Charity Folks

Charity Folks (also called Fowkes after 1791)[1] (1757, Belair Plantation, Bowie, Maryland[2] -1834) was an African-American woman who lived in Annapolis, Maryland, both as a slave and a free woman.[2][3][4]

Slavery

Charity was born into slavery and held by Maryland Governor Samuel Ogle. Until the age of 10 or 12, Charity lived at Belair Plantation with her mother, Rachel Burke, and brother James; her father is believed to have been plantation manager Colonel Benjamin Tasker, Jr.[2] She was transferred to the ownership of Annapolis's John Ridout. In some reports she accompanied Ogle's daughter Mary to White Hall Plantation in 1764 upon Mary's marriage to John Ridout, Ogle's secretary;[5] Historian Jessica Millward places the transfer sometime between 1765 and 1767, saying that 'It is equally possible that Charity became the property of John Ridout when he served as executor of the estates of Benjamin Tasker, Sr. and Benjamin Tasker, Jr.'[2]

Family

While still enslaved, she married her husband Thomas who was enslaved by another Annapolis merchant until 1794[1]

She and her husband had several children including Harriet Calder (1789-??),[2] who married and had three children with white man William Calder;[1] Mary Folks (1799-??);[2] and namesake Charity Folks Bishop (1793-1877), who married William Henry Bishop, Jr. (1802-1870)[6][2] "Only Lil' Charity resided with her mother at the Ridout's home in Annapolis".[2] Her older children, Harriet Jackson (1780-??) [2] and James Jackson (1786-??),[2] may have predated the marriage.[2]

Her great-grandson was Rev. Dr. Hutchens C. Bishop, an Episcopalean minister who served as President of the historic 1917 Negro Silent Protest Parade in New York City.[7]

Freedom

She was freed in 1797[1] by Mary (Ogle) Ridout after John Ridout's death.[5] However, it has been noted that 'the 1797 deed for manumission...was not a gift of immediate freedom.'[2][8] As a freed woman, she continued working for the same family, and was named in Mary's will.[5] The manumission was recorded by Anne Arundel County Court, Manumission Records in 1807,[9] and in 1811 Charity was issued a certificate of freedom from the same court.[10]

In 1832 she purchased property on Franklin Street in Annapolis, Maryland.[11] She had a stroke in 1834 and died later the same year.[2]

Property she owned was studied in the late twentieth-century as 'the Courthouse Site' in Annapolis archaeology.[12]

Further reading
  • Finding Charity's Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland by Jessica Millward, 2015, University of Georgia Press (Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 Series), ISBN 978-0820348780

References
  1. Millward, Jessica. "The Relics of Slavery": Interracial Sex and Manumission in the American South." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 31.3 (2010): 22-30.
  2. Millward, Jessica. "Charity Folks, Lost Royalty, and the Bishop Family of Maryland and New York". Journal of African American History 98, no.1 (Winter 2013): 24-47.
  3. Millward, J; Liz Covart, Episode 089: Jessica Millward, Slavery & Freedom in Early Maryland (audio recording)
  4. Jessica Millward (2016) Black Women’s History and the Labor of Mourning, Souls, 18:1, 161-165, DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2016.1162601
  5. Trail of Souls: A Pilgrimage Toward Truth & Reconciliation at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Westminster Parish, Annapolis MD, page 11
  6. finding aid to Joan C. Scurlock, “Bishop Family of Annapolis,” unpublished family history, African American Episcopal Historical Collection, Virginia Theological Seminary Archives, Alexandria.
  7. Milward, Jessica (2015-12-15). Finding Charity's Folks. ISBN 9780820348797. Retrieved 31 July 2017.
  8. Anne Arundel County Court, Manumission Record, 1797-1807, Volume 825, Page 17–18 December 8, 1797 and recorded December 14, 1797
  9. Anne Arundel County Court, Manumission Record, 1807-1816 Volume 830, Pages 2-6, August 7, 1807
  10. Anne Arundel County Court Certificates of Freedom, 1810-1831, Volume 823, Page 8, April 29, 1811
  11. "Archaeology in Annapolis: Web-Based Tour".
  12. Racializing Consumer Culture by Paul R. Mullins "Charity Folks" search in Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture
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