Slavery
L'Hermitage was also known in its time for its harsh regime. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz traveled through the area in June 1798, recounting that he had been told of tyranny and torture at the plantation:
June 15. ... Four miles from the town we forded the river . On its banks one can see a row of wooden houses and one stone house with the upper storeys painted white . ... One can see on the home farm instruments of torture, stocks, wooden horses, whips, etc. Two or three negroes crippled with torture have brought legal action ...
Nine court proceedings against family members for cruelty to slaves are recorded, including proceedings against Boisneuf for "cruelly and immercifully beating and whipping" six slaves and against Victoire Vincendière for beating her slave Jenny. These charges were dismissed, but Boisneuf was found guilty in 1797 of beating a slave named Shadrack and of "not sufficiently clothing and feeding his negroes."
The Vincendières sold L'Hermitage in 1827, after gradually dispersing most of their slaves. Victoire moved to a townhouse in Frederick. Victoire died in 1854, still the owner of three slaves. Her will stipulated their freedom. Slavery at the property continued under the new proprietors. John Brien (or O'Brien) bought the farm and continued the practice, and David Best, the farm's tenant from 1843 kept slaves. Best had six slaves in 1860, making him one of the largest slave owners in the county. Slavery ended in Maryland in 1864.
The l'Hermitage site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Read more about this topic: L'Hermitage Slave Village Archeological Site
Famous quotes containing the word slavery:
“Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature—opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“It would be idle to say that we were not, from time to time, aware that a volcano slumbered fitfully beneath us. There were dark sides to the Slavery Question, for master, as for slave.”
—Marion Harland (1830–1922)
“It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said, and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)