Manumissions

Maryland Western Shore Manumission Deed Database, 1775-1785 (by deed). Click "Link" column to see deed details and PDFs.

Introduction

Maryland was unique among the slave states of the antebellum American South by virtue of its relatively large free Black population. Scholars have typically advanced economic arguments to explain this anomaly, positing that the shift from labor-intensive tobacco production to less labor-intensive grain production generated a surplus of enslaved laborers who were subsequently emancipated. But this explanation presents a puzzle. Why would profit-motivated planters choose to free their enslaved workers, a process called manumission, when they could easily recover their capital by selling them, either privately or on the open market? And where is the evidence that Maryland planters chose manumission over remuneration? 

This project departs from economic explanations of Maryland's large free Black population. Our study of late-18th century freedom deeds suggests that private manumissions undertaken for moral and religious reasons, specifically in response to the 1778 Quaker edict forbidding slave ownership and the early Methodist antislavery movement, were at least as important, and possibly more, as those undertaken for socio-political reasons. To support this claim, we collected and examined 100 freedom deeds filed in county courts between 1775 and 1785 on Maryland's Western Shore. Although preliminary, the results we present above and below favor the religious thesis over the surplus labor thesis during the ten-year period under examination.

Project Results - So Far

This page provides data and information regarding 100 private manumission deeds recorded in Maryland during the eighteenth century, including the names of 618 people manumitted as a result of these legal contracts between the years 1775 and 1785 in five Maryland counties: Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford, Montgomery and Prince George's.*

Quakers** were responsible for the majority of the manumissions we collected (58%), and this research shows how Quakers and others structured their manumissions to respond directly to the 1752 Act to Prevent Disabled and Superannuated Slaves Being Set Free. This statute criminalized most manumissions by last will and testament, meaning that between 1752 and 1790, freedom deeds, in the guise of property contracts, were the primary legal mechanism for liberating enslaved people in the colony. 

It is important to note that manumission did not always result in immediate freedom for the enslaved people named in these deeds. In fact, of the 618 individual manumissions recorded in the spreadsheet below, by Quakers, Methodists and others, 59% were delayed. In other words, only two-fifths of the individuals affected by these deeds were granted freedom immediately. For the remaining three-fifths, many of them children, freedom was promised but delayed. Although ages vary, females were typically released at 18 years of age and males at 21. Delayed manumission was thus the norm not the exception, just as gradual emancipation was the norm among the northern states that outlawed slavery following the Revolutionary War.

Freedom deeds were also sometimes contested, most frequently by heirs and creditors. Although we have encountered no evidence of this occurring among the 100 deeds in our sample, it is likely that some of the individuals manumitted by these contracts never experienced freedom. Maryland courts could, for example, order an entire deed null and void or deem the manumission of a single individual illegitimate. In some cases, judgments ordered the sale of enslaved but not-yet-free people. In fact, until a person achieved legal freedom, he or she could be sold, transferred or bequeathed to another owner for the remainder of their term of enslavement.

In our sample of 100 deeds, the largest was filed in 1780 by Samuel Snowden and manumitted 71 people, about half immediately and the other half after further terms of service (women were freed at 18 and men at 21). Snowden, a Quaker, was part owner of the Patuxent Iron Works. Due to the gradual nature of this freedom deed, enslaved people continued to labor at the iron works and on the Snowden family farms in Prince George's County into the early years of the 19th century.

The Hopkins clan of Anne Arundel County, all Quakers, together manumitted more people than any other family during this period: 87. The largest of these deeds was recorded in 1778 by Johns Hopkins, the grandfather of the founder of the university and hospital, manumitting 9 people immediately and 33 others at the ages of 21 (women) or 25 (men). The future offspring of the women named in this deed would also be free, which was a standard feature of Quaker freedom deeds from this period.

But it wasn't just Quakers who were emancipating enslaved people during the Revolutionary era. Methodists based in Baltimore and Harford Counties accounted for 9% of the total manumissions we collected for this project. The wealthy Methodist planter and preacher Harry Dorsey Gough of Harford County, for instance, manumitted 45 people  in 1780. Gough was influenced by Francis Asbury (1745 – 1816), the first bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and a fierce critic of slavery. Later, Gough would return to slaveholding, dying with around 50 enslaved people recorded as part of his estate.

Manumission was rare during the 18th century, but it was more commonly undertaken in Maryland than in most other southern colonies. Not only did the Upper Chesapeake region include a large Quaker population, the laws of the province (and state after 1788) made manumission relatively easy to carry out. In neighboring Virginia, by contrast, private manumission was almost entirely illegal except by direct appeal to the governor based on the "meritorious conduct" of the enslaved person. Only in 1782 did Virginia make private manumission by deed legal and with greater restrictions than those imposed in Maryland. In other states, like North Carolina, manumission was legal but required the posting of a cash bond for each person emancipated. 

Consequently, manumission was one of the most important pathways to freedom for enslaved people in antebellum Maryland, alongside flight, freedom suits, and self-purchase. Manumission contributed significantly to the growth of the free Black population in Maryland, especially in Baltimore, to the creation of a wide range of African American religious and civic organizations, and to the establishment of many free Black towns and settlements throughout the state.

Please note that this is an ongoing research project, and this page will be regularly updated. We welcome your feedback at houseofhopkins@jhu.edu and will share additional findings as the results become available. To learn more about manumission in Maryland, consult T. Stephen Whitman, Challenging Slavery in the Chesapeake: Black and White Resistance to Human Bondage, 1775-1865, Maryland Historical Society, 2007.

Relevant Manumission Laws in Maryland

1752 - An Act to prevent disabled and superannuated Slaves being set free, or the Manumission of Slaves by any last Will or Testament. This act made it illegal for slaveowners to liberate disabled or elderly slaves (50 years of age or older) as well as to free their slaves in their wills. Manumission by property deed, however, was permitted. The law was predicated on the claim that "sundry Persons of this Province have set disabled and superannuated Slaves free who have either perished through Want, or otherwise become a Burthen to others."

1790 - The General Assembly voted to permit the manumission of slaves by last will and testament, based on a petition submitted by Quakers. The statute repealed the 1752 act prohibiting manumission by will and also punished masters who failed to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter for slaves too old or infirm to be lawfully freed. 

1796 - An Act relating to negroes, and to repeal the acts of assembly therein mentioned. This act, a major piece of legislation, denied free Black citizens the right to vote, to serve in public office, and to give evidence against a white person or in any freedom suit. And going forward, freedom suits could only be filed in county courts, reducing the likelihood of success for the enslaved petitioner. Another section of the new law lowered the age of legal manumission to 45.

1809 - An act to ascertain and declare the condition of such issue as may here-after be born of Negro and Mulatto Female slaves, during their servitude for years, and for other purposes therein mentioned. This act declared that, going forward, all instruments of manumission, whether by will or deed, must indicate the status of the children of freed slaves. If not explicitly stated, the child would be judged a slave. 

Spreadsheet of Individuals Manumitted by Freedom Deed on Maryland's Western Shore, 1775 to 1785 (N=618)

Additional Data and Resources

Click this link to view an interactive map of the counties included in this dataset: Interactive Map

The freedom deeds collected for this project can be viewed using the links in the deed database displayed above.

*Data and deeds collected by four research assistants Hardy Williams '24, Bailey Pasternak '25, Lydia Wan '25 and Qingxi Wang '26, student researchers at JHU working under my supervision. The deeds were accessed using the Maryland State Archive's land record database at https://mdlandrec.net/main/. We wish to thank Ed Papenfuse for his assistance with this research.

**Manumitters were coded "Methodist" or "Quaker" only if we had other independent evidence that the person filing the deed was a member of the Methodist Church or Society of Friends, such as the forms recorded in Quaker meeting books as shown below. Future research will help determine the religious affiliations of those code "undetermined" at this time.