| Notes |
- Sophie Gowins Slave of Samuel Ringgold--Escaped to Lake Ontario
Account of her life was published:
“Caroline Healey Dall, “A Breeze from Lake Ontario,” in The Liberty Bell (Boston: National Anti-Slavery Bazaar, 1853), 33. The abolitionist who published Gowins’ account noted, “Contrary to my usual practice, I have preserved in this sketch the true names of Eliza’s owners.” However, Dall did not claim that “Eliza Thomas” was a real name, and a lengthy obituary published in the Hagerstown Mail on 24 Dec. 1877 (“Death of a Centennarian”) suggests that Sophie Gowins never used the name “Eliza Thomas” after she returned to Hagerstown following the Civil War, and that it may have simply been invented by Dall for her essay. (Too many of elements of the 1877 story-including the surname Gowins-align with the 1853 story for these to be two different women.)” ([Emily Amt, 2021, page 5-6]
“One of the people who passed on such stories at Fountain Rock was a woman named Sophie Gowins (a.k.a. Eliza Thomas). Born in Frederick County in the eighteenth century, she had been taken by her enslavers to Georgetown (now in Washington, D.C.) and then back to Frederick, promised her freedom, but sold instead when her enslaver died unexpectedly. Samuel Ringgold purchased Gowins, her husband Josh Gowins, and their five children at the estate auction, and brought them to Fountain Rock. Gowins recalled the stories her own enslaved grandmother had told her about Africa: They ketched her-la! I’ve heard her tell many a time, how she left her babies sleeping in her hut, while her husband was gone away to fish. She warn’t afraid of nothing, and she went down to the shore a-gathering broom-sedge. The pirates had spread bright-colored kerchiefs over the bushes. They stuck to the thorns, and while she was a-pulling of ’em off, they bound her hands, and carried her away to the hold of the ship. Many a dead body was lifted from her side and flung overboard during the long, hot voyage; but she lived, lived to see more children of hern, in old Virginny. Sophie Gowins undoubtedly told this story in the slave quarter at Fountain Rock. Later, Gowins recalled her time with the Ringgolds: “I spun and sewed and quilted and lived comfortable, for they treated me well, they did. I had two [more] children, but they died. It was no matter for that, they went free to Heaven.”12 Her husband Josh also died during this time. Yet Gowins could speak positively of her years at Fountain Rock, compared with what would come later (as we shall see below).” ([Emily Amt, 2021, page 5-6
“The 1820s brought hardship for everyone at Fountain Rock. By 1825, Samuel Ringgold had gone bankrupt, and his trustees had begun selling off his assets, including the people he held in slavery. A Hagerstown newspaper advertised “30 valuable Negroes” to be sold from Fountain Rock on March 24, “consisting of men and boys, women and children-some being as fine hands as any in the state.” Horses, cattle, and sheep were put up for sale at the same time. Not all of Ringgold’s assets were liquidated at this time, though; when he died four years later (in 1829), more sales apparently ensued. Sophie Gowins remembered being sold as part of the Fountain Rock estate settlement: The Gin’ral died, and there was another auction, and they sold one of my girls away from me. My husband was dead, and they sent me away to ole Virginny, with four children. Two on ’em went, I don’t know know where, and two on ’em went with me... It’s a cussed place, that ole Virginny, and there I was worked to the death.14 Her mistreatment in Virginia eventually drove Sophie/Eliza Gowins Thomas (now remarried) to make a harrowing escape to Canada.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, page 6-7
“From 1825 (the date of the Ringgold bankruptcy) onward, many of the Fountain Rock slaves were probably dispersed, like Sophie Gowins, to Virginia and further south. Like Gowins and her daughters, families were broken up, as happened routinely when enslavers sold their human property.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 7)
“Dall, 33. It’s also possible that she was sold in the 1825 sale and mis-remembered the occasion for it. There are no records of slaves being sold after Ringgold’s death. 15 Dall, 33-7. She would return to Hagerstown after Emancipation, die there in 1877, and be buried at Williamsport; Hagerstown Mail, 24 Dec. 1877.” ([Emily Amt, 2021, p. 7)
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