Document listing the division of enslaved persons among the heirs of Governor Charles Carnan Ridgely, 1829
G. Howard and Gene White Papers, MS 1003, Hampton NHS, NPS
The family headed by “Yellow Jake”/Jacob Wicks and his wife Keziah/Kesiah was not fully researched until the final years of the Ethnographic Study. However, since then, it has become one of the most important in terms of numbers of identified living descendants along several different lines of descent. During the EOA, Dr. Camee Maddox-Wingfield’s ground-breaking research (“The Power of the Apostrophe”) on identifying family relationships through analyzing possessive prefix names led to recognizing several important kin groupings, including the Wicks family.
The inventory of the enslaved at the Hampton home farm taken in February 1829 (before Gov. Ridgely’s death later that summer) lists the following eight children as “Keziah’s”: Harriet (17), Ben (17), Celia (14), Jake (12), Maria (7), Moses (7), Henry (6) and William (4). Also recorded at Hampton among the adult males was an enslaved man named “Yellow Jake” (referring to the light tone of his skin) age 44. Keziah herself, age 42, was among the enslaved women at Hampton. Both Keziah’s Harriet and Keziah’s Celia are referred to in other estate records of Gov. Ridgely with the surname Wicks, helping to identify the entire family group. Additionally, when both Jake (44) and Keziah (42) were manumitted in September 1829, their Certificates of Freedom list their names as Jacob Wicks and Kesiah Wicks.
Sadly, none of the eight Wicks children were of an age to be freed when their parents were. Unlike families such as the Battys and Sheridans, who during the settlement of the estate to the various heirs were kept together for the most part, Keziah’s children were divided among four different owners. Harriet, Maria, and Jake Jr. were inherited by George Howard (“Waverly”, Howard County); Moses, Henry, and William by Priscilla White (Baltimore City); Celia by James Carroll (“Mount Clare” and “Summerfield” near Cromwell’s Bridge); and Ben by Charles S. W. Dorsey (Howard County). With the children spread out from eastern Baltimore County (Cromwell Valley) to central Howard County (near Marriottsville), Jake Sr. continued to work as a paid farm laborer throughout the 1830s for John Ridgely at Hampton. No further information on Keziah post-manumission has been found.
Further genealogical research turned up a wealth of information on “Yellow Jake” and Keziah’s descendants. As is typical, no further information could be found on their three daughters. Three of their five sons (Jake, Jr., Moses, William), however, had descendants living at least into the late 19th century, and Moses (1822-1892) had eight children with many dozens and probably hundreds of living descendants. The most recent group of descendants identified, from the line of Moses’ daughter Laura Jane, were not discovered until spring 2022, with research and updating of family trees ongoing.
Very soon after he was freed at age 28, Moses Wicks married a woman named Catherine Howard and in 1850 was living near Epsom, the Chew/Ridgely farm just south of Hampton. Moses and his brother Jake, Jr. had been widely separated during their post-1829 enslavement, with Jake out in Howard County and Moses in Baltimore City. Nevertheless, the brothers eventually reunited to buy land together in southeastern Baltimore County in the Fullerton/Overlea area in 1855. In the 1860 Census, Moses is listed working as a laborer on the nearby farm located in the Little Gunpowder district, owned by Benjamin Chew, a son of Henry Banning Chew and Harriet Ridgely Chew of Epsom. By 1870, the Wicks family was still living in the Little Gunpowder district in the area near Forge Road according to family members. Brother Jacob Jr. was living next door with one his sons Hanson Wicks, all the men working as farm laborers. Moses lived until 1892 and is buried at Asbury Methodist Cemetery in White Marsh.
Despite Moses’ spending nearly 40 years in southeastern Baltimore County, his children branched out into every part of the county. At least three of Moses children (Abraham, 1857-lv. 1940; Laura Jane, 1864-1927; Moses, Jr., 1870-1937) had numerous descendants who have become scattered across many neighborhoods of eastern, western, and northern Baltimore County and Baltimore City and some as far as Virginia and North Carolina. Abraham moved to Mount Washington and then into the city on Caroline Street not far from Johns Hopkins Hospital. Laura Jane married twice and had three daughters from whom there are dozens of living descendants, most living in eastern Baltimore County. Among these are several ministers and community leaders.
Moses, Jr. maintained his connections to the White Marsh and Glen Arm neighborhoods but also bought property in East Towson. He was active in civic affairs including the Baltimore County Industrial Association. He and his wife Mary are buried Mt. Zion AME Cemetery, Glen Arm. In the most remarkable coincidence of the entire Ethnographic Study, Moses Jr.’s daughter Ruth Wicks Garnes had a granddaughter who is currently married to the uncle of Camee Maddox-Wingfield, the scholar and EOA Team Member whose work first identified the children of Jake and Keziah Wicks.
