Introduction

1807. This is the most common year cited for the manumission of the enslaved families owned by the Hopkins family in Anne Arundel County. The date 1807, which has been repeated countless times in biographies and other accounts of Johns Hopkins' life over the past century, was taken from the biography Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette, written by Hopkins' grand niece Helen Hopkins Thom, that also attributes the manumissions to Johns Hopkins' parents Samuel and Hannah Hopkins. As Thom wrote: 

"The time came at last for a final decision and the Society of Friends took a firm stand. All were to set free their slaves without compensation of any sort or be put out of Meeting. Samuel Hopkins paced the floor for three nights trying to adjust his mind to the changes that would come if he obeyed this ultimatum....At last a decision was reached and the life of the Hopkins family turned a corner. Because of something unexplainable, but perhaps divine, which manifests itself now and then in men and women, Samuel and Hannah were able, though blood and sweat were the price, to lift their eyes unto the hills and see the vision. And so all of the able-bodied negroes belonging to Samuel Hopkins were set free in the year 1807."

We know now that this date is dead wrong. As I have written elsewhere on this blog, the enslaved laborers held by the Hopkins family on their plantation in Anne Arundel county were manumitted in 1778, 17 years before Johns Hopkins was born, by his grandparents and not by his parents. And although those manumissions were staggered and gradual, all of the enslaved people held by the Hopkins family were free by 1800. 

So, why did Helen Hopkins Thom (hereafter HHT) write that the family's slaves were released in 1807 by Samuel and Hannah Hopkins? Did she know that this date was incorrect? And if so, how and why did she select the year 1807?

Published Sources

Answering these questions requires us to review the sources HHT had at her disposal while she was drafting Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette during the 1920s.

Three of her most important published sources[1] would have been:

• Brantz Mayer, “Johns Hopkins,” Baltimore: Past and Present, Richardson & Bennett, 1871. 

• Miles White, Jr., "Some Colonial Ancestors of Johns Hopkins," Southern History Association, vol. IV, no. 6, 1900.

• Henry M. Hurd, MD, “Johns Hopkins and Some of His Contemporaries,” Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, No. 317, July 1917.

What do these sources indicate? 

It is said that the biography of Johns Hopkins written by Brantz Mayer that appeared in 1871 was reviewed by Johns Hopkins before it was published. The biography credits Johns Hopkins the Elder with the manumissions, though it does not give a year. Here is the key passage:

“Johns Hopkins, the grandfather of the gentleman who is the subject of this notice, was the descendent of that one of the [Hopkins] brothers, emigrating from England, who established his home upon South River, in Anne Arundel county. He inherited the considerable landed estate acquired by his ancestor in theta neighborhood, and cultivated his property with the aid of some hundred negroes, of who he became possessed by bequest from his parents and by marriage. He had eleven children. At that period slave labor was essential to profitable farming in the colony, and the industry and enterprise of Mr. Hopkins were taxed by the necessity of proving for the support of so large a family. But doubt arose in his mind as to the rightfulness of keeping negroes in bondage; and he, therefore, gave freedom to all of his slaves, cultivating his estate afterwards by his own labor, aided by the toil of his sons and by such free labor as could then be procured.”

Next, we have the detailed family genealogy published in 1900 and written by HHT's cousin Miles White, Jr., who also served as a trustee of Johns Hopkins University. White cites Mayer as one of his sources. However, White inaccurately credits Samuel Hopkins, Johns Hopkins' father, with manumitting the family's enslaved laborers. He does not give a date. Here is the key passage:

"When the Society of Friends decided that its members must set free their Negroes, or be disowned, Samuel Hopkins walked the floor all night before he decided to obey this decision, for he had a large family, and his only means of support was his plantation, the principle crop of which was tobacco, which required negro labor for its cultivation."

The narrative changes again in 1917, when Henry M. Hurd, professor of psychiatry and the first director of Johns Hopkins Hospital, wrote a piece for the hospital bulletin on the life of its founder. Hurd cites White as one of his sources. Here is the key passage:

“The [Hopkins] family lived liberally upon a large farm and seem to have prospered. At one time the possession of slave had enabled them to cultivate the farm with ease and to engage especially in the cultivation of tobacco, which required much care and heavy work. For many years, however, the Religious Society of Friends had become very much interested in freeing the slaves and had borne constant testimony against the holding of men in bondage as entirely inconsistent with their ideas of right. In 1812 the yearly meeting adopted a minute that no persons could remain connected with the meeting who held slaves. It is said that Samuel Hopkins was much troubled by this action, in view of his large family and the difficulty of managing his estate without the aid of slaves. He walked the floor at night in his perplexity, and finally came to the decision that he ought to emancipate his slaves, which he did in 1812.”

1812? Why did Dr. Hurd pick this year, which does not appear in any prior biography of Johns Hopkins? While it is true that the Quakers released many minutes reminding their members to obey the testimony against slaveholding, the church's first edicts prohibiting slavery were handed down in the 1770s in Maryland (and even earlier in other places).

Obituaries and Family Accounts

Needless to say, HHT must have been baffled by the conflicting stories! But luckily she had other information available to her beyond these three sources. First, she surely would have consulted sketches of Johns Hopkins' life that were published upon his death in 1873. For example, in a lengthy obituary for Johns Hopkins, the Baltimore Sun wrote:

"Mr. Johns Hopkins was born in Anne Arundel county, Maryland, May 19, 1795. He was the son of Samuel Hopkins, of that county, and of Hannah Janny [sic] Hopkins, of Loudoun county, Virginia, both parents being of Quaker families. He was named after his grandfather Johns Hopkins, of Anne Arundel, who was the descendant of the early English settlers of that county ... Johns Hopkins, the grandfather, inherited the considerable landed assets acquired by his ancestors in Anne Arundel and cultivated his property with the aid of some hundred negroes, whom he afterwards emancipated, the consequences of doubt arising in his mind as to the rightfulness of negro bondage. This estate was afterwards cultivated by his son, Samuel Hopkins, with the assistance of his sons, one of whom was the late Johns Hopkins, who, in his eighteenth year, showed a strong disposition to engage in mercantile life and was allowed to enter the counting room of his uncle, Gerald T. Hopkins, who was then conducting a wholesale grocery in this city."

Second, HHT also had the firsthand account of her father, and she credits him with inspiring her to write a biography of Johns Hopkins. In her dedication, HHT writes: "To my father, JOSEPH S. HOPKINS, whose personal reminiscences of his uncle have made this book possible."

My research team has acquired, through a Hopkins family descendent, a copy of notes made by Joseph S. Hopkins and used by his daughter in writing A Silhouette. In his notes recalling his life as a child at Whites Hall and memories of his uncle Johns Hopkins (posted at https://osf.io/b6ys3/), Joseph S. Hopkins states twice that the family's enslaved laborers were released in 1780. In one passage he wrote:

“The Hopkins had 50 able negroes whom they manumitted but kept the old and too young and these latter were the field hands whom Father [Joseph Janney Hopkins] depended upon. My old nurse was named Minty or Araminta and her mother was one of those who were too old to be set free in 1780, yet in 1852 she was living with her daughter Aunt Minty in a cabin on the old place. Father used to allow her $60.00 a year which was considered ample in those days.”

So, while the records that HHT consulted were conflicting, the two that were published during Hopkins' lifetime and on his death told the same story - the Hopkins family enslaved laborers were manumitted by Johns Hopkins the elder prior to his death in 1783. White and Hurd incorrectly credited Samuel Hopkins with the manumissions, and one of them gave a year (1812). However, HHT also had her own father's remembrances that substantiated the earlier accounts of a mass manumission event occurring in the 18th century, well before Johns Hopkins was born. Joseph S. Hopkins, like the bio sketch and obituary published in the 1870s, correctly credited Johns Hopkins the Elder with liberating the family's slaves and the date that he cites - 1780 - is very close to the real date of 1778. (1780 is also the year in which the manumissions were recorded in the Quaker meeting records.)

Why 1807?

This evidence suggests, I believe, that HHT must have concluded that Samuel and Hannah Hopkins were not responsible for freeing the family's enslaved people. If so, why did she say they were in her book? The most convincing explanation to me is that she was simply asserting a biographer’s license to condense and embellish her subject's story. After all, the facts surrounding the 1778 manumissions are confusing – 42 people were freed, some immediately, some later, by someone with the same name as Johns Hopkins the philanthropist. These are not easy details to explain in a short book.

Naming Samuel and Hannah Hopkins as the liberators also enabled HHT to dramatize Johns’ youth in a way that she must have thought was more exciting than the reality. With the "Myth of 1807" Thom was able to establish an appealing (in her view) origin story for Johns Hopkins and at the same time flatter his Quaker parents, who were also her great grandparents. 

Either way, the picture she paints of Johns’ carefree childhood, made easy by the family’s numerous enslaved servants and field hands, is apocryphal. It may be that Johns left school at an early age for some reason, perhaps because he was "needed on the farm," but it was not because the family suddenly lost its entire enslaved labor force. 

So, lastly, why did HHT choose the date 1807 specifically? My best guess is that she took the date of 1780, cited twice by her father in his notes, and just flipped the digits. 1780 became 1807, and the myth, which has survived scrutiny for almost a century, was born. 

Postscript

After the publication of Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette in 1929, Helen Hopkins Thom's account of the famous philanthropist's biography took on a life of its own. Her version of the story - that in the year 1807 Johns Hopkins' parents, following Quaker doctrine, released all of their enslaved laborers and recalled Johns from school to work on the family farm - has rarely been questioned.

For example, in his well-known 1946 book, A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, John C. French wrote:

“Samuel was well to do, with several hundred acres of good land and numerous slaves. The oldest son was sent to boarding school at Alexandria, and Johns to the local South River School about a mile away. In 1807 the education of both was suddenly interrupted by an important family decision. For years, perhaps since the journey of the pious John Woolman through Maryland in 1757, members of the Meeting had been uneasy in their minds about human slavery…Samuel and Hannah were devout Quakers, and they proceeded to act on this conviction. The able-bodied slaves at Whitehall were all given their freedom, and the two older sons were recalled from school to go to work in the fields. It is recorded that Johns was required to study at night and to recite to the master on Saturday evenings.”

Fast forward three decades to an article entitled "Mr. Hopkins" written by the university's archivist Kathryn A. Jacob in 1974. Echoing Thom in language and detail, Jacob wrote:

"'Johnsie's' first twelve years were carefree. Tobacco was a profitable crop and his father became a man of means. All the plantation work was done by the family's numerous slaves. But in 1807, the pleasant routine of the family changed dramatically. In that year, following the direction of the Society of Friends which had begun to preach that human slavery was inconsistent with their faith, Samuel Hopkins freed his slaves."

The only source I have found that gets the story mostly straight is Antero Pietila's The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins. Published in 2018, Pietila consulted many of the same primary documents I have reviewed in my research, and he correctly concludes that it was Johns Hopkins' grandfather Johns Hopkins the Elder, not his father Samuel Hopkins, who was responsible for freeing the family's enslaved workers. Pietila's account includes some errors of fact, but his telling of the early life of the philanthropist and his family's adherence to (and sometimes defiance of) Quaker doctrine is largely accurate.

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[1] These articles are available on the OSF "Johns Hopkins History Project" site under files/secondary sources at https://osf.io/b6ys3/.