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Anthony Johnson (c1600 — 1670) was a black Angolan held as an indentured servant by a merchant in the Colony of Virginia in 1620, but later freed to become a successful tobacco farmer and property owner. Notably, he was the first legal slave owner — that is, the first to hold a servant as a slave in the mainland American colonies.

Biography

Early life

Johnson was captured by Arab traders in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold as a slave to a merchant working for the Virginia Company.

The Virginia Muster (census) of 1624 lists his name as "Antonio not given" with "a Negro" written in the notes column and records that he had arrived in Virginia in 1621 aboard the James. However, there is some dispute as to whether this was the Antonio who became Anthony Johnson as the census lists several Antonios' with this one being only the most likely. Johnson was sold to a white planter named Bennet to work on his Virginia tobacco farm as an indentured servant. Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues. Prior to 1654, all Africans in the thirteen Colonies were held under contracts of indentured servitude and, with the exception of those indentured for life, were released after a contracted period with many of the indentured receiving land and equipment after their contracts expired or were bought out. Johnson would later take ownership of a large plot of farmland after he paid out his contract. For those that survived the work and received their freedom package, many historians argue that they were better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country. Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year's worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the journey by sea and the conditions of life in the New World, life was as a modest freeman in an expanding colonial economy.

Johnson almost lost his life in the Indian massacre of 1622 when his master's farm was attacked. The Powhatans, who were native to Virginia, were upset at the advance of the tobacco planters into their land and planned an attack on Good Friday. Of the fifty-seven men on the farm where Johnson worked, fifty-two died during the attack. In 1622, 30 Native Americans attacked Jamestown to avenge the death of one of their leaders.

The following year (1623) "Mary, a Negro" arrived from England aboard the ship Margaret and was brought in to work on the plantation, where she was the only woman. They were married and lived together for over forty years.

Freedom

Sometime after 1635 Antonio and Mary were freed, and Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson. Johnson first enters the legal record as a free man when he purchased a calf in 1647 and on 24 July 1651 he acquired 250 acres (100 ha) of land under the headright system by buying 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.:

In 1652 "an unfortunate fire" caused "great losses" for the family and Johnson applied to the courts for tax relief. The court not only lightened the families taxes but on 28 February 1652, exempted his wife Mary and her 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 negro men and women and all other men from the age of 16 to 60 shall be judged tithable." It is unclear from the records why the Johnson women were exempted but this gave them the same social standing as white women. 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".

Casor suit

In a case brought in 1654 in which he contested the freedom suit of a servant, John Casor. Johnson won the suit and retained Casor as his servant for life.

Significance of Casor suit

Slavery was established in Virginia in 1655, when Johnson convinced a court that his servant John Casor (also a black man), was his for life. Johnson himself had been brought to Virginia some years earlier as an indentured servant but he had saved enough money to buy out the remainder of his contract and that of his wife. The court ruling in Johnson’s favor resulted in Casor becoming the first state-recognized slave in the Colony of Virginia. Slavery in Virginia was officially enacted in state law for free whites, blacks, and Indians in 1661.

The practice of importing African indentured servants to the North American colonies started in the Virginia area in 1619, though slavery in the Spanish New World colonies brought African slaves to the Americas as early as the 1560s. The Virginia Muster (census) of 1624 listed 1,292 colonists, of these some 809 were free while 483 were indentured servants. The number of Africans in the colony, both indentured servants and free numbered 23. There were three classes of indentured servitude, those who signed a contract with an agent before boarding a ship who would then be auctioned to the highest bidder on arrival, those who had no contract and were allowed several days to arrange their own indenture or be indentured by the captain on his terms and convicts, vagrants and kidnapped people who were forcibly indentured. An indenture of three to five years was common although times for young children were usually much longer and for the third class of indentures life terms were not unknown. The landowner received 50 acres of land from the state (headrights) for each servant purchased (around £6 per person in the 17th Century) from a ships captain. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased. They could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Unlike slaves they were freed after their term of service expired or was bought out, their children did not inherit their status, and on their release from contract they received "freedom dues." Dues varied by state and in Virginia consisted of 50 acres of land, ten bushels of corn, one musket and a 30 shilling cash payment. Surveys of records indicate that from around 1675, with land becoming scarcer and more expensive, owners often took former servants to court to dispute their entitlement to freedom dues and that only 25% of freed servants received the land component with more than two thirds of those immediately selling the rights and keeping no land for themselves.

By 1699, there had been several armed insurrections by white indentured servants and the number of free blacks prompted fears of a "Negro insurrection." Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed blacks back to Africa. Many blacks sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to repatriate free blacks back to Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black slaves. However, black slave owners continued to thrive in the United States.By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.

Later life

In 1657, Johnson’s white neighbor, Edmund Scarborough, forged a letter in which Johnson acknowledged a debt. Johnson did not contest the case and although he was clearly illiterate and couldn’t have written the letter, the court granted Scarborough 100 acres of Johnson’s land to pay off his "debt".

In 1665, Anthony Johnson and his family moved to Somerset County, Maryland, and negotiated a lease on a 300-acre (120 ha) plot of land for ninety-nine years. Johnson used this land to start a tobacco farm, which he named Tories Vineyards.

Court ruling after death

When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a “free Negro” and ran a successful farm. In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant. Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time. Casor left and became employed by the free white man Robert Parker.

Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner. While some genealogists and historians describe John Punch as the first slave, he was technically still an indentured servant, as he was sentenced to serve the remainder of his life in servitude as punishment for escaping. Casor, by contrast, was found to have been a slave since his arrival in Virginia.

Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.

References

1. Horton 2002, p. 29.
2. Breen1980, p. 8.
3. Walsh, Lorena (2010). Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763. Pg 115: UNC Press. ISBN 9780807832349.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
4. Horton 2002, p. 26.
5. ^ Rodriguez, Junius. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2. Pg 353: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781851095445. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |year 2007= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
6. ^ Breen 1980, p. 10.
7. ^ 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.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
8. ^ Breen, T. H. (2004). "Myne Owne Ground" : Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. Pg 12: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199729050.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
9. 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.
10. Act CII, Laws of Virginia, March, 1661-2 (Hening, Statutes at Large, 2: 116-17)
11. David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 124
12. ^ Applebaum, Herbert (1996). Colonial Americans at Work. pp. 88 - 103: University Press of America. ISBN 9780761804314.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
13. Holloway, Joseph. "The Black Slave Owners". Retrieved 8 October 2011.
14. Johnson 1999, p. 44.
15. Slavery and Indentured Servants Law Library of Congress

Sources

• James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Hard road to freedon: the story of African America, Rutgers University Press, 2002.
• Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith and the WGBH Research Team, Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.
• Cox, Ryan Charles. "The Johnson Family: The Migratory Study of an African-American Family on the Eastern Shore". Delmarva Settlers, accessed 16 November 2012.
• Ira Berlin, _Many Thousands Gone, The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America_, Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers' Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940 (p. 378)
• A Thinkport Library article on Johnson's Life
• 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 Interdependenc, Hartwick College, 1995.

External links

• Anthony Johnson - Africans in America, PBS.org
• Exploring Maryland's Roots: Anthony Johnson
• Template:Persondata

• 1670 deaths
• American people of Angolan descent
• American slaves
• History of slavery in Virginia
• Virginia colonial people
• African slaves in the Americas