W.M. Canby (b. 1835 - d. 1922)
MSA SC 5496-036784
Property owner and slave holder in Berrys District, Montgomery County,
Maryland
Biography:
One of five children, William Mauduit Canby was born near Colesville on June 25, 1835. His parents were Thomas Canby III and Deborah W. Canby, the owner of the slave Lewis Swams. When his mother died in 1864, William inherited one hundred and thirty-five acres and the two-story manor house, Rose Hill, that his grandfather Benjamin Duvall had built around 1800.
However, Canby did not live at Rose Hill until 1865, instead spending the last year of the Civil War incarcerated at the Old Capitol Prison and Fort Delaware. On August 31, 1864, the Baltimore Sun reported that "William Canby, a citizen of Montgomery county, Md., tried by court-martial, and found guilty of secreting officers and soldiers of the rebel army within our lines, has been found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned in Fort Delaware during the war."1 The "officers and soldiers of the rebel army" included Lieutenant Walter Bowie of Prince George's County, and several other men from Company F of the 43rd Virginia cavalry.2 Although initially imprisoned at the Old Capital prison along with William Canby, Lieutenant Walter Bowie soon escaped and resumed his raids. Canby remained a prisoner at Fort Delaware for the rest of the Civil War, receiving a pardon from President Lincoln in 1865.
By 1870, William M. Canby was living at Rose Hill with his younger brother, Benjamin, and an African American servant named Dinah Brogden and her three children.3 Benjamin Canby settled a few miles south of his brother by 1879. In 1880, the census recorded three white boarders at Rose Hill—Emma Ruth Waters, a toll gate keeper named Martin J. Higgins, and his wife Mary E. Higgins, who also worked as Canby's servant. Two African American servants, Jane M. Dorsey and John Edgar, also lived with Canby.4
In January 1883, at the age of forty-seven, Canby married the twenty-four-year-old
Sarah Jane Rust.5 Their four children were George Rust (b. 1884),
Laura Wilson (b. 1886), who died at the age of eleven,6 Eliza
M. (b. 1888), Thomas Yellott (b. 1891), and William Mauduit, Jr. (b. 1901).
A politician as a well as a farmer, Canby was elected to the Maryland House
of Delegates in 1876, 1878, and 1892.7 In 1895, he served as
one of the county's eight delegates to the Democratic Convention for the
Montgomery County and Frederick County circuit.8 He died at
Rose Hill on March 18, 1922, and was buried at Grace Church Cemetery in
Rockville.9
Lieutenant Walter Bowie's raid and death:
William M. Canby's sheltering of Lieutenant Walter "Wat" Bowie in 1863 not only suggested Canby's Confederate sympathies, but also marked the beginning of an infamous episode in Sandy Spring history. Following the arrest of both Canby and Lieutenant Bowie, the latter escaped from the Old Capital Prison and returned to Montgomery County with his men.10 The 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry—the so-called Mosby's Rangers, which Col. John S. Mosby had organized in June of 1863—had already gained notoriety for its forays against Federal troops and Unionist sympathizers. Lieutenant Bowie and his soldiers in Company F ranked among the Rangers' most active raiders.11
The company's exploits were cut short by Lieutenant Bowie's death on October 7, 1864. After stealing several horses from either Union troops or Unionist property owners in the area, Bowie and ten other soldiers headed back towards the Potomac River, where they robbed the Gilpin and Bentley12 general store in Sandy Spring. At least a dozen Sandy Spring citizens ambushed the raiders on their back to the Potomac, resulting in Bowie's death. Bowie's brother, Brune, was then taken prisoner, while the rest of the party escaped into Virginia. Sandy Spring residents labeled the skirmish the "Battle of Rickett's Run."13 Walter Bowie was buried at Locust Grove in Prince George's County.14
Further details of the skirmish varied depending on the source. For
instance, the Richmond Enquirer claimed that, after capturing several
Union soldiers and sixty horses, Bowie and his men "selected" desperately-needed
clothing from the shop of "a violent Union citizen" in Sandy Spring.15However,
the Quaker storekeeper, Alban Gilpin Thomas, claimed that Bowie had
threatened to hang him unless he produced the key to Gilpin and
Bentley's store. In a letter to his brother, Thomas claimed that
"Captain
'Bowie' seized ahold of my arm and ordered a man to take hold of the
other
side and sent a third to his horse and got a rope...I told him hanging
would not get it out of me."16 According to Thomas, the raiders
finally entered the store by breaking a window, and stole luxury items
including silks, "kid gloves," and slippers. The storekeeper also described
another Sandy Spring resident shooting Bowie several hours later, when
Bowie shot at a pursuer named John Able.
1. "Sentenced to Fort Delaware." The Baltimore Sun 31 August 1864: 4. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive. Enoch Pratt Free Library.
2. James J. Williamson. Mosby's Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Forty-third Battalion Virginia Cavalry. Ralph B. Kenyon, 1896.
3. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for William Canby, 1870, Montgomery County, Fifth District, Page 49, Line 1 [MSA SM61-275, M 7256].
4. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Wm. M. Canby, 1880, Montgomery County, Berrys District, District 114, Page 38, Line 19 [MSA SM61-324, M 4748-2]. Canby's household was accidentally counted twice.
5. MONTGOMERY COUNTY, CIRCUIT COURT, (Marriage Licenses), 1867-1899, [MSA T2490-1]. William M. Canby and Sallie J. Rust, January 8 1884.
6. Ellsworth Marshall Rust. Rust of Virginia (Published by Rust, 1931) 349.
7. "Historical List, House of Delegates, Montgomery County (1790-1966)." Archives of Maryland.
8. "Judge Henderson Nominated." Baltimore Sun 8 August 1895. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive. Enoch Pratt Free Library.
9. "William M. Canby." Interment Cemetery Records Online, Grace Church Cemetery, Montgomery County.
10. "Exploit and Death of Lieutenant Walter Bowie." The Baltimore Sun 15 November 1864: 1. From the Richmond Enquirer. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive. Enoch Pratt Free Library.
11. William A. Tidwell.
April '65:
Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent
State University Press, 1995) 69-70.
James
J. Williamson. Mosby's Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Forty-third
Battalion Virginia Cavalry (New York, NY: Ralph B. Kenyon, 1896) 256.
12. "A Guerilla Raid in Maryland."
The
Baltimore Sun. 10 October 1864: 1. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive.
Enoch Pratt Free Library.
Montgomery
County District 5, Simon J. Martenet, Martenet and Bond's Map of Montgomery
County, 1865, Library of Congress, MSA SC 1213-1-464. Huntingfield Map
Collection.
13. "Walter Bowie." Where History Happened: Civil War Touches Home. Sandy Spring Museum. http://www.sandyspringmuseum.org/history/when/cw/index.html.
14. Bowie, Walter Worthington. The Bowies and Their Kindred: A Genealogical and Biographical History. Cottonport, LA: Polyanthos, 1971.
15. "Exploit and Death of Lieutenant
Walter Bowie." The Baltimore Sun 15 November 1864: 1. From the Richmond
Enquirer. Baltimore Sun Historical Archive. Enoch Pratt Free Library.
Tidwell
68.
16. Alban Gilpin Thomas. "Civil War:
Eyewitness Account." Where History Happened: Civil War Touches Home. Sandy
Spring Museum. http://www.sandyspringmuseum.org/c810.html.
Researched and written by Rachel Frazier, 2010.
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