The 1860 inventory of Marsham Waring’s estate lists a Patrick Stewart, age 35. Two years later, James Waring, Marsham’s son and heir, signs out an affidavit seeking the return of Patrick Stewart, along with other enslaved people who had fled to the District in 1862 seeking freedom. Five years later, Elizabeth L. Bowie, Marsham’s daughter and heir, claims Patrick Stewart on the compensation list submitted to the Prince George’s Commission on Slave Statistics in 1867. Jumping back 34 years to 1833, the Prince George’s County Personal Property Assessment for 1833 listed the names of people enslaved and assessed with their external market value based on age ranges. Patrick was listed for Marsham Waring, assessed at $250, allowing us to identify his age bracket as 10-15 years old.
Locating Patrick Stewart after emancipation is difficult as Patrick was a name repeatedly used by different branches of the Stewart Family Group and census enumerators often used estimated ages for Black freedmen who may or may not have known their birthday or birth year.
The purpose of this post and other related posts is to clarify and identify the various individuals named Patrick Stewart living in the District of Columbia and Prince George’s County after the Civil War, and to hopefully identify their relationships to each other and the larger Stewart Family Groups and the Patrick Stewart of Waring’s Inventory.
stories of Then 