Between Freedom and Equality

Chapter 1: From Slavery to Freedom in Colonial Maryland

Detail from a map of the Territory of Columbia, 1794
Detail from a map of the Territory of Columbia, 1794. The Potomac Canal around Little Falls (marked “Canal”) is just northwest of Georgetown (labelled “George T”). On the map both can be found in the red circle just to the northwest of the City of Washington. George Pointer was born near the Presbyterian Meeting House, marked “PM House,” and circled in red on the upper left corner of the map. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Main Points

  • Tobacco was the major crop of colonial Maryland and enslaved people were a major source of farm labor. 
  • Transportation of crops was very difficult because of dirt roads and rocky rivers.
  • Five years before he was elected as the first president of the United States, George Washington became the president of the Potomac Company that was building a canal around the waterfalls on the Potomac River.
  • The owner of a young slave boy rented him to the Potomac Company; six years later, at age 19, this boy bought his freedom and would work on the river for the rest of his life.

In 1773 George Pointer was born enslaved on a tobacco farm in rural Maryland near the Potomac River. Tobacco was the major crop of colonial Maryland. As a slave child Pointer had backbreaking work in the tobacco fields. At harvest time he would receive 3 meals a day, but his only clothing was likely to have been a large shirt. 1

In order to get the tobacco to market the enslaved workers had to haul it over heavily rutted dirt roads nine miles south to the deep-water river port of Georgetown. They couldn’t use the river because its many falls made it too dangerous to come down and too difficult for sail ships to go up. 2

View of the port of Georgetown, circa 1795
View of the port of Georgetown, circa 1795, looking up the Potomac River. Drawing by George Isham Parkyns (1750-1820). Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

The merchants of Georgetown wanted a safer Potomac to increase their trade; George Washington also wanted a smoother river to get to his property on the American frontier. The year after winning the Revolutionary War he convened a meeting of the states of Maryland and Virginia at Mt. Vernon to form the Potomac Company to make the river navigable. Their agreement was the first interstate commerce agreement of the new country. George Washington was made the president of the board and the company immediately advertised for slave labor to do the backbreaking work. 3

13-year-old Pointer was rented to the company, which gave him a small hut near Lock 6 of the current C&O Canal. It was next to the powder magazine where the company stored its valuable blasting powder; presumably they wanted a guard because there had been several thefts.4

Powder Magazine
The stone structure in the foreground is what remains of the eighteenth century US powder magazine, which overlooks the rubble dam that extends into the Potomac River. It is located just north of the lockhouse at Lock 6 of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Photo by Clara Myrick Green.

Eventually he met George Washington and his friends on the board of the Potomac Company. In 1789 Pointer joined the first formal survey expedition of the upper Potomac. The survey was led by Washington’s close friend, Colonel George Gilpin and they covered about 4 miles a day, and carefully recorded the 1,160-foot drop in the river. Pointer was only a 16-year-old teenager when he made this historic trip down the river that would be so important to the rest of his life.

Three years later Pointer bought his freedom for $300. But he did not get any documentation, possibly because there were economic costs to the former owner. The result, however, was that in a county in which 98% of Black people were enslaved, Pointer would be vulnerable to re-enslavement by unscrupulous strangers. Therefore, it is not surprising that he continued working for a company where people knew him as a freed and trustworthy man.

George Pointer worked for George Washington’s Potomac Co. for more than three decades. He eventually became a supervisory engineer and was addressed as Captain. After becoming free he immediately married Betty Townsend, who was also a freed slave, and they had three children. Thirty-five years later Pointer would meet another American president when he and his granddaughter ferried John Quincy Adams up the Potomac Canal.

Did you know…?

  • Transporting cargo by river was much cheaper than by dirt roads.
  • Tobacco was one of the most important crops and exports in colonial Maryland.

Question for Students

  • Why was slave labor considered so important in 18th century Maryland?
  • Why was the Potomac River so important to George Washington?
  • Did the Potomac River fulfill George Washington’s dreams in the next two centuries?
  • Why was improving transportation systems so important in the 18th and 19th centuries?
  • Would you like to go on a 218-mile trip down the Potomac River in a canoe?

See All the Images

Click on the images below to see them in a larger format.

  • Painting of George Washington
  • View of the port of Georgetown, circa 1795
  • Powder Magazine
  • Map of the Washington aqueduct in 1864
  • Detail from a map of the Territory of Columbia, 1794.

Endnotes

  1. Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021, 8-10.
  2. Torrey and Green, 10.
  3. Torrey and Green, 11-12.
  4. Torrey and Green, 12.
  5. Torrey and Green, 16-17.
  6. Torrey and Green, 18-19. 

Other Sources

  • Robert J. Kapsch, The Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007.
  • Joel Achenbach, The Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac and the Race to the West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
  • Cora Bacon-Foster, Early Chapters in the Development of the Patomac Route to the West. Washington DC: Columbia Historical Society, 1912.