Geo. E. Dixon
MSA SC 5496-016167
Property owner, Prince George's County, Maryland,
Biography:
A Justice of the Peace of the State of Maryland for Prince Georges
County, George Dixon was a land and slaveowner who was located in the Piscataway
Parish area of the Martinet Map. As with all our subjects, the first step
in our researchmethodology was to track Dixon through the 1850, 1860 and
1870 US Census records, MSA SM61, and his slave property through the 1850
and 1860 Slave Schedules. Listed as a Farmer, Dixon's census returns reveal
that although his personal and real estate value grew and fell substantially
from approximately $660 in 1850 to over $7,000 in 1860 and back down to
$600 in 1870, his slave ownership remained at 3; apparently populated
with the same single female and two males he owned in 1850.
To more closely scrutinize the marked change in Dixon's wealth, staff utilized PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records, Index), MSA CE22 (1840-1884), available in MdLandrec.net and the PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS (Assessment Record) MSA C1164 (1861 - 1871). Eight transactions were found in the land records of which two were bond aggreements with the State of Maryland and 4 were with family members. This suggested that however much Dixon was personally building and divesting himself of his holdings, he was primarily doing so with family. The sole land record regarding George E. Dixon between these years referenced his and his wife's purchase of a 138 acre parcel of land from J.B.F. Cawood (MSA SC 5496-016168) and wife in 1848 called Mount Ararat. The assessments indicate that 212 acres of Ararat remained in the Cawood family hands throughout the same period. Also, judging from the assessment records, the Cawoods, while owning more than the Dixons, were still small scale slave owners. The Cawood's human property was assessed at $875 while the Dixon's were assessed at $475.
As indicated in the land and assessment records and displayed in the
Prince George's County District 5 section of the Simon J. Martenet, Martenet's
Atlas of Maryland, 1861, Library of Congress, MSA SC 1213-1-118, the Dixons
and Cawoods were clearly owners of neighboring plantations which adjoined
450 acres.
The Underground Railroad database was accessed next to see if any of
George Dixon's human property was referenced in various other records such
as runaway slave ads, inventories and chattel records. Prior to the years
of our specific study (1829) there is one chattel record that refers to
George Dixon of Prince George's County sale of a slave named Michael to
a Richard Thompson, also of Prince George's County. Review of Dixon's
1840 census returns and the ages of the two enslaved males and two females
listed, indicates that 3 of them may well be the same shown in the 1850
and 1860 documents. Upon exploring whether this trio might have remained
in the same area past Maryland's emancipation in 1864, the neighboring
blacks in the 1870 census are mostly teenage domestics living in the homes
of white employers, none of the Dixon blacks would have been so young.
Apparently, the small core of servants, present through the household's
height of 2 parents and 8 children in 1850, had moved on. Being
neighboring properties and assuming that some of the enslaved of both plantations
may well have been related or, at the least, been in contact, staff chose
to check the same sources for Cawood.
The 1860 Slave Schedule for J.B.F. Cawood indicated 10 enslaved. The 1867 Slave Statistics showed 11 slaves in the estate of J.B.F. Cawood as adminstered by his son James which approximate the ages of those listed in 1860. The 1870 Census shows Jane Cawood, then J.B.F. Cawood's widow, as head of a household of seven which include two young black servant children, Mary (16) and Andrew (10) Sims.
Return to Geo. E. Dixon's Introductory Page
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