Anthony Johnson (American Colonist)

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Anthony Johnson (American Colonist)

WHO LEARNED THIS IN SCHOOL OR COLLEGE ??

Anthony Johnson (b. c. 1600 – d. 1670) was an Angolan who achieved freedom in the early 17th

century Colony of Virginia, where he became one of the first black property owners and

slaveholders. Held as an indentured servant in 1621, he earned his freedom after several

years, which was accompanied by a grant of land. He later became a successful tobacco

farmer. Notably, he is recognized for attaining great wealth after having been an indentured

servant and has been referred to as “'the black patriarch' of the first community of black person

property owners in America".[1]

Early life[edit]

Johnson was captured in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold to Arab slave traders.

He was eventually sold as an indentured servant to a merchant working for the Virginia

Company.[2]

He arrived in Virginia in 1621 aboard the James. The Virginia Muster (census) of 1624 lists

his name as "Antonio not given," recorded as "a black person" in the "notes" column.[3] There is

some dispute among historians as to whether this was the Antonio later known as Anthony

Johnson, as the census lists several "Antonios." This one is considered the most likely.[4]

Johnson was sold to a white planter named Bennet as an indentured servant to work on his

Virginia tobacco farm. Servants typically worked under an indenture contract for four to

seven years to pay off their passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues. In the early

colonial years, most Africans in the Thirteen Colonies were held under such contracts of

indentured servitude. With the exception of those indentured for life, they were released

after a contracted period with many of the indentured receiving land and equipment after

their contracts expired or were bought out.[5]

Antonio almost lost his life in the Indian massacre of 1622 when his master's plantation was

attacked. The Powhatan, who were the Native Americans dominant in the Tidewater of Virginia,

were upset at the encroachment of the colonists into their land. They attacked the

settlement on Good Friday and killed 52 of the 57 men where Johnson worked.

The following year (1623) "Mary, a black person" arrived from England aboard the ship Margaret. She

was brought to work on the same plantation as Antonio, where she was the only woman. Antonio

and Mary married and lived together for over forty years.[6]

Freedom[edit]

Sometime after 1635, Antonio and Mary gained their freedom from indenture. Antonio changed

his name to Anthony Johnson.[6] Johnson first enters the legal record as a free man when he

purchased a calf in 1647.

Johnson took ownership of a large plot of farmland after he paid off his indentured contract

by his labor.[7] On 24 July 1651, he acquired 250 acres (100 ha) of land under the headright

system by buying the contracts of five indentured servants, one of whom was his son Richard

Johnson. The land was located on the Great Naswattock Creek which flowed into the

Pungoteague River in Northampton County, Virginia.:[8]

In 1652 "an unfortunate fire" caused "great losses" for the family, and Johnson applied to

the courts for tax relief. The court not only reduced the family's taxes but on 28 February

1652, exempted his wife Mary and their two daughters from paying taxes at all "during their

natural lives." At that time taxes were levied on people not property, and under the 1645

Virginia taxation act, "all black person men and women and all other men from the age of 16 to 60

shall be judged tithable."[8][9] It is unclear from the records why the Johnson women were

exempted, but the change gave them the same social standing as white women, who were not

taxed.[9] During the case, the justices noted that Anthony and Mary "have lived Inhabitants

in Virginia (above thirty years)" and had been respected for their "hard labor and known

service".[6]

Casor suit[edit]

When Anthony Johnson was released from servitude, he was legally recognized as a "free

black person." He developed a successful farm. In 1651 he owned 250 acres, and the services of four

white and one black indentured servants. In 1653, John Casor, a black indentured servant

whose contract Johnson appeared to have bought in the early 1640s, approached Captain

Goldsmith, claiming his indenture had expired seven years earlier and that he was being held

illegally by Johnson. A neighbor, Robert Parker, intervened and persuaded Johnson to free

Casor.

Handwritten court ruling.

March 8, 1655

Parker offered Casor work, and he signed a term of indenture to the planter. Johnson sued

Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654 for the return of Casor. The court initially found

in favor of Parker, but Johnson appealed. In 1655, the court reversed its ruling.[10]

Finding that Anthony Johnson still "owned" John Casor, the court ordered that he be returned

with the court dues paid by Robert Parker.[11]

This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding

that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[12][13][14]

[15][16]

Though Casor was the first person declared a slave in a civil case, there were both black

and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude before him. Many historians

describe indentured servant John Punch as the first documented slave in America, as he was

sentenced to life in servitude as punishment for escaping in 1640.[17][18] The Punch case

was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black person and

that of the two European indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch

and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case in Virginia of an African sentenced

to lifetime servitude. It is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial

distinction between black and white indentured servants.[19][20]

Significance of Casor suit[edit]

The Casor suit demonstrates the culture and mentality of planters in the mid-17th century.

Individuals made assumptions about the society of Northampton County and their place in it.

According to historians T.R. Breen and Stephen Innes, Casor believed he could form a

stronger relationship with his patron Robert Parker than Anthony Johnson had formed over the

years with his patrons. Casor considered the dispute to be a matter of patron-client

relationship, and this wrongful assumption ultimately lost him the court and the decision.

Johnson knew that the local justices shared his basic belief in the sanctity of property.

The judge sided with Johnson, although in future legal issues, race played a larger role.

[21]

The Casor suit was an example of how difficult it was for Africans who were indentured

servants to keep from being reduced to slavery. Most African immigrants could not read and

had almost no knowledge of the English language. Planters found it easy to force them into

slavery by refusing to acknowledge the completion of their indentured contracts.[22] This is

what happened in Johnson v. Parker. Although two white planters who confirmed that Casor had

completed his indentured contract with Johnson, the court still ruled in Johnson's favor.

[23]

Later life[edit]

1666 Marke of Anthony Johnson

In 1657, Johnson’s white neighbor, Edmund Scarborough, forged a letter in which Johnson

acknowledged a debt. Johnson did not contest the case. Johnson was illiterate and could not

have written the letter; nevertheless, the court awarded Scarborough 100 acres of Johnson’s

land to pay off his alleged "debt".[7]

In this early period, free blacks enjoyed "relative equality" with the white community.

About 20% of the free black Virginians owned their own homes. By 1665, however, racism was

becoming more common. In 1662 the Virginia Colony passed a law that children were born with

the status of their mother, according to the Roman principle of partus sequitur ventrem.

This meant that the children of slave women were born as slaves, even if their fathers were

free. This was a reversal of English common law, which held that the children of English

subjects took the status of their father. Africans were considered foreigners and thus were

not English subjects.

Anthony Johnson moved his family to Somerset County, Maryland, where he negotiated a lease

on a 300-acre (120 ha) plot of land for ninety-nine years. He turned this into a tobacco

farm, which he named Tories Vineyards.[24]

References[edit]

Jump up ^ Foner, Philip S. (1980). "History of Black Americans: From Africa to the emergence

of the cotton kingdom". Oxford University Press.

Jump up ^ Horton (2002), p. 29.

Jump up ^ Breen1980, p. 8.

Jump up ^ Walsh, Lorena (2010). Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation

Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763. Pg 115: UNC Press. ISBN 9780807832349.

Jump up ^ Horton (2002), p. 26

^ Jump up to: a b c Breen (1980), p. 10.

^ Jump up to: a b Rodriguez, Junius. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and

Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2. Pg 353: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781851095445.

^ Jump up to: a b Heinegg, Paul (2005). Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia,

and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to about 1820, Volume 2. Pg 705: Genealogical

Publishing. ISBN 9780806352824.

^ Jump up to: a b Breen, T. H. (2004). "Myne Owne Ground" : Race and Freedom on Virginia's

Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. Pg 12: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199729050.

Jump up ^ Walker, Juliet (2009). The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race,

Entrepreneurship, Volume 1. Pg 49: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807832417.

Jump up ^ Frank W. Sweet (July 2005). Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph

of the One-Drop Rule. Backintyme. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-939479-23-8. Retrieved 23 February

2013.

Jump up ^ Federal Writers' Project (1954). Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion. Pg 76: US

History Publishers. ISBN 9781603540452.

Jump up ^ Danver, Steven (2010). Popular Controversies in World History. Pg 322: ABC-CLIO.

ISBN 9781598840780.

Jump up ^ Kozlowski, Darrell (2010). Colonialism: Key Concepts in American History. Pg 78:

Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781604132175.

Jump up ^ Conway, John (2008). A Look at the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments: Slavery

Abolished, Equal Protection Established. Pg 5: Enslow Publishers. ISBN 9781598450705.

Jump up ^ Toppin, Edgar (2010). The Black American in United States History. Pg 46: Allyn &

Bacon. ISBN 9781475961720.

Jump up ^ Donoghue, John (2010). "Out of the Land of Bondage": The English Revolution and

the Atlantic Origins of Abolition" (PDF). The American Historical Review.

Jump up ^ Russell, 29

Jump up ^ Slavery and Indentured Servants Law Library of Congress

Jump up ^ "Slave Laws". Virtual Jamestown. Retrieved 2013-11-04.

Jump up ^ Breen and Innes, "Myne Owne Ground," p. 15

Jump up ^ Foner, Philip S. (1980). "History of Black Americans: From Africa to the emergence

of the cotton kingdom". Oxford University Press.

Jump up ^ Klein, 43-44.

Jump up ^ Johnson (1999), Africans in America, p. 44.

Sources[edit]

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone, The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America,

Harvard University Press, 1998.

Breen, Timothy and Stephen Innes. "Myne Own Ground" Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern

Shore, 1979/reprint 2004, 25th anniversary edition: Oxford University Press

Cox, Ryan Charles. "The Johnson Family: The Migratory Study of an African-American Family on

the Eastern Shore", Delmarva Settlers, University of Maryland Salisbury, accessed 16

November 2012.

Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton, Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America,

Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Research Team, Africans in America: America's

Journey Through Slavery, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.

Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas; A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba.

Nash, Gary B., Julie R. Jeffrey, John R. Howe, Peter J. Frederick, Allen F. Davis, and Allan

M. Winkler. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. 6th ed. New York: Pearson,

2004. 74-75.

Matthews, Harry Bradshaw, The Family Legacy of Anthony Johnson: From Jamestown, VA to

Somerset, MD, 1619-1995, Oneonta, NY: Sondhi Loimthongkul Center for Interdependence,

Hartwick College, 1995.

Russell, Jack Henderson. The Free black person in Virginia, 1619-1865, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1913

WPA Writers' Program, Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940

(p. 378)

"Anthony Johnson", Thinkport Library

External links[edit]

"Anthony Johnson", Africans in America, PBS.org

"Anthony Johnson", Exploring Maryland's Roots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)