Prince George’s County Commissioner of Slave Statistics 1867

Author: Transcription prepared by Michael Hait, African-American Genealogy Examiner & Hait Family Research
Title: Prince George’s County Commissioner of Slave Statistics (Slave Statistics, Original) 1867, MSA C1308-1, Loc. #1/21/10/46 | Information as of adoption of new Maryland Constitution in 1864.
Location: Prince George’s County, Maryland
Description: 6300 names of Prince George’s County slaves indexed by slave owner, age, sex, physical condition and enslavement period
Year: 1867
Record File Format: HTML, PDF & Microsoft Excel

• PG Slave Statistics – Original.htm
• PG Slave Statistics – Original.pdf
• PG Slave Statistics – Original.xlsx

Source Notes:

This transcribed extract is from the original Slave Statistics as held at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, Maryland.  There is a separate volume, a register of these originals, which also holds additional Statistics that are no longer available.  This current data does not contain these additional lists, and should not be considered a full record of all slaves in the county, nor all slaves in the Slave Statistics register volume.

This record group (MSA C1308) is organized into three boxes, each holding over thirty folders.  Each of these folders holds between one and ten individual sheets.   Each sheet represents the slaves of an individual slaveholder; some list only one slave, some over a hundred.

The first column, labeled “MdHR,” represents the folder in which these particular slaveholders appear.  Box 1 holds folders 1-33.  Box 2 holds folders 34-71.  Box 3 holds folders 72-109.  A proper citation will provide both the box (MSA series) and folder (MdHR) number.  The Maryland State Archives’ suggested citation format would be as follows (using an example slave listing):

Prince George’s County Commissioner of Slave Statistics (Slave Statistics, Original) Nathaniel Smallwood entry, Mrs. Eleanor B. Bowie list of slaves, 15 May 1867, MSA C1308-1, MdHR 40230-2; Maryland State Archive, Annapolis, Maryland.

All names of slaves and slaveholders have been reversed.  They appear in the originals with the given name first, but here, for ease of alphabetical sorting, they appear in the form, “SURNAME, GIVEN NAME.”

In regard to slaveholders, many women and children who legally owned slaves did not themselves appear before the Commissioner or his representatives.  In these cases, they were represented by an Agent, who is named here; children may be represented by their Guardian, also identified as such.  In the case of estates still under administration, the executor or administrator appeared before the Commissioner.  These agents, guardians, administrators, and executors should not themselves be considered the slaveholder, unless stated as such, e.g. “James J. Bowie, acting for Mrs. Catherine Bowie and himself.”

The date listed in this extract is the date on which the list was made.  According to the instructions to the Commissioner, the record was supposed to reflect the names and ages of all slaves owned on the date of the adoption of the new Maryland Constitution that abolished slavery, 1 November 1864.  Further research on over one thousand of the slaves included herein, using additional records, shows that not all of these records do in fact reflect this date, much as the federal census records do not all reflect the official “census day.”

The column “ED” contains the reported election district in which the slaveowner resided.

The column labeled “Enlisted/Drafted” combines two columns of the original, which contain military service information and owner compensation information.  For slaves freed by the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, many slaveowners petitioned the courts and received compensation for their freed slaves.  The U. S. Congress also authorized those slaveowners who freed their slaves in order to serve in the U. S. Army to be compensated under the Slave Claims Commissions.  This column contains details of those owners compensated in both of these ways.