Newman, Benjamin

Benjamin Newman was a free African American man born before 1760, probably in Maryland or Virginia. The Mason family manuscript account book records “Benj Newman” being paid one pound and sixteen shillings for “boating” on 7 June 1794. Although the building of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal across the Potomac River in Maryland did not begin until 1828, the Potomac River itself was a rapidly developing commercial transportation passageway by the late eighteenth century. The Masons’ Raspberry Plain plantation was conveniently situated in Virginia along the Potomac. Stevens Thomson Mason recorded the payment to Newman on overseer Joseph Williams’s account as a credit. Williams likely paid Newman to transport crops for the Masons to or from Raspberry Plain.

The extended Newman family was a mixed-race family of enslaved and free individuals living primarily in the Furnace Mountain area of Loudoun County. At least a few members of the Newman family, including Benjamin, lived for a time across the river in Montgomery County, Maryland. The family trade was boating, and many Newman family members claimed the occupation of boating or ferrying in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In 1790, Benjamin Newman lived in Montgomery County. The first federal census recorded Newman as the head of a household comprised entirely of free non-white individuals. The census listed four males sixteen and older, one male under sixteen, and five females with no specified age. While the relationships of those in the house are not readily obvious, perhaps one of the women was Benjamin Newman’s wife or partner. Perhaps some of the other people were his children. In the 1800 census, Newman was still recorded as the head of a household in Montgomery County, but it appears his entire household was counted as free and white instead of African American. Benjamin Newman disappears from census records in Montgomery County after 1800.

At least one of the free African American members of the Newman family, probably related to Benjamin, became a wealthy and well-regarded member of the Loudoun County community. Bazil Newman was a ferryman, farmer, and entrepreneur. In 2022, Loudoun County renamed the Bazil Newman Riverfront Park in his honor. Around 1815, Bazil Newman chose to call his own son Benjamin. Perhaps Bazil Newman named his son after the Benjamin Newman who appears in the Mason family manuscript account book.

By Elizabeth S Paynter