On November 3, 1813, Elizabeth Barton, a "bright mulatto," appeared at the Prince George's County courthouse in Upper Marlboro, Maryland in order to obtain a certificate of freedom in keeping with an 1806 law. The court clerk, John Read Magruder, Jr., recorded that the twenty-year-old Barton was "born free, reputed dau[ghter] of Nancy Barton who recovered her freedom in Prince George's County Court in a freedom suit against Anthony Addison."1 In addition to Elizabeth, other members of her family made visits to the court that were recorded: Elizabeth's mother, Nancy, and her aunt, Eleanor, in April 1813; as well as Elizabeth's siblings: James and William in 1818, Charlotte and Ann in 1819, and Thomas in 1824.2
However, to tell this family's story, I must begin in late seventeenth-century Maryland, when a white indentured servant named Mary Davis married an enslaved black man named Domingo. Their union set the stage for a multi-generational legal struggle across multiple jurisdictions that was shaped by over 150 years of Maryland and national laws, from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries.
This story begins in late seventeenth-century Maryland, when a white indentured servant named Mary Davis married an enslaved black man named Domingo, a union which set the stage for a multi-generational legal struggle across multiple jurisdictions and shaped by over 150 years of Maryland and national laws.
Freedom suits not only tell us how race and slavery worked on a local level, they also help us reconstruct the family histories of enslaved people. Family stories allow us to see change over time in the legal system, as well as in the evolution of racial definitions in early America. Many scholars have discussed the fluid nature of race in early American history.3 Notions of difference were often tied to religion. English people, along with Western Europeans more generally, saw the world as divided between Christians and "heathens," at times even coming close to equating "race" with "religion."4 As the century came to a close, legislators strengthened the institution of slavery and in the process, began to move to a notion of race that would increasingly be based on biology. They began to legally tie race, sex, and labor together in their efforts to regulate sexual relationships between enslaved men and white women.5 As we will see, this had important implications for enslaved people's efforts to obtain their freedom through the courts.
The Davis Generations
Mary Davis, was born in London, England, in the mid-seventeenth century. The exact date is not known, nor is much known about her life in London prior to her arrival in Maryland in the late seventeenth-century. It is believed that her father's name was Richard Davis and she had a brother, John, who lived on Mark Lane in the shadow of the Tower of London. The circumstances of Mary Davis' indenture are uncertain, although a 1779 court deposition asserts that she was brought to Maryland before 1677 as an indentured servant by Charles Calvert, the Third Lord Baltimore and Proprietor of the Province of Maryland. Sometime after her arrival, Davis met and married a black man by the name of Domingo who was enslaved by Joseph Tilley in Calvert County, MD.
Explanation:
