Paul Edmonson (abt. 1785 - aft. 1860)

Born about 1785 in Montgomery, Maryland

Descendants

Died after 1860 after about age 75 in Montgomery, Maryland

Biography

Paul Edmonson is a part of US Black heritage.

Paul was set free by his owner's will. He purchased land in the Norbeck area of Montgomery County, where he farmed and established his family. His wife Amelia was still enslaved but was allowed to live with her husband while she continued to work for her master.

The couple's 14 children were born into slavery because the law stated that if a mother was a slave, her children were also slaves. Those children, then, began work at an early age as servants, laborers and skilled workers. From about the ages of 13 or 14, they were "hired out" to work in elite private homes in nearby Washington, D.C. under a type of lease arrangement, where their wages went to the slaveholder.

Among those children are:

• Elizabeth (Edmonson) Brent (abt.1815-1881)
• Hamilton
• Ephraim
• Richard, coachman for Robert Walker, former Senator from Mississippi and Secretary of the Treasury 1845-1849.
• John
• Josiah
• Samuel,
• Mary
• Emily
• Louisa

On April 15, 1848, Paul, with the help of Paul Jennings, arranged for 6 of his children to sneak out in the middle of the night to board the ship The Pearl in the largest recorded escape of enslaved persons in U.S. History. They planned to sail south along Potomac River and then north up the Chesapeake Bay, cross overland to the Delaware River and then to the free state of New Jersey, a distance of nearly 225 miles.

The wind was against the schooner, however, forcing it to anchor for the night. The next morning, numerous Washington, D.C. slaveholders, realizing their slaves and The Pearl were missing, sent out an armed posse of 35 men on the steamboat Salem. The posse caught up with The Pearl near Point Lookout, Maryland, boarded the vessel, and took the slaves and the ship back to Washington.

Many of the newly captured slaves were sold to slave trader partners Joseph Bruin & Henry P. Hill and sent to New Orleans to be sold. Paul's daughters Mary and Emily, however, were returned to Alexandria, Virginia to protect them from the Yellow Fever outbreak occurring in the South.

Paul spent the rest of his life wheeling and dealing and risking his life to gain freedom for his children.

Sources

• "Edmonson Sisters' Wikipedia Page"
• United States Census, 1850
• United States Census, 1860

See Also:

• "The Pearl Incident"