1860 Baltimore Directory. See https://archive.org/details/woodsbaltimoreci1860balt/page/444/mode/2up. 

2/8/23: Added information re: Jones' appearance as a free colored citizen of Baltimore.