Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)

Bet
MSA SC 5496-51592
Fled from Slavery, Caroline County, 1834

Biography:

    Bet was enslaved by Thomas Brodey Culbreth, or his father Samuel, before she decided to escape early in 1834. She may have also brought along a young child on the journey to southern New Jersey. Bet was likely one of the 7 female African Americans enslaved by Samuel Culbreth in 1820, though there is no specific record of her existence before the escape.1

    Bet and her child made their way to Salem area of New Jersey, which had become notorious among Maryland slaves and slaveholders alike. The relatively anonymity of the small towns and rural districts, as well as a supportive Quaker community, made the region an attractive target. Famed Philadelphia abolitionist William Still had been raised in nearby Burlington County, after his parents escaped from slavery on the Eastern Shore in the early 19th century. Queen Anne's county planter Thomas Emory had become privy as early as 1826, when William Duhamel informed him that "a vast quantity of negros that have settled in the neighbourhood of Salem and are shielded by some few individuals of that place."2 Just months before Bet's ordeal Robert G. Johnson told Emory of another potential Maryland fugitive on trial in the town.3 In newspaper advertisements, slave holders from the state would routinely site Philadelphia and New Jersey as a possible destination for those blacks who fled.     

    Bet's owners were likely informed of this trend when they hired Philadelphia constable Michael Donahower to seek her out. According a local newspaper, the Freeman's Banner, the trouble started at 4 AM when "the quiet slumbers of our peaceful town were disturbed by the cries of fire or murder." It was actually the "heart-rending cries of eight miserable beings in chains," who were forced into the falling snow with just the clothes on their backs.4 These details are corroborated in the diary of a Salem Quaker named John Mason Brown, apparently an eye-witness to the events. Brown would further contend that while several men were involved in the capture, Michael Donahower "passed more imprudence than all the others united."5 Bet and her child were among the African 
Americans accused of being fugitives from labor in Maryland, as they were dragged to the Salem County Courthouse. The case was taken before Judge George Bush later that morning, and Bet may have been the "poor negress" who was first to be potentially identified. There was testimony from Donahower, as well as several locals who spoke on behalf of the accused. Judge Bush decided that the claimant's documents were insufficient, and his actions therefore illegal, before dismissing the prisoner.

     At that point, Donahower brandished a pistol and refused to release those whom he considered his rightful property. Brown, the local sheriff and many others intervened to detain the belligerent slave catcher, while the defendants made their escape.6 According to a more pro-slavery account, Thomas B. Culbreth was actually present during most of these events and put up resistance alongside Donahower. However, this contention was likely a biased attempt to defend his claim to the African Americans on trial.7 Bet and her family were presumably allowed to remain in the New Jersey community, though her whereabouts after these proceedings are unknown. Culbreth would not be deterred by his initial failure in Salem. Outraged by what had occurred the previous year, the Marylander went to the New Jersey Supreme Court and introduced a "Plea of Trespass for the Escape of a Black Woman."8 The 1835 case implicated John Mason Brown and several others in Bet's escape, for which Culbreth was seeking a $10,000 in damages. The six men were described as "principally Friends, all of them among the most respectable inhabitants of the town of Salem." The eight day trial ended successfully for the former slave owner as the plaintiffs were assessed $1,000.9 Presumably much of these damages were awarded to Culbreth himself, which would have softened the blow of losing the two slaves.

    Bet's case was one of many that would continue to build southern New Jersey's reputation as a legal battleground between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Queen Anne's County freedom seeker Nathan Mead, who changed his name to Alexander Hemsley once he reached the area, was similarly captured later in 1835 in Burlington County. His case ultimately reached the New Jersey Supreme Court. There, Hemsley and his family were exonerated due to a technicality in the state law, which his lawyer had cleverly utilized.10 Dorchester County owner Thomas Hicks pursued his man Henry Gladden to Salem in 1836, unsuccessfully attempting to claim another man who was proven to be legally free.11
Footnotes -

1. Ancestry.com. 1820 United States Federal Census, Caroline County, Maryland, District Not Stated, p. 5. 

2. Poplar Grove, Series 13, pp. 129-131.

3. Poplar Grove, Series 13, pp. 195-197.

4. "Annals of Kidnapping: An Exhibition of Slavery in New Jersey." Liberator, 10 January 1835. 

5. John Mason Brown. Diary [December 25, 1834 - February 2, 1838]. MC 154. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey.

6. Ibid.

7. "Unprecedented Outrage," found in Thomas Brothers. The United States of North American As They Are; Not As They Are Generally Described: Being A Cure for Radicalism. Longman: London, UK (1840).

8. "The Slave Case in New Jersey." Baltimore Sun, 20 April 1838. 

9. Ibid.

10. Benjamin Drew. The Refugee: A North-Side View of Slavery. Boston: John Jewett, 1854. - "Rev. Alexander Hemsley," pp. 32-33.

11. "A Slave Case," Dorchester Aurora, 23 January 1837. Special Collections, MSA SC 4856.

Researched and written by David Armenti, 2013.

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