THE DEFENSE AND DEFENDERS.
William Parker and His Home--A Leader of His Race and Class--The
Hero of the Fugitive Slaves and the Champion of Their Resistance to
Recapture--The Night Before the Fight.
To those who sympathized with resistance to the execution of the
warrants, and rejoiced in the results of the battle to the death made
by the refugees, the hero of the event was William Parker. His home was
“where the battle was fought,” and he was then and had been long before
a leader of his race and the most resolute defender of the runaway
slaves in that section. He was a man of force and had strong though
untutored intellectual qualities. After the war for the Union, in
which he served, he inspired some articles for the _Atlantic Monthly_,
in 1866, from which this story will later be amplified, and upon the
occasion of a revisit nearly forty years ago to Christiana he gave some
account of himself to old friends thereabouts.
He was born opposite Queen Anne, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
His mother was Louisa Simms, who died when he was young, and his only
parental care was from his grandmother. His mother was one of the
seventy field hands of Major William Brogdon, of “Rodown” plantation;
and six years after the old master died, when his sons David and
William divided his plantation and slaves, William Parker fell to
David and to his estate “Nearo.” There he had kind treatment, until
slave traders came and a slave sale occurred, followed by others with
their cruel and pathetic separation of families. Then he realized the
bitterness of slavery and the blessings of freedom. He set out for the
North by Baltimore, with his brother as a companion. They reached
York and Wrightsville, crossed the river to Columbia in a boat and he
settled down to farm work near Lancaster at $3 per month; while his
brother moved on to the eastern part of the County. Later William got
employment with Dr. Obadiah Dingee, a warm sympathizer, who lived near
Georgetown and was the father of the venerable Charles Dingee, of West
Grove nursery and rose culture fame. While there Parker had access
to anti-slavery periodicals and he heard William Lloyd Garrison and
Frederick Douglass speak; he caught inspiration from them to organize
his fellows, fugitive and free, in that community to resist recapture
and repel assaults upon their race.
It has been already told, upon his own testimony, how they operated.
Parker was involved in many other affrays. In a rescue riot on the
streets of Lancaster on one occasion he proved himself a man of great
strength and valor; he was recognized by whites and blacks as a
towering figure. Daniel Gibbons sent Eliza Ann Howard, another refugee,
to Dr. Dingee’s and she became Parker’s wife; her sister followed and
married his associate Alex. Pinckney. They all lived together, and at
the time the Gorsuch party came for their slaves Parker and Pinckney
were running a horse-power threshing machine for Joseph Scarlet and
George Whitson. Their families lived together in the tenant house, just
to the east of the “long lane” on the Levi Pownall farm, later owned by
Marion Griest, and now by Mrs. Agnes Lantz. It was a place for frequent
foregatherings of the colored people in that day. No trace of the
little old stone house is left, but sketches of it were made before the
obliteration. The news spread by Sam Williams of Kline’s visit reached
Parker’s house the evening before the officers. Besides Pinckney, Josh
Kite, Samuel Thompson and Abraham Johnson were there. Sam Hopkins, who
died recently, always related that there was an apple-butter boiling at
Parker’s that night, and the merrymakers danced around the kettle and
fire singing a song the refrain of which was
“Take me back to Canada,
Where de’ cullud people’s free.”
The men named and the Parker and Pinckney sisters were there all night
at least. That the negroes were armed not only appears from subsequent
events, but it might be inferred from Parker’s own account of his
habit. He was long reticent as to the details of the final encounter;
but there is ample proof that of the Gorsuch slaves Noah Buley was
there very early on the day of the affray, and at least two others of
the Gorsuch slaves were on the ground soon after. The names taken by
fugitives were so uncertain that the “Abraham Johnson” of this occasion
may or may not have been the Baltimore County freeman of that name
who fled from Gorsuch’s warrant in 1849. Some of the Gorsuch party
so identified him. It is beyond doubt that the concourse of colored
men already gathered at Parker’s house when the Kline-Gorsuch squad
arrived were assembled by design, upon some call or signal; that their
leaders knew the objective point was the arrest then and there of the
Baltimore County runaways; and they soon had added force large enough
and brave enough to resist, defeat and either kill, wound or drive off
the officers and owners.