John Ringold was a Black man who was enslaved in Arlington in the 1800s and lived out his free life in the District.
Records indicate that he was born in Maryland. One of his enslavers, Benjamin F. Weeden of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, prepared a bill of sale on January 8, 1839, to offer Ringold as collateral for his promise to pay back a cash loan from Robert B. Moss, also of Anne Arundel County, by 1846. Weeden lent Ringold to provide services to Moss during those years, and based on receipts, Ringold did serve Moss in at least 1840 and 1841. In 1843, Weeden paid Moss the balance owed, and Ross released Ringold back to Weeden. In the same year, Weeden married Mary Jane Causin in the District.
Mary Jane later remarried to William B. Lacy, born in New York in 1824 and living in Alexandria (Arlington), and thus Lacy became Ringold’s next enslaver. Lacy’s farm was located at Walter Reed Drive and Columbia Pike, near the area once known as Hunter’s Crossroads, near where the Cinema and Drafthouse is now. It was a place where, in 1860, Lacy is recorded as owning 37 acres of improved land and 3 acres of unimproved land, 3 horses, 9 milk cows, 5 swine, 75 bushels of rye, 250 bushels of corn, and 7 enslaved people, including Ringold.
Presumably, Lacy moved his family to the District—as other Arlington landowners did when Union troops overtook their land and dwelling—because Lacy submitted a petition to the federal government’s Southern Claims Commission to receive payment for the value of his enslaved property upon DC’s emancipation of enslaved people in April 1862. In his petition for renumeration for Ringold, Lacy described Ringold as about age 40 and “dark, about five feet nine and a half,” “stout build, well made and healthy.” In addition, Lacy wrote that Ringold “is a valuable servant, being a first rate garden and field hand, an excellent wagoner, and may be trusted with any duty connected with a farm or garden.”
In July 1863, the District listed Ringold as 44 years old and among those residents subject to military duty in the District—that is, to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He may have trained with the 1st District of Columbia Colored Volunteers, which formed in May 1863, the first black regiment formally mustered into service (later designated as the 1st United States Colored Troops).
In the 1870 Census, Ringold was listed as a District resident, 50 years old, working as a brickmaker. Listed with him is his family, which he likely began establishing during his time in Arlington: Ann M. Ringold, 34, born in Virginia, whose profession is “keeping house”; Charles Ringold, 12, born in Virginia, a “laborer”; John, 10, born in Virginia, who works “in brickyard”; and three younger children, Edward, 8, and Elijah, 4, both born in DC, and Zachariah, 1, born in Virginia, all listed as “at home.”
By 1880, John Ringold, who would have been 60, is no longer listed in the census, and neither is his wife Ann, who would have been 44. But his children Edward, 18, a “laborer”; Elijah, 14, who “works in the brick yard”; and Zach, 12, “at home,” are still living as a family, with presumably John’s second wife, Maria Ringgold, 40, a “laundress” born in Virginia. She, along with each member of the family, is listed as “mulatto” and with a different spelling of their last name. John Ringold’s children, Charles, who would have been 22, and John, who would have been 20, are not recorded as living at home by this time, and two new children appear in the records: May, 8, and Enoch, 4, both born in DC, indicating that John Ringold at least lived to father them in 1878, between the age of 54 and 58.
—Sue Eisenfeld
Sources:
Bill of Sale, Benjamin F. Weeden to Robert B. Moss. (1839, May 11). U.S. Slave Owner Petitions, 1862-1863, Washington, DC. Retrieved from Ancestry.com.
Ringold lease receipts, 1843 from Robert B. Moss to Benjamin F. Weeden. U.S. Slave Owner Petitions, 1862-1863, Washington, DC. Retrieved from Ancestry.com.
U.S. Marriage Records, Mary Jane Causin to Benjamin F. Weeden. Retrieved from Ancestry.com.
Schedule 1 – Free Inhabitants in Alexandria, Virginia. (1860, July). Retrieved from US 1860 Federal Census from Ancestry.com.
Schedule 4 – Production of Agriculture in Alexandria, Virginia (1860, September 15). Retrieved from US Selected Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880, Ancestry.com.
Petition for Compensation (1862). U.S. Slave Owner Petitions, 1862-1863, Washington, DC, William B. Lacy Claim. Retrieved from Ancestry.com.
Schedule II – Consolidated List of all persons of Class II, subject to do military duty in the Seventh Congressional District of Columbia. (1863, June-July). U.S. Civil War Draft Registration Records, 1863-1865. Ancestry.com.
Schedule 1 – Inhabitants of the Seventh Ward, Washington District of Columbia (1870, June 11). Retrieved from US 1870 Federal Census, Ancestry.com
Schedule 1 – Inhabitants of Washington City, District of Columbia (1880, June 5). Retrieved from US 1880 Federal Census, Ancenstry.com.
Washington, DC Genealogy Trails. (2023.) Retrieved from http://genealogytrails.com/washdc/marriages/marr1841to1845.html