Slaveryto
freedom
Harrisburg on the eve of Civil War
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The Patty Cannon Gang
From The Year of Jubilee, Chapter 6
The kidnapping of free Blacks to feed the burgeoning domestic slave trade plagued nearly all towns and cities that had African American communities. While some kidnappings were perpetrated by one or two immoral men who saw an opportunity, it became clear as early as the 1810s that organized bands were preying on northern free Black communities. Most of the young boys taken from Philadelphia in the 1820s were abducted by a man named Joe Johnson and his gang, working near the city wharves. Testimony from three boys who were recovered, Samuel Scomp, Peter Hook, and Cornelius St. Clair, all of Philadelphia, described the method of operations and identified Joe Johnson and members of his family. The boys gave depositions at different times, and the details provided by each corroborated the stories of the others.
All described being lured near to, or actually onto, a sloop anchored in the Delaware River owned by Joe Johnson, the Little John. Usually it was the promise of an odd job for extra money -- helping to "bring up peaches, melons, &c. from a boat," for a quarter dollar -- at other times the boys were lured onto the ship by the promise that they would be given a dram of whiskey. In all cases, they were led below deck where they were tied up and securely chained. The gang leader, Johnson assured the boys' silence by brandishing a large knife and telling them to "be still, make no noise, or I'll cut your throats."
There they were kept until the gang had collected several children, at which time they sailed downriver, put ashore after several days, possibly in Maryland, and were roped together around the neck and taken to Joe Johnson's tavern. After a day or two being held captive there, they were marched overland to Sussex County, Delaware, to the remote farmhouse of Joe Johnson's in-laws, Jesse and Patty Cannon. The captives were then chained in the garret of the house, some for weeks at a time. It was at that location that Peter Hooks testified he saw Ephraim Lawrence chained in the garret.
From the Cannon house, they were taken by wagon to a boat, and sailed further south, accompanied by Joe Johnson's brother, Ebenezer, and his brother-in-law, Jesse Cannon, Jr. Ebenezer Johnson owned property and a cabin in Ashville, Alabama, and it was there that Samuel Scomp's group rested before continuing the journey toward slavery. They were beaten regularly and savagely if they complained or slowed down, and on the way from Ashville to Rocky Springs, one of the children, whose feet were frostbitten, kept falling down. Ebenezer Johnson flogged the boy so severely that they had to place him in the wagon. The beating, lack of medical attention and mistreatment were so severe that the child died before they reached their destination.
The staging area for these horrific scenes was a remote location, described by Philadelphia's Mayor Joseph Watson as "on the dividing line between the states of Delaware and Maryland, low down on the peninsula, between the Delaware and Chesapeake bays." A contemporary historian notes that the specific area, North West Fork Hundred, was "one of the most desolate and isolated points on an isolated peninsula." Historian Gabrielle M. Lanier says the area, near Delaware's Great Cypress Swamp, was "well know for its relative lawlessness."
The Patty Cannon Gang
It was an ideal location for the activities of the kidnapping gang headed by Patty Cannon. She was the wife of Jesse Cannon Sr., and though the testimony of Hooks and Scomp did not mention her by name, concentrating instead on her son Jesse and son-in-law, Joe Johnson, it was Patty Cannon who appears to have been the leader of the operation. Her gang targeted any free blacks they could lay their hands on, imprisoning them until they could sell them to southern slave merchants. The gang operated most effectively in the port cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, but nabbed captives -- they preferred young boys and girls -- from as far inland as Harrisburg. An eyewitness reported a child named John Jacobs, from Harrisburg, was imprisoned at Joe Johnson's tavern in 1827. His fate is unknown.
Arrest documents show that the gang was active in kidnapping free blacks as early as 1821, but the state line-straddling location of their farmhouse, combined with the remoteness and lawlessness of the region, allowed them to stay one step ahead of active prosecution, and they continued with their kidnapping activities for another five or six years. It was during this time, following the death of her husband, that Patty Cannon assumed a leadership role in the gang, apparently leading to an expansion of their operations that included the summer of 1825 kidnapping spree in Philadelphia, which triggered the investigation that would become their undoing.
In the years following her arrest in 1829, after several bodies were dug up on her Delaware property, Patty's reputation grew rapidly. She was described as "more like a man than a woman," and a strapping wench -- a woman of great strength and ferocity." Stories of murder and brutality circulated, most of which were exaggerated, but the truth was horrible enough.
Testimony proved that she and her accomplices kept captured blacks chained in her farmhouse garret, sometimes for many months, until they could be taken south for sale as slaves. She was implicated in the murder of a southern slave merchant, whose bones were dug up on her property, and one person testified before the judge who issued the arrest warrant for her, that she bludgeoned a black infant to death, and otherwise killed at least one other black chil -- the bodies of whom were also found buried on her farm. She was imprisoned in Delaware to await trial for her alleged crimes in 1829, but died in jail of natural causes on May 11, just before her trial.
The terror of Patty Cannon did not die in her jail cell, however. Stories of her depredations spread across the countryside within months of her arrest, and her reputation grew with each retelling of the stories. A largely fictional work, The Narratives and Confessions of Lucretia P. Cannon, appeared in 1841, and contributed greatly to the folklore. So fierce was her reputation, that African American mothers in Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania threatened misbehaving children for many decades by invoking the dreaded name of Patty Cannon.
The Philadelphia Times, 24 March 1879)
Notes
Additional Sources
Smith, Eric Ledell, "Rescuing African American Kidnapping Victims in Philadelphia as Documented in the Joseph Watson Papers at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 129, No. 3 (July 2005), pp 317-345.
The Year of Jubilee
Vol. 1: Men of God and Vol. 2: Men of Muscle
by George F. Nagle
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