Frisby Harris

Colonial Marines drill at Fort Albion on Tangier Island, VA.

(c) Gerry Embleton

Quick Facts

Significance:

A Corporal in the Colonial Marines

Place of Birth:

Calvert County, Maryland

Date of Birth:

1796

Frisby Harris was born around 1796 enslaved to William Harris in Calvert County, MD. By 1814, his enslaver likely offered Harris’s services to Dr. John Beall for a fee. Harris sought freedom from Beall’s property and immediately joined the British military.

Harris joined the ranks of the Colonial Marines under Captain Joseph Nourse on the HMS Severn. In one instance, he led the British forces back to Beall’s property and joined them in looting and burning down Beall’s house. There are a few written accounts of witnesses to Harris’s service, like Robert Yoe who wrote that Harris was “acting as an officer” when the British torched the county prison in Prince Frederick, MD. In the Colonial Marines, Harris became a Corporal, further demonstrating his alleged monetary worth to his former enslaver William Harris.

William Harris believed Frisby Harris to be worth five hundred dollars, but he only received $280 from the British government for his “loss of property.”

Although it likely that Frisby Harris lived the rest of his life as a free man in British territory, there are no records of his arrival in Halifax or Trinidad.