THE REVOLUTIONARY SHORE - February 4, 1775

Pictured: Nancy Johnson’s name on the Brig Elija manifest to Port Mouton, NS, 1783, Sir Guy Carleton Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.

By Kellee Blake

On this very day, 250 years ago . . .

Benjamin Franklin fretted about the impending British deployment of thousands of soldiers and sailors to America and Parliament readied to declare Massachusetts in a “state of rebellion.” Meanwhile, Colonial leaders argued among themselves about the need for military preparedness and jockeyed for premier positions in the new national hierarchy.

For twenty-eight-year-old Nancy Johnson, though, these lofty debates in halls far away changed little about her cold February 1775 days. Nancy was the enslaved worker of William Smith on Pungoteague Creek. She surely saw how the Continental Association’s boycott of British goods changed the social behaviors of the Smiths and their Accomack neighbors. She possibly observed a reduction in vessel trade to and from the nearby Pungoteague landings. Still, the resonant voices pondering rights and representation brought no new hope of freedom to her winter hearth.

Two more winters passed before her chance at liberty came sailing up the Chesapeake Bay. Nancy Johnson seized it. In August and September 1777 a British fleet “assailed” the Shore and welcomed any enslaved men and women who would support their fighting forces. Nancy Johnson and Levi[e] Johnson, ten years her junior, escaped from William Smith’s estate to a waiting vessel and were “spirited off” to North East, Maryland. The Johnsons traveled on to British-occupied Philadelphia and then followed the British on a freedom exodus to New York City.

Nancy and Levi were capable, healthy, and hopeful; they had come so far and much seemed possible. They joined the large New York City community of formerly enslaved “refugees” who believed a British victory would provide new opportunities in the American colonies. But then the British lost the war. The 1783 Treaty of Paris demanded the British return these former slaves to their owners. Some Shore slaveholders even traveled to New York to retrieve their “property.” Thankfully, Nancy and Levi’s story ended on free soil far to the north in Nova Scotia.

For many Virginians, the chilly uncertainties of February 1775 would soon give way to the incendiary fervor of the Second Virginia Convention held in March at St. John’s Church in Richmond. Liberty was foremost in discussion and oration. Nonetheless, many enslaved of the Shore soon recognized their most immediate hope for personal liberty did not lie with these emerging Patriots, but meant following the soldiers in red coats.