digging up the past
Nelly Crawford was listed in the Benjamin Lee inventory as 33 years old with four living children: Caroline, Louisa, Dennis, and Jerry.
The names of the children with their ages allowed for the identification of Eleanor (Nelly) Crawford’s family in the 1870 Census. The family was living with their father, Dennis Green, near the small mercantile community of Woodmoor. Eleanor is not listed with the family, suggesting she died within the past two years.
This is one post in a series on the children of David and Kizzy Crawford.
John was listed as Kizzy’s son in the 1832 Inventory of James Belt‘s estate. He was four years old when Belt died. Kizzy, his mother, was 27 and she was listed with an unnamed child and John, her son.
In 1863, John (as Jack) and Kizzy were listed in the Inventory of Benjamin Lee’s estate. Lee was the son-in-law of Belt and administered his estate.
In 1870, after emancipation, John was enumerated as living in Queen Anne District along Church Road south of Collington. He is living with his wife, Harriet and four children.
The Jesuit priests of White Marsh, located near Priest’s Bridge in Queen Anne District, left baptismal records, including parent’s names, sponsors and at times, the mother’s enslaver. These help recreate kin groups.
In 1853, the priests of White Marsh recorded the baptism of Louisa Crowford, daughter of John Crowford and Hariot Harrison, his wife, property of Dr. Tayler. Dr. Tayler is likely Dr. Grafton Tyler who owned a large estate near Governor’s Bridge. Her birthday is noted as July 1 1853.
In 1856, Amelia [Amilia] Crawford, daughter of John Crawford and Harriet [Hariot] Harrison was baptized. The mother was marked as property of Richard Bowie. Johanna Harrison sponsored the baptism. As Harriet and Johanna have the same last name, it is likely they are kin, cousins or sisters. Her birthday is marked as April 1856.
In 1859, William H Crawford, son of John and Harriette Crawford, “servants of Charles Hill, Jr.” was baptized.
In each baptism, Harriet Harrison is recorded as the property of three different enslavers: Dr. Grafton Tyler, Richard W. W. Bowie, and Charles C. Hill, all large estate owners in Queen Anne District.
In 1867, Charles C Hill enumerated names on the compensation lists he submitted to the Prince George’s County Commission on Slave Statistics. Harriet and five children were named by Hill:
Amelia Crawford, baptized in 1857, was not named in the 1867 compensation list submitted by Charles C. Hill. It is unclear if she was separated from her family as they were sold to Bowie and Hill, or if she did not survive to adulthood, though she may be the second wife of Henry Tyler.
In 1870, Lucy Crawford married Henry Tyler. Their marriage was performed by “Begue”, i.e., Charles Bague, one of the Jesuit Priests of White Marsh. This shows the marriage was Catholic, in line with the other White Marsh baptisms.
In the 1870 Census, John and Harriet Crawford are enumerated at dwelling number 366. They are listed with four sons: Thomas, James, Edward, Charles. Enumerated immediately after the Crawfords is the household of Henry Tyler at dwelling number 367. He is 21 years old.
Henry’s household does not list Lucy or another female of comparable age. There is Henry Brown, age 55, Lucy Mitchell, age 58 with Henry, age 17, as well as Luke and Milly Tilghman (Tillman).
Lucy Mitchell and Henry were names submitted by Charles C. Hill; Luke and Milly were not submitted. However, the 1826 will of Francis Magruder Hall conveyed “Luke and Milly, his wife and their six children” to Hall’s grandson, Benjamin Young, the son of Notley and Eleanor Young.
In 1880, Henry Tyler is living in Queen Anne District near “T. C. Slingluff”, a landowner who is living near Woodmore along the edge of Queen Anne District. Slingluff had acquired the estate of Fielder Cross.
Henry Tyler is living with “Emma Tyler”. Emma and Amelia are similar sounding names. They are both listed as 30 providing a rough estimated year of 1850.
In 1900, Emma Tyler appears in the census, living in Kent, the neighboring district. She is living with John Tyler, her nephew. Her birthmonth is given as April.
In 1863, the US Federal Government began to actively recruit Black men for the Union Army. In the fall of 1863, the War Department authorized the systematic enlistment of enslaved men in the Border States, including Maryland. General Order 329 promised freedom to the soldier and compensation to slaveholders loyal to the Union. The slaveholders were resistant to the enlistment of what they perceived as their “property”, despite promised compensation.
Barbara Jean Fields wrote in her book Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground that “Full-scale recruitment put an end to slavery in Maryland. Before the war was over some ten thousand Black men served in the Union army and navy. If only half of them were slaves, they would represent well over a third of the slave men aged eighteen to forty-five.”
In October 1864, the War Department organized a round of the Draft and the names were published in the Baltimore Sun. Among those pulled for the Seventh District of Prince George’s County (Queen Anne District) were Samuel and William Crawford, “slave of the estate of Benjamin Lee”.
Not every name was called into service and of the two brothers, William Crawford served. A service record for the 6th regiment of the USCT Infantry, Company H shows that he was born in Prince George’s County, Maryland and was drafted from the 5th Election District (Prince George’s County).. He was enlisted for one year.
The service record describes William Crawford as 28 years old [1836] and of average height at 5 feet 8 1/2 inches. His eyes, hair, and complexion was described as Black. By April 1865, he was ill and marked as “absent sick” in the muster rolls. He was mustered out in Sept 1865 in Wilmington, NC.
For the time that Crawford was enlisted in the 6th regiment, it appears to have been fighting in North Carolina as part of the attacks on Fort Fisher, North Carolina and at Sugar Loaf Hill. In February it took part in the Battle of Wilmington and in March took part in Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign.
In 1870, William Crawford filed for a pension as an invalid. It does not provide a place of residence and Crawford has yet to be identified in the 1870 census.
In the 1863 Inventory of Benjamin Lee‘s estate, Sam, age 24, is listed two names below the name of Davy and Kizzy. No other details are recorded for him. The estate’s appraisers noted that “Owning to the unsafe conditions …. produced by the war” that raged on, they could not provide a market value for the people they commodified, marking only each person as $100, giving no other indication of health or skill. In October 1864, the Civil War Draft called the name of Samuel Crawford, “slave of the estate of Benj Lee”; based on the birth years of his children, he likely did not get called up.
And in 1870, after the Civil War ended and the nation began the slow arduous work of reconstructing an economy based on a strict social hierarchy, Samuel Crawford, age 35, was living between Buena Vista and Mitchellville, two small mercantile communities among the plantations of the “Forest of Prince George’s County.”
Crawford lived near the convergence of Woodmore Road with Mt. Oak Road at Church Road near the estates of Mary Hall and James Mullikin, white landowners who had connections with some of the richest men in Prince George’s County, that derived their wealth from the labor of the enslaved and near Lee’s newly purchased Stewart Farm.
Samuel Crawford is living with his wife, Sophia Crawford, age 30 and their four children, Mary, age 8, William, age 5, Washington, age 3, and Charles age 1. Also living with them is Peter, age 10, not listed chronologically with the other children, suggesting a different relationship than biological.
Through the next three decades, Samuel would labor in the fields of Queen Anne District, renting his farm and providing for his family. He died in October 1906 from chronic gastritis. His son provided the information for the Certificate of Death, naming Sophia as his wife and David Crawford as his father. After his death, Sophia and many of their children migrated north away from Queen Anne District and Prince George’s County to Delaware.
Sophia died a few decades later in 1930. At the beginning of the Great Depression, Sophia Crawford lived in New Castle, Delaware, where she was living with her son, Edward. He gave the name of her parents as Wash. Dorsey and Mary Dorsey of Maryland for the death certificate.
The Evening Journal ran an obituary for her: “Former Slave Dead at Age of 104”
Life as a slave in Maryland, the Civil War and freedom which followed it, were vivid memories of Mrs. Sophie Crawford, who died last evening, at the age of 104 years, at the home of her son, James E. Crawford, 1017 Church Street. She had not been ill, but gradually weakened until she died.
She was born on April 19, 1826 on the estate of the late Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Hall in Prince George county, MD., and spent her life as a slave there. Sophie Dorsey married Joseph Bell when she was eighteen years old. Two sons that marriage, Gabriel Bell of Uniontown, PA., and Peter Bell of Baltimore, still survive her. Joseph Bell was killed in the Civil War. In 1865, she married Samuel Crawford. Eleven children were born to them, six boys and five girls. Of these children, John L. Crawford, Michael C. Crawford, and James E Crawford, all of this city, survive her.
The old colored woman had been reared a Catholic and since coming to Wilmington in 1911, was a member of St. Joseph’s parish. She was very devout and counseled her children to be temperate in all things.
Funeral Services will be held on Monday from her home. Solemn requiem mass will be said in St. Joseph’s Church and internment will be in Cathedral cemetery.
The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, 6 Jun 1930, page 39
The article notes her former enslaver. Mrs. F. M. Hall, or Mary Hall, was part of the Hill family, descendant from the Darnalls and other Catholics connected with the Calvert family, who had shaped much of Maryland’s culture and economy. Mary Hall, the widow of Francis Magruder Hall, had inherited a vast estate not only from her husband, but both of her parents, Clement and Eleanor Hill.
Connected as she was to the wealthy Catholic landowners, she also had connections to the White Marsh Jesuit Plantation near Priest’s Bridge in Queen Anne District along the Patuxent River. The priests of White Marsh baptized many of the Catholics living in Queen Anne District, both the white landowners and those they enslaved. The Jesuits kept records of their baptisms, noting often who enslaved the mother of the baptized child. Due to a fire in 1853, earlier records are incomplete with mostly only those from around 1820 preserved. “White Marsh Book 3” kept the records of the baptisms after 1853 and the fire. Among them, Samuel and Sophia Crawford had four children baptized and their sacrament recorded in the records of the Jesuit Priests.
No record of their marriage has been found.
The four children baptized at White Marsh are the same four children listed in the 1870 census. Another White Marsh record provides clarity for the relationship of Peter, age 10 in the census.
Her obituary notes eleven children for Samuel and Sophia, six boys and five girls. Reviewing the 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910 census, this does not seem to be accurate.
The 1900 census also marked 13 children total which would account for the 3 boys with Joseph Bell (see below) and 10 children from Samuel, with seven children living. The 1910 census also marked 13 children total with 10 children living.
In 1859, three years before the death of Mary Hall, Peter was baptized, the son of Joseph Bell and Sophia Dorsey, illeg.; the baptism was sponsored by William Weldon and the baptism occurred “at Mrs. Hall’s.”
Peter is the step-son of Samuel Crawford and the son of Joseph Bell and Sophia Dorsey. While marriage was not legally recognized by the state between enslaved people, and while slaveholders did not often recognize the rights of those partnered, the records of White Marsh show that Mrs. Hall had permitted and perhaps even encouraged a Catholic blessing for the unions of those enslaved by herself and her neighboring Catholic slaveholders. This suggests that the union between Joseph and Sophia Dorsey was not one sanctioned by Mary Hall or the other white slaveholders, though Sophia viewed it as a legitimate partnership.
Another record, in 1858, records the baptism of Gabriel, son of Sophey “of Mrs. Hall’s”. No father was listed. In 1880, there is a Gabriel Beall living in Queen Anne District who was estimated to have been born in 1858.
In Mary Hall’s 1861 Inventory, Sophy, age 24, is listed with her parents, Dorsey, 45, and Mary 40, and their family group is listed with Peter, age 1, and Gabriel, age 3. There is also a Michael age 5, suggesting that Sophy may have had another son, named Michael. She would later name another of her sons with Samuel Crawford, Michael.
Joseph Bell was enumerated by Geo. A. Mitchell in the 1867 Compensation Lists submitted to the Prince George’s Commission on Slave Statistics. Mitchell owned land on the east side of Collington Branch near the Mullikin’s and Halls. In the 1870 census, Mitchell was marked as a Merchant and Farmer and it is his name that was given to the community that grew after the war with the establishment of the railroad nearby. The article notes he was killed in the Civil War; a service record has yet to be located for him.
Davy and Kizzy were listed about two-thirds of the way through the 1863 Inventory of Benjamin Lee’s estate. Davy, age 63, and Kizzy, age 58, were among the oldest listed in the inventory. Listed with them were several adults: Jack, age 36, Sam, age 24, Billy, age 21, and Nelly, age 33 and then what appears to be Nelly’s children, and likely Davy and Kizzy’s grandchildren.
In 1870, “Danl” Crawford and Kizzie Crawford were enumerated in Queen Anne District of Prince George’s County, living in the household of Delaney and Lucy Brown. They are living in close proximity to the white landowner Jeremiah Duckett, who lived outside the village of Woodmore, and near the estates of Northhampton (Sprigg) and Oak Hill (Lee). They do not appear to be living during the 1880 census.
Benjamin Lee, their enslaver prior to Lee’s death in 1863 and emancipation in 1864, was from Anne Arundel County, the son of Stephen Lee who owned land in and around South River. His father had remarried and the bulk of his father’s estate had gone to Lee’s half-siblings upon his father’s death in 1833. In the previous decade, Lee had married Eleanor Lansdale Belt, the daughter of Captain James Belt, a merchant in Prince George’s County, in 1824.
James Belt died in 1832, and Benjamin Lee and his brother-in-law, Marsham Waring served as administrators of the estate. On the 1832 Inventory of Belt’s estate, the name Kizzy, age 27, is listed along with John, Kizzy’s son, age 4. Davy Crawford does not appear on the inventory list with any variation of the name David, suggesting that Lee acquired the legal authority to enslave Davy from a different person than James Belt.
John, listed on the James Belt 1832 Inventory, is likely Jack of the Benjamin Lee 1863 Inventory. Young John, on the Belt Inventory, was 4 years old, allowing an estimated birth year of 1829. Jack, of the Lee Inventory was 36, giving him an estimated birth year of 1831, only two years later. Jack is a diminutive form of John.
The death certificate of Mary Anna Stewart was located. Mary Anna Stewart, Robert Stewart’s wife died in 1903 and her death certificate was informed by her sister, Lucy Brown. Lucy reported their parents as David Crawford and Ida Jackson.
Both Anna and Lucy are listed in the 1863 Benjamin Lee Inventory below David (Davy) Crawford and Keziah (Kizzy). Anna was twenty and Lucy were 18. They were not immediately identified as children of David and Keziah as there were other children and grand-children listed between them and David. However, it also allows for the identification of other possible children.
It also shows the connection between the Crawfords and the 1870 household of Delaney Brown, whose wife was Lucy Brown.
stories of Then 