James Moody (b. circa ? - d. circa ?)
MSA SC 5496-002692
Escaped from Slavery, Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Biography:
In 1851, Edward Bryan (son of the late Valentine Bryan) sold the fugitive slave James Moody to L. McFarlan of Boston, Massachusetts.1 According to the bill of sale, Moody had escaped from Edward's brother, the late Charles J. Bryan, and fled to Canada. When Charles J. Bryan died in 1850, the inventory of his estate had listed a slave named Jim, age thirty-six, who may have been James Moody.2 The bill prohibited Moody from traveling south of the free states. However, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law would have made travel even in the free states dangerous for Moody.
L. McFarland may have been the same one who appeared in the 1860 census
in Boston's Ward 11. Born in Massachusetts around 1825, McFarland worked
as a physician, and owned $3,000 in personal property.3 Massachusetts
had abolished slavery in their 1780 constitution.4
1. QUEEN ANNE'S COUNTY COURT (Land Records) Liber JT 6, Folio 379 [MSA CE 143-42]. Edward Bryan to L. (S.?) McFarlan, August 7, 1851.
2. QUEEN ANNE'S COUNTY REGISTER OF WILLS (Inventories) Liber LR 2, Folio 482 [MSA C1412-34]. Estate of Charles J. Bryan, November 4, 1850.
3. 1860 U.S. Federal Census Record (MS) for L. McFarland, Boston, Ward 11, Page 263, Line 22. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Ancestry.com.
4. Jack T. Haley, Afro-American
Encyclopaedia (Nashville, TN: Haley & Florida, 1895) 359.
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