| Notes |
- “There a young enslaved man named Jim Pembroke was growing up during the years that Fountain Rock flourished. Jim Pembroke eventually escaped from slavery, changed his name to James W.C. Pennington, and became a well known abolitionist. His memoirs, published in 1849 under the title The Fugitive Blacksmith, paint a vivid and detailed picture of what enslaved people experienced in the vicinity of Fountain Rock, including family life, food, clothing, work, master-slave relations, and slave resistance; anyone interested in knowing about slavery in the Fountain Rock neighborhood should read this short book.9” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 4](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=4&annotation=7NKCMGCY))
“Pennington described in detail the brutality of his own master, Frisby Tilghman, but writes that Tilghman was not “one of the most cruel masters.”10 Presumably Pennington was comparing Tilghman to other slaveholders in the neighborhood, and interestingly he did have something to say about Samuel Ringgold: One of the wealthiest slaveholders in the county, was General R., a brother-in law to my master. This man owned a large and highly valuable tract of land, called R.’s Manor. I do not know how many slaves he owned, but the number was large.... Slaves have a superstitious dread of passing the dilapidated dwelling of a man who has been guilty of great cruelties to his slaves, and who is dead, or moved away. I never felt this dread deeply but once, and that was one Sabbath about sunset, as I crossed the yard of General R.’s residence, which was about two miles from us, after he had been compelled to leave it.11” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 4](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=4&annotation=JZ6HNL63))
“Maryland Register of Wills Records 1629-1999, FamilySearch.org, Washington County Records, Will Book B, p. 98.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 4](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=4&annotation=4LEUFG5T))
“James W.C. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith, or, Events in the History of James W.C. Pennington... (London, 1849). 10 Pennington, 9. 11 Pennington, 69-70. Pennington wrote more about the “R.” family, including details that confirm they were the Ringgolds, but he recorded no other information about their slaveholding.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 4](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=4&annotation=IIXNUJD8))
“Pennington also wrote about the presence of native Africans in the slave community at Rockland, and about his own African heritage. Because the time period of Fountain Rock (17921825) overlapped with the final years of the legal African slave trade (which officially ended in 1807), we can be sure that people born in Africa lived at Fountain Rock, and that stories of Africa were told around the fires and hearths of the slave quarter there.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 5](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=5&annotation=N7N9YRRI))
“The Rev. Russell Trevett, professor of classics, owned three people in 1850: a 50-year-old woman, a 20-year-old woman, and a seven-year-old girl. Kerfoot held an enslaved family in circumstances that will be described below.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 9](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=9&annotation=TFBWVTTZ))
“Slaves lived on many neighboring farms, such as the six people enslaved in 1850 by John W. Breathed, a strong friend and supporter of the College.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 9](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=9&annotation=TGWUBMWJ))
“The Brooks Family / Catharine Peeker In 1843, the Rev. John Kerfoot, headmaster of the College, purchased an eslaved woman named Catharine (“Kitty”) Brooks and her young daughter, Eliza Robison, paying $425 for the two of them.26 His intent from the beginning (“my original design”), he later wrote, was to free them both when their purchase price had been paid off by their labor. Kerfoot kept a record of Kitty’s earnings-perhaps from being hired out-and manumitted her in 1848, five years after he bought her. In the meantime, Kitty seems to have married Samuel Brooks, and while she was enslaved by Kerfoot she and Samuel had three children (Caroline Virginia, Joanna, and Mary), all of whom Kerfoot freed with her, making no financial claim to them. (Legally, children borne by an enslaved woman were the property of her enslaver.) But Kitty’s labor had not, by Kerfoot’s calculations, cleared the entire debt she owed for the purchase price plus interest. Kerfoot was still $132 in the red for the transaction, so he “retained” Kitty’s eldest daughter, twelve-year-old Eliza Robison, with the avowed intent of freeing her at some future date; he also stated that Robison “requires such care as I do not expect she would receive from her own family.” Four years later (in 1851) he sold Robison for $125 for” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 10](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=10&annotation=Q4GQY4FQ))
“a term of sixteen more years of slavery, and in 1852 he formalized a deed of delayed manumission for her.27” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 11](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=11&annotation=BRQAPA3R))
“Another version of Kitty Brooks’ story may be an anecdote included by the Rev. Thomas Henry (a local A.M.E. preacher) in his autobiography. Henry wrote that a woman named Catharine Peeker was being held in the Hagerstown jail awaiting sale to the south. Rev. Henry was present when a “gentleman” contacted Catharine’s mother, Deborah Peeker, to inquire about her family’s plight, “brought” Catharine Peeker out of jail, and then purchased Catharine’s young daughter as well. This gentleman “took them both down to St. James’ College ... and in less than three years they were both free.”28 I have been unable to find records of any women named Peeker being enslaved, bought, sold, or freed in Washington County, or any records at all of a Catharine Peeker. But if Catharine Peeker was the same woman as Catharine “Kitty” Brooks, the the two stories dovetail fairly well. There are some discrepancies between the version in Henry’s memoirs, written decades later, and the Brooks documents that were written contemporaneously with the events they recorded.29 But the matching or very similar elements of the stories are strong: in the 1840s, an enslaved woman named Catharine and her young daughter were purchased by a white man connected with the College of St. James, for the purpose of” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 11](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=11&annotation=B74G3X5T))
“rescuing them from slavery and/or sale to the south; not many years later the woman was free, and in less than a decade the daughter had received a deed of manumission. Indeed, it seems unlikely that two such episodes occurred. Thus we probably have two accounts of this event, one from Kerfoot and one from Henry. Rev. Henry’s account implicitly raises the possibility that he, a black A.M.E. preacher, reached out to Rev. Kerfoot, a white Episcopal priest, for help in preventing an enslaved mother from being sold south.30 It suggests that Kerfoot was known in the local black community as someone who was sympathetic to enslaved people and might be willing to invest money in helping them toward freedom. Such an interpretation further complicates the story of race and slavery at St. James.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 12](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=12&annotation=C4P8SXNB))
“Washington County Circuit Court (Land Records) 1858-1859, IN 13, pp. 298-300, MSA CE 18-18 (online); this unusual document is the basis for much of what I say here about the Brooks family and Kerfoot.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 10](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=10&annotation=N8LV3969))
“Washington County Circuit Court (Land Records) 1852-1853, IN 7, p. 90, MSA CE 18-2, and IN 10, pp. 163-4, MSA 18-5 (online); originals at Washington County Historical Society, Hagerstown, [slave] documents nos. D25 and BS201. No more is recorded of Robison’s legal situation, but in 1860 she and her four-year-old son were living with Kitty and Samuel Brooks, and she died in 1864; U.S. Census, Washington County, MD, for 1850, 1860, and 1870; and Samuel W. Piper, Washington County, Maryland, Cemetery Records, vol. VI, p. 31 [59] (entries for Ebenezer A.M.E. Church). 28 Henry, From Slavery to Salvation, 43. 29 Kerfoot purchased Brooks and Robison from Richard Tilghman Holliday, by “lifting” a debt for $425 in the Hagerstown Bank; R.T. Halliday in turn had bought them from a William Holliday; Land Records, Liber YY, p. 834. Rev. Henry stated that Catharine Peeker had been “sold to a gentleman named Jonathan Hager. He found her to be crippled in one hand, and returned her to jail again.” This may by a faulty memory on Henry’s part, or it may mean that one of the Hallidays had tried to sell Catharine to Hager but the sale had failed. In another discrepancy, Henry described the young daughter as thirteen years old and “living with Alexander Neale,” whereas Eliza Robison was about seven years old when Kerfoot bought her, and the sale documents make no mention of Neale. Again, the age could be a mistake on Henry’s part, and the daughter could have been hired out to Neale, not owned by him.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 11](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=11&annotation=9I2ZS5WE))
“30 I owe the suggestion to Jean Libby, who makes it in her commentary on Henry’s text; Henry, From Slavery to Salvation, 99. 31 Maryland State Archives, C2838-2; for Green’s name see Kerfoot’s letter.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 12](zotero://select/groups/4761904/items/3UJ2VNS8)) ([pdf](zotero://open-pdf/groups/4761904/items/6FVKPVB2?page=12&annotation=Q8T9T8N2))
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