Existing comment:
Tobias Henson, From Property to Property Owner:
Ownership of land and freedom for oneself and one's family were goals that might have seemed unattainable to many African Americans in the first half of the 19th century. Tobias Henson, who lived in Washington's rural area across from the Eastern Branch, reached these goals, one by one, over a period of seven years making sacrifices that one can hardly imagine. He was born around 1767. The first time he appeared in the official record was in an 1817 slave list in the estate appraisal of his owner, Philip Evans. Even then he was listed only as "Toby about 50 years of age" and given the value of $350. Also among the estate slaves were 22-year-old Matilda and 12-year-old Mary Ann, daughters of Tobias and his wife Bessie Barton. Bessie, according to the family lore, was a red-headed Irish woman. But Tobias was only chattel, "an item of tangible movable or immovable property." |