Introduction

One of my earliest and most intriguing discoveries in researching the Hopkins family was the 1832 manumission of Minty and Louisa Wells by Joseph Janney Hopkins, the elder brother of Johns Hopkins. Minty was a significant figure in the Hopkins household at White’s Hall. She is mentioned in family correspondence and appears in Helen Hopkins Thom’s biography Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette as the family’s beloved “mammy,” a characterization based on her father’s recollections of growing up at White’s Hall in the 1840s, when Minty and her (presumed) daughter Louisa resided there. 

When I first wrote about Minty in 2021, I noted that she entered the Hopkins household in the early 1830s as an enslaved woman, accompanied by Louisa. At the time, her origins were uncertain. I speculated that Minty may have been transferred to the Hopkins family as payment for a debt. But new evidence has upended that theory. Minty was likely not from Maryland at all, but from North Carolina, where she lived and worked under the  supervision of Caleb White, a prominent Quaker and the brother of Miles White, who would later become Johns Hopkins’ brother-in-law.

To review, here again is the text of Minty and Louisa's freedom deed, listing Caleb White and Isaac H. White as witnesses :

Maryland A A County to wit:

To all whom it may concern be it known that that I Joseph J. Hopkins of said county in the state of Maryland for divers good causes and considerations me thereunto moving as also in further consideration of the sum of one hundred dollars current money to me in hand paid have released from slavery liberated manumitted and set free my negro woman named Minty aged about forty three years Louiza aged about fourteen & their heirs for ever all of which are able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintainance & the said negroes named I do declare to be free manumitted and discharged from all manner of servitude or service to me my executors administrators or assigns for ever.

In testimony whereof I hereunto set my hand and affix my seal this 25th May 1832

Signed sealed and delivered in the presence of Caleb White Isaac H White

 Jos. J Hopkins  (seal)

Caleb White (1796 - 1860)

Back in 2021, the name Caleb White meant little to me. “White” is a common surname, and there was even a man by that name living in Anne Arundel County, not far from the Hopkins farm. But today, four years later, I strongly suspect that the Caleb White who witnessed Minty’s manumission was the younger brother of Miles White, a prominent Baltimore businessman, close associate of Johns Hopkins, and husband to his sister Margaret. Later, their families would become even further intertwined. Miles White’s son, Francis White, married Jane Janney, one of Johns Hopkins’ favorite nieces, and later served on the inaugural board of trustees for the Johns Hopkins University. (In 1848, Miles and Johns both contributed to a fund used to free an enslaved family of five seeking to move to Maryland in Liberia.) 

Caleb White was born on November 12, 1796, in Perquimans County, North Carolina, to Francis and Miriam White, members of a devout Quaker family deeply rooted in the region’s history and antislavery traditions. His early life unfolded amid the turbulent debates over slavery that stirred Quaker communities in the Albemarle region of far northeastern North Carolina during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 

On December 15, 1821, he married Mary White in neighboring Pasquotank County, and together they had six children over the next fifteen years. The couple remained in eastern North Carolina through the 1820s, where Caleb and his family attended Symons Creek Monthly Meeting and became involved in local politics. This included supporting the colonization movement, which sought to relocate free Blacks to West Africa. On May 16, 1825, the Raleigh Register reported that "The citizens of Pasquotank County ... resolved to establish a Colonization Society, auxiliary to the American Colonization Society." Caleb White was named as one of the society's three managers.  And in 1830, while still serving as a colonization agent, he promoted the outfitting of the brig Montgomery for such an expedition, a project that linked him to broader Quaker, evangelical and commercial networks concerned with slavery, education, and trade with Africa. (I wrote about Quakers and colonization here.)

Quaker Free Negroes

While still residing in North Carolina, Caleb White also played a role in assisting “Quaker Free Negroes”—enslaved individuals who, though not legally emancipated, were permitted by their Quaker owners to live with significant autonomy. These men, women, and children were, in many respects, free-they could travel, earn wages, and, in some cases, establish independent households. The origins of this practice, and the moral and legal dilemmas it posed, form a compelling chapter in the history of Quaker antislavery efforts in the Upper South.

Quakers in North Carolina, like their counterparts in Virginia and Maryland, were directed by their Yearly Meeting to emancipate enslaved people under their control. Yet after the 1790s, increasingly restrictive state laws made manumission difficult, if not impossible. Blacks who "lived out," away from their legal owners, faced escalating legal discrimination, constant surveillance, and the threat of expulsion. In response, and with the guidance of the distinguished jurist William Gaston, North Carolina Friends devised an alternative scheme. Enslaved individuals would henceforth be held “in trust” by the Society of Friends as a corporate body. This arrangement preserved nominal legal ownership, shielding individuals from re-enslavement or forced removal, while allowing them to live as de facto free persons under the "care" of Quaker families. They adopted surnames (like Wells), entered into marriages, cultivated land, and engaged in informal economic transactions.

This practice, however, was always precarious. State authorities periodically targeted these “quasi-freedmen,” whom they regarded as threats to both the institution of slavery and the prevailing racial order. Quaker meetings were at times fined for harboring such individuals or for failing to comply with registration requirements. Opponents also brought legal actions against the North Carolina Yearly Meeting, entangling the Society in protracted and costly court battles. By the 1820s and 1830s, as proslavery sentiment hardened throughout the South, many Friends sought more permanent solutions to shield Black North Carolinians from the reach of the slave regime. Colonization was one option; another was to help Black families move to “Free Governments” elsewhere on the North American continent.

Appealing to Baltimore Yearly Meeting

In a letter dated November 6, 1833, the Meeting for Sufferings in North Carolina appealed to the Baltimore Yearly Meeting for financial assistance in their ongoing struggle to protect and resettle the "Quaker Free Negroes"—numbered around 400 at the time, with “about seven or eight hundred” already removed to “free Governments” at a staggering cost of more than $17,000. (A full transcription of the letter is provided below.)

The letter described decades of failed petitioning to the state legislature, which had only responded by “drawing the cords of Slavery, directing the Fetters closer,” and going so far as to outlaw literacy among the Black population. Then there were the suits. “Judgments have gone against [the trustees] for about seven Hundred Dollars” for sending fourteen individuals out of the state, and an additional $6,300 for refusing to relinquish twenty-seven others, with more than $1,000 spent on defense costs. Appeals were pending in the state’s Supreme Court, but “new demands have been made by disowned Heirs,” with further suits expected.

The letter also acknowledged the emotional toll of forced migration, and the failure of the colonization movement to relocate free Blacks to Africa. “The unwillingness in the Black People to quit their native Soil and seek repose in a Foreign Clime” made colonization efforts increasingly fraught, especially since “to cross the Ocean they will not consent.” 

To complicate matters further, many of those held in trust were married to or closely connected with individuals outside of Quaker ownership—enslaved people or free Blacks with no legal ties to the Society of Friends. As the authors explained, “we could not separate families,” and thus, “by removing those under Friends’ care, we had to remove many others thus connected.” In effect, the Yearly Meeting found itself compelled to extend assistance to non-Quaker-owned individuals in order to preserve marital and familial bonds, greatly expanding both the scope and cost of their efforts.

Moving Minty and Louisa Wells to Maryland

Under increasingly hostile conditions in North Carolina, Friends were willing to take extraordinary measures to remove Quaker Free Negroes from the state. This broader context helps explain why it is plausible that Minty was among those relocated by Caleb White, with the help of a sympathetic relative, to the Hopkins family farm in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, in 1832. Though Maryland remained a slave state, its comparatively liberal manumission laws made it a more viable destination for resettlement. There, Caleb could place Minty and her daughter in the home of a trusted Quaker family who would guarantee their legal emancipation and future welfare. 

Caleb White was even present on Friday, May 25, 1832, when Joseph J. Hopkins appeared before a Justice of the Peace at the Anne Arundel County Court in Annapolis to formally manumit Minty and Louisa. In the recorded deed, Hopkins declared that he had “released from slavery, liberated, manumitted and set free” both women, affirming that they were “able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintenance,” and thereby forever “discharged from all manner of servitude.” 

Minty and Louisa probably arrived at White's Hall not long before their manumission was executed in 1832. There are no enslaved people on the census for Hannah and Joseph J. Hopkins in 1830, but in the same federal census two enslaved women reside in Caleb White’s North Carolina household—one aged between 10 and 23, and the other between 36 and 54. At that time, Louisa and Minty would have been approximately 12 and 41 years old, respectively, a compelling demographic match. Combined with the documented efforts of North Carolina Friends to remove entire families from the reach of the state’s increasingly repressive slave regime, this record strongly suggests that Minty and Louisa were among those protected under Quaker trusteeship and relocated to Maryland through Caleb’s efforts.

Why did the Hopkins family agree to take in Minty and Louisa? Clues from Quaker records suggest several possible motivations rooted in both principle and practicality. Beginning in the early 1830s, Hannah Hopkins became increasingly active in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, serving on a committee tasked with visiting meetings in Virginia and another charged with coordinating efforts to unite Orthodox Yearly Meetings across the continent through an annual conference. These roles required extended periods of travel, creating a need for additional help at White’s Hall in Anne Arundel County during her absences. At the same time, her son Joseph J. Hopkins was preparing to marry Elisabeth Schofield, a fellow Friend and representative from Hopewell Meeting in Virginia to Baltimore Yearly Meeting. The couple wed in 1833, and their first child, Lewis Neill Hopkins, was born the following year. (Lewis was later appointed by his uncle to the inaugural board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University.)

The arrival of Minty and Louisa in 1832 thus served a dual purpose: it reflected the family’s alignment with Quaker efforts to assist vulnerable Black families in North Carolina, and it met a growing need for domestic support within the Hopkins household. Their presence offered a practical solution to the demands imposed by Hannah’s religious duties and the expansion of Joseph and Elisabeth’s young family. Quaker records and manumission practices suggest that such arrangements were not unusual. Women like Minty, once relocated, were often placed with sympathetic families where they could live and work freely.

For his part, soon after transferring Minty and Louisa to Maryland, Caleb White joined the growing migration of Friends from North Carolina and Virginia to the free states of the Midwest. In the early 1830s, he led a caravan of Friends and 133 Quaker Free Negroes to Indiana, helping the newly freed Black families establish households in the Hoosier State. Miles White accompanied the caravan and also acted as an agent of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting, collecting funds for this and other emancipationist ventures.

Caleb and his family eventually settled in the town of Raysville, part of a broader Quaker settlement network that had flourished in Wayne County and its surrounding areas since the early 1800s. The region quickly emerged as a stronghold of antislavery reform, Black education, and covert assistance to the Underground Railroad. White became embedded in these efforts, settling among like-minded Friends—including residents such as Levi and Catherine Coffin, who later gained national renown for providing aid to thousands of fugitive slaves. (Catherine's maiden name was White; she may even have been the sister of Isaac H. White, who witnessed Minty's and Louisa's manumission in 1832.)

Caleb White died on May 10, 1860, at the age of 63, and was buried at Raysville Friends Cemetery, not far from the Indiana meetinghouses that had welcomed him decades earlier and among the communities whose freedom he had quietly helped to secure. Miles White died in 1876 in Baltimore and was laid to rest in Green Mount Cemetery, next to his wife Margaret and near the grave of his good friend and fellow Quaker philanthropist, Johns Hopkins.

Conclusion

The 1832 manumission of Minty and Louisa Wells, once regarded by me as a curious detail in the Hopkins family narrative, now emerges as a window into a much larger story. Through careful reconstruction of the historical context and the individuals involved—particularly Caleb White and the North Carolina Yearly Meeting—it becomes clear that the Hopkins family was not only sympathetic to antislavery aims but was actively participating in the broader, multistate network of Quaker emancipationists already in the early 1830s.

This episode also reveals just how complex and fraught the path to freedom for enslaved individuals could be in the antebellum South. Manumission was often obstructed by restrictive laws, unfriendly courts, and hostile enslavers. In response, Quakers employed a wide range of strategies, including holding individuals in legal trust, submitting petitions to state governments, organizing overland migration, appealing to courts, and, when necessary, supporting colonization efforts for those who chose to leave the United States. Their efforts extended not only to the slaves of fellow Friends but to the spouses and children of those under their care, even when that meant aiding enslaved people held by others. What emerges is a portrait of a religious community improvising within an oppressive legal regime—adapting, petitioning, resettling, and risking much in order to live out their testimony against slavery.

That the Hopkins family played a role in this network, and did so as early as 1832, adds a new dimension to their historical legacy. 

Transcribed text starting here: https://transcribedoc.net/mdsa_bc_quaker_records/scm781/html/scm781-0026.html 

“The following Communication was received form the Meeting for Sufferings, held at New Garden, Guilford County, North Carolina, dated 6th of the 11th Month, 1833, viz:

From our Meeting for Sufferings of the Society of Friends, held at New Garden, in Guilford County, North Carolina, 6th of the 11th Mo. 1833:

To the Meeting for Sufferings in Baltimore

Dear Friends,

In adverting to the accounts brought up from the Trustees in the different Quarterly Meetings having care of the People of Colour held by Friends in North Carolina, we find there are about four hundred yet not removed to free Governments.

About the Year 1809 there were several of the people of Colour, the legal Title whereof was vested in individuals. Members of the Yearly Meeting, who could not lawfully set them free, or retain them in bondage, being prohibited from holding them as property not only by the dictates of Conscience, but by an order of Society, this had then been the unpleasant condition for more than thirty Years. During this long term of time, and for six or seven Years after, our Yearly Meeting almost continually remonstrated and petitioned the Legislature for liberty to set these people free, and for them to be protected by Law as freeborn persons are. The Government, instead of granting any relief, have manifested a disposition unfriendly to our Memorials by drawing the cords of Slavery, directing the Fetters closer, and increasing the weight of the Shackles together with a train of evils attendant on systems of oppression, even forbidding by Law their being learnt to read.

The Yearly Meeting, under the advice of learned Law Council, appointed trustees to receive Asssignments of transfer from individuals for the Society in its aggregate capacity, to hold those under friends’ care, so that when Parents departed this Life, that their heirs being some of them disowned, should not claim these People of Colour as their property.

In the Year 1824 the number of Quaker free Negroes (as they are called) amounted to seven or eight hundred, many of whom were connected with Slaves and free Persons of Colour by Marriage. About this time the tide of emigration was up for removing those people of Colour to free governments. We could not separate families and by removing those under Friends’ care, we had to remove many others thus connected. The number removed to free Governments is near nine hundred, at an expense exceeding seventeen thousand Dollars. The tenure by which we hold the People of Color is daily becoming more precarious in so much that the great prejudice excited in the public Mind seemed to have an effect in the Trials of five Law Suits against the Trustees of the Yearly Meeting. Judgments have gone against them for about seven Hundred Dollars on account of having sent fourteen Persons of Colour to free Governments. And about six thousand three hundred Dollars for twenty-seven held in defense Costs over one thousand dollars. Appeals are taken in all to the Supreme Court, some new demands have been made by disowned Heirs, who are waiting the issue of their Suits before they commence others.

All this, added to the unwillingness in the Black People to quit their native Soil and seek repose in a Foreign Clime, seems to place the task of removal beyond our reach with many, yet there are several that express a willingness to leave Carolina if they could stay on this Continent, to cross the Ocean they will not consent. Some of the State Governments have shut their Gate against [the] migration Coloured People into them.

Notwithstanding all the difficulties and troubles we have encountered, we feel very thankful that through divine mercy we have been instrumental in getting so many of our fellow Creatures to remove their habitations to Lands of more congenial Laws and are disposed to acknowledge your sympathy and assistance in this laborious work.

We remain with Love Your Friends and Brethren.

Signed on behalf of the said Meeting by John Stuart, Clerk"