Tag Archives: black-history

The “Contrasting Dye” of Family

So, I was lying on the table as a tech got me ready for a CT Scan, and asking questions. He confirmed what I had assumed: that the intravenous contrasting dye goes everywhere your circulatory system goes. How the results are read depends on what the radiologist looks for, which in turn depends on what the doctor asked for. If he needs information about your kidneys, the report won’t mention your lungs.

This got me thinking about genealogy and family research–the question of “what’s there” vs. “what we’re looking for.” Some people inject “Magruder” into archival records, into a community, into the body politic, to find illustrious connections. I get a small but steady trickle of messages from people interested in royal descent, for example, which doesn’t interest me at all. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some just want to identify a great-grandmother. Sometimes I can help with that, not always.

When I started my Magruder book project I wanted to see what an injection of “Magruder” would show about my family’s involvement in slavery. As neither family trees nor archival records have a natural boundary like that of a single human body, I decided my circulatory system would be limited to Maryland and D.C., with occasional excursions to Virginia.

Within that body of evidence, I would look at two questions.

First, would I find that my relatives and other Magruder descendants had taken part in every aspect of the pernicious institution, from manumissions to slave trading?

Some answers so far:

Claims by descendants (including my grandmother) that an ancestor “freed his slaves” far outnumber manumissions that are visible in the records. The 19th century requirement that free blacks in Maryland carry papers proving their status means that, at least within the time span of that law, the answer is not ambiguous. (My great-great-grandfather, it turns out, was living in D.C. at the time in question, so I am still researching his story.)

And, so far, I have found just one man who (according to one of his half-siblings) signed on as driver for a slave trader trafficking people to the Deep South. Magruders did do business with slave traders, however, both buying and selling human beings. More than a million people were trafficked from the Upper South to the Deep South between 1808 and Emancipation, including a substantial percentage of people enslaved in Maryland and Virginia, and the sale of healthy, young workers was lucrative. Magruders did not stand apart from this reality. In a few cases, Magruders who advertised people for sale (in between ads for hay, cattle, furniture, and shoes) took steps to ensure that they could not be removed from the state.

Second, would my search paths illuminate the lives of any of the thousands of people who were enslaved by Magruders and descendants, from the 1660s to the 1860s?

The answer so far:

A few. The best resources are the so-called Slave Statistics compiled from 1864 (date of Maryland Emancipation) to 1869. These are the affidavits sworn by enslavers who hoped that either the state or the Federal government would compensate them for the loss of their captive laborers. Filing required a second affidavit affirming that the filer had remained true to the Union and not supported the rebellion–which, of course, many could not or would not swear to. The whole process was voluntary and aspirational–compensation did not materialize–so the record is partial, but the affidavits provide each enslaved person’s first and last name and age. This is a tremendous head-start for descendants who are researching their family trees–full name, approximate age, and last enslaver. In some cases, family groupings are clear. Once those relationships have been established, the next question is: how do we get to the next generation back?

A large part of my research in the last ten years has focused on helping with that question by connecting the Slave Statistics for Prince George’s County to the probate, land, and tax records of enslavers. In some cases I have been able to assemble known or likely family lines and siblings by tracing them through several generations of white family records. I have posted about this before and will do so again. In my book, I sometimes pause the narrative to provide explicit information about “Following the Lines” of these families.

And then, of course, I am too curious for my own good.

People, places, events…things surface in my reading that I just have to learn more about. Rabbit holes turn into tunnels. Or should I say that what I thought was a capillary turns out to be an artery.

Which is how the Civil War / Emancipation era came to dominate my research for the last…well, it might be three years. Working title for that section of the book: “When Everything Happened.”

So, it’s time to share. Starting now, I will try to post at least once a week about something in my research. I’m starting with Civil War soldiers–both Yanks and Rebs, most white, two black–whose lives I never would have known about had they not been illuminated by the “contrasting dye” of Magruder descent.

Adding one more person known to have been enslaved by Magruder descendant Walter W. W. Bowie

For those researching family among people declared by “Three W’s” Bowie in Maryland’s 1867 Slave Statistics, here is another record–and another surname–to consider. It surfaces just over the line in Washington, D.C.

Those enslaved in the District of Columbia were emancipated by the Compensated Emancipation Act of 16 April 1862. All slaves were freed immediately and slave holders had 90 days to file a petition for compensation. The website Civil War Washington has transcribed and indexed those petitions, with images of the original documents attached. When I posted about this, several years ago, I emphasized that because both owners and the enslaved frequently moved back and forth across state lines, this source should be searched for those with Maryland or Virginia roots…and here is a good example.

In 1862 one of those petitioning for compensation was a black man named Gabriel Coakley (or Cokely). Coakley had previously purchased the freedom of his future wife, Mary Calloway, and another woman, possibly his sister, Ann M. Coakley. Ann was purchased from John Larcum (or Larcombe) of Washington, D.C., in 1857, for the sum of $1. Mary Calloway was purchased in 1850 from Walter W. W. Bowie, of Prince George’s County. Petition of Gabriel Coakley

Like many before him, Gabriel Coakley’s earnings were devoted to freeing family members–an expensive but effective form of bootstrapping by which some families reached freedom. Those purchased were usually manumitted–often immediately–but ownership could also provide protection, especially in Washington, where the kidnapping of free blacks was terrifyingly frequent. Should a loved one need rescuing, proving ownership could be easier and more effective than proving freedom.

From Bowie’s deed to Coakley, it looks like Gabriel required help to get up the $350 he needed to free the woman he wished to marry, and thus protect their future children from being born into slavery. The deed mentions “current money to me in hand paid” as well as promissory notes from Gabriel Cokely and two other men. Gabriel discharged his debt to those men just one year prior to D.C. Emancipation.

More helpful to genealogists is that Bowie’s deed identifies Mary Calloway as “the same servant girl who belonged heretofore to Mary Weems late of Prince George’s County Maryland.” Mary Hall Weems was Bowie’s grandmother, through his mother Amelia Hall Weems, who married Walter Bowie.

Mary Weems wrote her will in 1840, but lived until 1849, with the inventory completed in 1850, the year Bowie agreed to sell Mary to Gabriel Coakley. The will names only a few enslaved people, and does not mention Mary Calloway, but she shows up on the estate inventory as Mary, age 21, valued at $500. From this we learn that though Bowie was not willing to free Mary for a token sum like $1, he did agree to let her go at a bargain price. What was his relationship with Coakley? I don’t know, but investigating that question might lead to more webs of family.

For Mary Calloway’s antecedents, you can take a deep dive into Mary Weems’ will and probate records, and then through her family. Vertically, her parents were Richard Bennett Hall and Margaret Magruder. Laterally, her brothers were Francis Magruder Hall and Richard Lowe Hall. You can start on my page, An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, where you will find links to key probate records and further info on how some of the enslaved were moved around among the white families–not always in ways you could predict.

By 1862, Mary and Gabriel Coakley had six children, from eleven down to one-and-a-half. Because Gabriel had never manumitted Mary, the children too were slaves in the eyes of the law. His petition for compensation thus included eight people–Mary, Ann, and all the kids–for a total of $3,300. In the formulaic language of the petitions, he describes their roles in the family.

  • Ann M. is an excellent nurse and chambermaid and at this time hired by Dr J C Riley of this city at $8 per month in his family. She is a moral, and a well behaved servant, stout & healthy.
  • Mary does all my cooking washing and ironing together with all my house-work [and is] moral industrious and temperate.
  • Mary Ann [eleven years-old] is a good childs nurse and is employed in my family.
  • All the rest of the above named servants are living in my family and I know of no moral, mental or bodily defect in either of them to depreciate their value.

Few petitioners received the full amount they requested–Congress had budgeted a million dollars, and commissioners had to parcel that out amongst claimants–so we should not assume that Gabriel got anything like $3,300. Even so, whatever sum he received can be looked at, however ironically, as a form of reparation.

Which is where this story began, for me, with an episode of Trymaine Lee’s podcast, Into America, “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” in which he and family members explore what Mary and Gabriel Coakley’s descendants have accomplished, and continue to accomplish, through “the legacy of service and Black Liberation.”

Most emancipated people started with nothing, so it didn’t take much to get a leg up. Be it capital, literacy, or land, a family that received something–anything–got a running start at freedom. Lee’s podcast helps us imagine what might have been, had all freed slaves received…anything at all. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Most former slaves in D.C. left their enslavers immediately, and by 1870 70% of those emancipated had left the city. So even if your family has no known connection to D.C., I urge you to take the time to search these petitions. They are cross-indexed, with names of both enslavers and enslaved, and supporting documents are attached. In addition, each petitioner had to explain how they came into possession of each person–a researcher’s goldmine.