Early Life
In 1847, William Saunders Crowdy was born into slavery at the Chilsy Hills Farm of the Charlotte Hall Plantation in Maryland. His father was Basil Crowdy, a deeply religious man who oversaw the drying of clay for the plantation's brick kiln. According to family tradition Basil was descended from the a lesser nobility of the ancient kings of the Ndongo empire, known as a Ngola, until his ancestor was captured into slavery by the Portuguese in the 17th century. His mother Sarah Ann was a cook, which often got her access to the "big house" despite her diminished stature as a slave. Crowdy was originally called "Wilson" by his overseer. The baby Crowdy was born in a one-room slave cabin near the Patuxent River in the middle of a violent nighttime thunderstorm. Crowdy lived his early life in bondage working first by milking the plantation owner's cows. As he grew older he was assigned by the slave overseer to tend the plantation's melon patch, and then to work as a stable boy and tobacco drier.
Life was hard on a 19th century plantation and the cruel overseer on Crowdy's plantation punished the slaves brutally. Despite it being illegal for slaves to read, Crowdy was a religious and caring man from a young age and learned the Hebrew prophets, especially Elijah. According to oral history Crowdy was beaten by the slavemaster at age 7 for taking too much cornpone from the ration cook to feed his sister. He spent the night locked in a barn for punishment but prayed to Moses to be released from bondage of his captors. Ten years to the day later at age 17 Crowdy escaped from his master. In 1863 he ran away after a fight with a white man. He shed his name "Wilson," regarding it as a slave name, and adopted the more dignified "William" which he then used to enlist at the nearest Union army recruiting station. He immediately took the job as quartermaster's cook. He joined the United States Colored Troops 19th Regiment of Maryland along with his half-brother Daniel
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