[[return]]1. The Washington Union, April 14, 1848.
[[return]]2. Daniel Drayton was a native of New Jersey who had spent several years following the water. He had risen from cook to captain in the wood-carrying business from the Maurice River to Philadelphia. Eventually he engaged in coast traffic from Philadelphia southward. He seemed to have drifted quite naturally from strong humane impulses, intensified by an old-time spiritual conversion, into a settled conviction that the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man was a reality and that it was his duty to do what he could to assist those in bondage.
Latterly his voyages had carried him into the Chesapeake Bay and thence up the Potomac. His first successful effort to assist the slaves was made on an earlier trip when he agreed to take away a woman and five children. The husband was already a free man. The woman had under an agreement with her master more than paid for her liberty, but when she had asked for a settlement, he had only answered by threatening to sell her. The mother and five children were taken aboard at night and after ten days were safely delivered at Frenchtown, where the husband was in waiting for them. Memoir of Daniel Drayton, Congressional Library.
[[return]]3. The only punishment meted out to Judson Diggs for his act of betrayal, so far as is known, was that by a party of young men who, shortly after the occurrence, took him from his cart and after considerable rough handling, threw him into the little stream that in those days and indeed for many years thereafter, took its way along the north side of the old John Wesley Church, then located at a spot directly opposite the north corner of the Convent of the Sacred Heart on Connecticut Avenue, between L and M Streets.
A number of old citizens now living distinctly remember Judson Diggs, who lived, despised and avoided, until late in the sixties. One of these is Mr. Jerome A. Johnson of the Treasury Department.
[[return]]4. Memoir of Daniel Drayton, Congressional Library.
[[return]]5. The case against Drayton and Sayres was prosecuted by Philip Barton Key, the District Attorney, before Judge Crawford, and on appeal the prisoners were sentenced to pay a fine of $10,000 and to remain in jail until the same should be paid.
English was absolved from all criminal responsibility and given his liberty.
After an imprisonment of more than four years they were pardoned by President Fillmore, to whom such application had been presented by Charles Sumner.--Memoir of Daniel Drayton.
The fare at the jail was insufficient and of poor quality and a more wholesome and generous diet was frequently surreptitiously furnished by Susannah Ford, a colored woman, who sold lunches in the lobby of the Court House.
[[return]]6. Stowe, "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin."
[[return]]7. The National Era, April 16, 1848.
[[return]]8. Memoir of Daniel Drayton.
[[return]]9. John Brent, the husband of Elizabeth, the oldest of the Edmondson girls, had first bought himself, earning the money chiefly by sawing wood; had then bought the freedom of his father, Elton Brent, for whom he paid $800, and finally bought Elizabeth's freedom, after which they were married. He purchased the ground at the southwest corner of 18th and L streets, now owned by his heirs, and erected a small frame dwelling. This was later enlarged and there the John Wesley A. M. E. Zion Church was established. He was a laborer in the War Department during forty years and died in 1885.--From interviews with Mr. Brent and other members of the family.
[[return]]10. Hamilton Edmondson was sold in the New Orleans slave market about the year 1840 and took the name of his purchaser and was thereafter known as Hamilton Taylor. He learned the trade of cooper and was allowed a percentage of his earnings, but was unfortunate in having his first savings stolen. He eventually acquired his freedom through the payment of $1,000.
[[return]]11. He continued in the cooperage business, was highly respected and became comparatively wealthy, having a place of business on Girard near Camp street. John S. Brent, who is his nephew and the son of the John Brent heretofore mentioned in this narrative, spent a week with his uncle, Hamilton Taylor, in 1865, on his return from Texas, when, as a member of the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, he was mustered out of the service.--Interview with John S. Brent.