Ezekiel Loney

Ezekiel Loney in the muster roll for the HMS Albion transferring from the HMS Narcissus.

(HMS Albion ADM 37/5005); 7100 (CO 295/59 - 3rd Company Village in Trinidad)

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Lancaster County, Virginia

Date of Birth:

About 1787

Place of Death:

3rd Company Village, Naparima, Trinidad

Date of Death:

May 10, 1870

Loney enlisted in the Colonial Marines on May 5, 1814. He likely trained at Tangier Island and fought alongside Tom Saunders and Canada Baton, who also joined the Colonial Marines, in battles around Washington D.C. and Baltimore in the fall of 1814.
 

Thousands of enslaved people took their freedom when they joined the British during the War of 1812. Situated on a point in Northern Neck, Virginia, overlooking the Rappahannock River, the British ships anchored in the river below were likely visible to Ezekiel Loney and the rest of the enslaved on the Corotoman Estate in Spring 1814. On April 18, 1814, Ezekiel Loney, along with Tom Saunders and Canada Baton (Kennedy Beaton), took their freedom when they joined a group of British marines who had come on shore to raid a nearby estate. Loney, Saunders, and Baton led the British back to the Corotoman Estate around midnight on April 20, 1814, to liberate 66 enslaved people, most of whom were women and children, from the estate. Among those liberated were Loney's wife, Nelly Marks, their daughter China Loney, and his sister Fanny. Ezekiel Loney, and the 68 other men, women, and children who were liberated from the Corotoman Estate found themselves on the HMS Narcissus and eventually transferred to the HMS Albion and HMS Regulus. They collectively were a part of the largest group of enslaved people who self-liberated from a single estate in Virginia during the War of 1812. 

Ezekiel Loney's experience of freedom with the British was one that was not unusual for enslaved men who self-emancipated to the British side. Loney enlisted in the Colonial Marines on May 5, 1814. He likely trained at Tangier Island and fought alongside Tom Saunders and Canada Baton, who also joined the Colonial Marines, in battles around Washington D.C. and Baltimore in the fall of 1814. Loney was eventually promoted to rank sergeant of the 4th Company. Meanwhile, his wife and daughter, Nelly and China, and sister, Fanny, remained in British protection. They travelled on British ships to Tangier Island and Bermuda, where they were located when the war ended in 1815. It was in Bermuda where Loney and his family chose to resettle in the British colony of Trinidad along with nearly 200 other self-emancipators who followed the British during the war. They were given 16 acres of land in the 3rd Company Village in the Naparima District. By 1823, Loney remarried to Ellen with whom he had another child. Loney and his family remained in the village, where he assisted William Patterson, the pastor of the village and former Colonial Marine, until his death on May 10, 1870.  

Learn more about the enslaved on the Corotoman Estate during the War of 1812