Edmund B. Duval (b. 1826 - d. 1878)
MSA SC 5496-2782
Slave Owner, Prince George's County, Maryland
Biography:
Edmund Brice DuVal was a slave owner in Prince George’s County during the antebellum period. He was born at Marietta, the DuVal family estate in Glen Dale, on March 20, 1826 to Captain Edmund Bryce and Augusta DuVal. Captain DuVal died in Philadelphia on February 5, 1831, when Edmund II was nearly five years old and before his youngest sister, Gabriella, was born. Augusta died a year later on October 7, 1832, orphaning the DuVal children. John Southgate of Norfolk, Virginia became the guardian of Edmund’s sisters. Edmund and his older brother Marcus were sent to live with their paternal grandfather, Judge Gabriel Duvall, a United States Supreme Court Justice. In 1834, Gabriel’s wife and Edmund’s grandmother, Jane Gibbon Duvall, died. When Gabriel Duvall died in 1844, Edmund inherited Marietta and three hundred twenty-five acres of land surrounding the home. George Washington Duvall, Gabriel’s first cousin, was named Edmund and Marcus’ guardian until they became of age. George Duvall was a lawyer, which partially explain why Gabriel handed over his grandsons, and by extension, his property to someone who he trusted with legal issues instead of a closer relative.
In 1848, DuVal married Caroline Donaldson Lansdale of Bloomsbury, Harford County. Edmund and Caroline had eleven children, Lansdale (born in 1847), Chatham (1848), Catherine (1849), Augusta Caroline (1850), Gabriel (1852), Edmund (1856), Gabriella (1858), Maria (Feb. 1860), Cornelia (1860), William Moylan (1862), and Mary Frances (1866). All of the DuVal children except Chatham survived into adulthood. Lansdale died in 1873, leaving Gabriel DuVal the eldest son and inheritor of Marietta.
The 1850 census lists DuVal’s real estate value at eighteen thousand dollars. According to the slave schedule of that year, he owned twenty-two slaves. In 1860, his real estate was worth nineteen thousand dollars and his personal estate was worth twenty-four thousand eight hundred and eighty-five dollars. By 1860, he owned nineteen slaves.
DuVal advertised the disappearance of his slave, Randolph Jackson, on three separate occasions. Jackson, a carriage driver, escaped from DuVal in July of 1853, August of 1855, and August of 1857. As a driver, he knew many of the roads in the area and could have avoided capture than most slaves who never left the plantation. Although he was obviously recaptured after his 1853 and 1855 escapes, there is no indication that Jackson was recovered after his 1857 escape. The slave schedule from 1860 does not list a male of Jackson’s age, suggest that the persistent carriage driver had finally found freedom for good.
Edmund B. DuVal died on May 23, 1878. His wife, Caroline, died on December 26, 1890. There are stained glass windows dedicated in memorial to Edmund, Caroline, and their children hanging at Holy Trinity Church in Collington. Marietta is a national historic site and the home of the Prince George’s Historical Society.
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