"I'll Use My Freedom Well": Josiah Henson and Slavery's Contradictions

I was born June 15th, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis Newman, about a mile from Port Tobacco.

Born into enslavement in Maryland at the nation’s founding, Reverend Josiah Henson embodied the opposition between American ideals of liberty and the lived reality of those enslaved. Rooted in economic gains for those in control, slavery was a foundational element of post-colonial America, and it would take almost 90 years and another war to formally abolish.

Josiah Henson’s life is rife with experiences common to thousands of enslaved who remain nameless and whose stories are lost to history. Through ingenuity, determination, and faith, he achieved freedom, and shared his story with the world, shining a bright light on the reality that so many silently endured. For Josiah Henson, freedom was not an abstract ideal, but a condition shaped by daily constraints, limited choices, and moments of agency within the system of enslavement.

As a young child, he suffered a fate most feared among the enslaved – his family was torn apart and he was sold to Adam Robb of Rockville, in the newly formed Montgomery County. Traded for the price of horseshoeing to Isaac Riley, who owned property just outside of town, Henson lived there for another two decades, growing up in the plantation system, eventually taking on the role of Riley’s overseer, managing hundreds of acres of agricultural fields and orchards, carrying crops to market, and protecting the larger enslaved community as best he could. After years of forced labor and increasing responsibility on the Riley plantation, Henson was denied the freedom he had been promised, a betrayal that ultimately led him to escape with his family to Canada in 1830. There he co-founds the Dawn Settlement with other Freedom Seekers and publishes his autobiography in 1849. In doing so Henson asserted control over his own story. His and other slave narratives influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, centering national debates over slavery in lived experience. Many who read the novel refused to believe it was based on real events; Stowe publishes A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin –detailing her sources and catalyzing discussions about true equality and liberty for all.

Josiah Henson’s autobiography preserves a rare first-person account of that struggle, while archaeological research at the Riley property anchors his words in the material realities of life on a plantation. While we don’t know the names of all those Riley enslaved, their hands were behind most tasks needed to run the farm. They cooked and served the meals, smoked and cured the meat, cared for the horses and other livestock, made and mended clothes, harvested and sold the crops. Today, the core of Riley’s property is maintained as the Josiah Henson Museum and Park, dedicated to sharing his story and slavery in Montgomery County, where as many as 40% of the population was enslaved prior to the Civil War. An introductory exhibit imagines the landscape Reverend Henson knew based on archaeology, documentary research, and his own words (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Riley plantation imagined, ca. 1815 (Montgomery Parks).

One rich archaeological feature on the site offers a window into the many ways Josiah and the other enslaved contributed to daily life around 1815 (Figures 2-5). Debris from repeated kitchen hearth sweepings—including household items and over 17,000 fish and small animal remains—shows that residents supplemented the farm animals and orchards with fishing and hunting. Pork and chicken are the primary livestock in the assemblage, with butchery patterns indicating on-site processing, while the presence of less typical bird species – swan, hawk, crow – suggests flexible food practices. Artifacts related to food preparation and clothing such as straight pins, a thimble, dish and glass fragments are the physical traces of the enslaved’ s handiwork at the site. The presence of decorative horse tack called a bridle boss points to roles that required skill and trust, underscoring how enslaved individuals like Josiah Henson occupied positions of responsibility without the freedom that such work might otherwise allow.

Figure 2: Straight pins and thimble from the site (JPPM).

Figure 3: Embossed horse hardware recovered from the site (JPPM).

Figure 4: Ceramic recovered during feature excavation.

Figure 5: Sample of animal remains (Montgomery Parks).

Artifacts from the later periods of Riley’s ownership are more mundane and indicate a collapse of Riley’s wealth as he loses slaves and needs to hire laborers. Josiah Henson returns to the plantation in 1878 and his remark that “The once great plantation is now but a wilderness; the most desolate, demoralised place one can imagine” shows that the economics of slavery were the foundation of Riley’s success, and the result when those who made it great were finally free to work for themselves. Josiah Henson’s life – and the many he represented - was defined by the contradictions inherent in slavery and today his legacy speaks to an essential part of Maryland’s history.