An Introduction to the lists of Enslaved People at Hampton

Several sets of unfree people worked on the property now known as Hampton National Historical Site. Probably the earliest workers were English and Irish indentured servants, who served for limited periods of time and then achieved freedom. Through the last quarter of the eighteenth, however, indentured servants were replaced by African-Americans who were legally slaves for life. Two groups of slaves worked at Hampton and its dependencies. One group, numbering nearly 350 by 1829 were in fact freed under conditions noted below by the will of Charles Carnan Ridgely, who died in that year. His son, John Ridgely, thus inherited Hampton but no work force. For a time he hired some of those individuals freed by his father and rented some slaves from his siblings. Very quickly, however, he purchased a second community of slaves who numbered as many as eighty or so. This second body of people was freed in 1864 by the enactment of a new constitution in Maryland.

Drawn from different periods, the documents concerning these two groups of slaves differ widely as do the data they provide. The groups are thus kept separate in the following lists. Surnames are given where they have been available, but unfortunately many Hampton slaves have come down to us identified by given names alone.

Kent Lancaster

Charles Carnan Ridgely 1829

John Ridgely 1829--64

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