Doradie Stewart and Rebecca Caroline Deville

This blog post is one of a series that explores the lives of the people enslaved by the Sasscer family, who lived south of Upper Marlboro in Prince George’s County, MD. The primary estate for the family was named Pleasant Hills and additional posts about the people can be found under the category “Pleasant Hills”.

The third son of Dora Stewart has an unusual name. In some documents its recorded as Dorothy, others Dortha, some Doradie, and others yet Dougherty. None of the documents are consistent with their spelling, leaving the imagination to consider the possibilities.

In the 1867 Slave Statistics, Sasscer submitted the name Dorothy and listed the gender as female. The 1870 census listed the name as Dorothy, and again, the gender as female. In the 1870 marriage license, it records Dorothy Stewart marrying Caroline Deville. The 1880 census lists him as a male named Dority.

In 1868, his name is recorded as Doradie in a correspondence between the Marlboro Field Office and the District of Columbia Headquarters of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In this letter, “sundry names of Freedmen” were submitted as informants about a man posing as a agent and demanding money from them. The men, Doradie Stewart, John Galloway, John Henry Stewart, and Washington Galloway, are brothers and brothers-in-law. The letter lists their residence as on Zed. Sasscer’s farm two miles northwest of Marlboro. It can be inferred from the letter that one of them or an acquaintance of theirs sold their hogs to meet the demand of the spurious agent. “My informers threatened him with me, that they would inform me immediately” suggests that the family were aware of the Bureau and its work in the community.

In 1880, Doradie and his family are still living near his brothers and brothers-in-law, next door to Washington Galloway, and working as a tenant farmer on the Sasscer land.