Enslavement by Marriage

A white indentured servant woman named Eleanor Butler—Irish Nell—immigrated to Maryland and married a slave named Charles in 1681. More than eighty years later, Mary and William Butler, descendants of Irish Nell and Charles, petitioned a Maryland court to free them from “a state of perpetual Slavery” in which they were held by a planter named Richard Boarman. Since seventeenth-century documents that could prove the race and status of Irish Nell and Charles did not exist, the court collected testimony in 1767 from white witnesses who knew the couple or had heard about them. The court eventually refused to grant freedom to Mary and William, but the testimony the court gathered about Irish Nell and Charles, excerpted here, reveals assumptions about race, status, and gender that were common in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake region.

Samuel Abell, Junior, 49: said “that . . . Mr Richard Boarman the Defendant . . . told him . . . that Lord Baltimore a good many years ago, came into this Country to live and brought with him a woman named Butler . . . to wash and Iron and boarded with his Grand Father, and that sometime after they had been there, the said woman called Butler fell in Love with one of his Grand Father’s Negroes and wanted to marry him, and upon my Lord, being informed that she wanted to marry the negro, my Lord sent for her in, and chid [chided] her, and told her that if she married the negro she would by that means enslave herself, and her posterity, upon which the woman told him that she had rather marry the negro under them circumstances, than to marry his Lordship with all his Country, upon which he told her she might go and marry him, and be dammed, accordingly she went and was married to the negro. . . . [Abell] asked . . . [Boarman] if there were not a good many of that Family; he said there was about one hundred and twenty of them, but the negroes by their Count made near three hundred of them, for that they had taken even some Salt water [African-born] negroes, into their count, and upon asking . . . [Boarman] how they came to be slaves as they came of a white woman; he said he claimed them by a Law of this province whereby white women marrying of slaves should become slaves to the house of her Husband’s master, and he took out of his pocket a paper which he said was a copy of the act, and it appeared to be a copy of an act.”

Thomas Bowling, 63: said “that . . . Irish Nell told [his mother] the day she expected to be married, she was early up intending to clear the house out, and a Gentleman . . . asked her if she was the Girl that was to be married that day to the negro? She said Yes, he then chid her, and told her, she would put a mark by that upon her Children and bring them into Slavery, that if she would marry a white man her Children might be of Credit in the world, otherwise they wou’d be in Slavery, upon which she fell a crying, and said it was to her Choice, she wou’d rather have Charles than have your Lordship.”

Edward Edelen, 50: said “that . . . his Father . . . heard Lord Baltimore ask for Eleanor Butler a servant woman of Major Boarmans, when she came to him he said, I understand you are going to be married today to Negro Charles, he said to her what a pitty so likely a young Girl as you are should fling herself away so as to marry a negro, and he said not only that, but you’l make slaves of your Children and their posterity.”

Benjamin Jameson, 48: said “that . . . [he] heard old Mrs Ruthom . . . say, that she was at Major Boarmans when the same Nell and Charles . . . was married . . . that she heard several people wish them much Joy, and that she behaved as a Bride, and that he has heard his mother say that . . . my Lord asked . . . [Nell] how she would like to go to bed to a Negro? She answered him that she rather go to bed to Charles than his Lordship.”

Mary Crossen, 74: said “that she knew Eleanor Butler a white woman commonly called Irish Nell . . . that she does not know that Nell was a free woman but appeared to her, to do as she pleased, that she was a hard labouring body, and made Good Crops.”

William Simpson, 49: said . . . “that he remembers Nell Butler and Negro Charles, and they passed as man and wife and called themselves so, and that Charles he believes was a salt water negro, and always understood was a slave of Major William Boarmans.”

Joseph Jameson, 52: said “that he knew Irish Nell very well, that she lived . . . within a [mile?] of his Fathers, that she had a Daughter living with her, who died as a slave of Mr Boarman, and being asked how he knew she was a slave? Says she worked among the other slaves and lived as they did, she there died . . . that all the Descendants of the said Nell that he knew lived and died slaves they working and living as such except the said Kate who he had heard from the neighbourhood . . . has purchased her freedom.”

William McPherson, 60: said “that he knew Eleanor Butler, commonly called Irish Nell about fifty years ago . . . that he has seen Nell and Charles together and the Negro Charles called the said Nell his old woman, and she called him her old man, that he never knew of the said Nell being held as a slave, that when Charles went to [John] Saunders’s quarter Nell went there also and acted as a Cook . . . that [when] John Saunders hired Negro Charles . . . that Eleanor Butler either came with him or followed him there and acted as a free woman and took in spinning and acted as a midwife . . . that . . . he has heard, that the Children of Nell . . . were held as slaves.”

Questions for Analysis

ASK HISTORICAL QUESTIONS: Why were Irish Nell and her descendants enslaved? What assumptions about race, gender, and social order contributed to their enslavement?

ANALYZE THE EVIDENCE: According to the witnesses, why did Irish Nell marry Charles? Why did Charles marry Irish Nell? What did it mean to the witnesses that Irish Nell was a white woman? To what extent are the testimonies reliable evidence?

CONSIDER THE CONTEXT: How did the witnesses learn about Irish Nell and Charles? What do the testimonies suggest about the neighborhood where Irish Nell and Charles resided? What do they suggest about the relationship between servants and slaves?

RECOGNIZE VIEWPOINTS: Why did Lord Baltimore warn Irish Nell about marrying Charles? How did Nell’s viewpoint differ from that of Lord Baltimore and other white Marylanders?

Source: Depositions from Butler v. Boarman, 1H. & McH. 371 (1770), Provincial Court, Judgment Record, Liber DD 17, Folio 236–243, Maryland State Archives.