MARY QUEEN, also known as the “Poppaw Queen” or “Queen Mary” was born—a free woman of color—between 1680 and 1690 near the Popayán Province, in South America. During the time of “Queen Anne’s War,” she embarked a two–year voyage to England after the British privateer Captain Woodes Rogers laid siege on the port town of Guayaquil in modern–day Ecuador. Around 1715, Mary was brought to the South River Hundred, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland by Captain Thomas Larkin. She entered an indenture with merchant-planter James Carroll, at his Fingaul plantation in All Hallows Parish, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, but was illegally enslaved and never set free. In his last will and testament dated 12 February 1728, James Carroll bequeathed Fingaul, along with his White Marsh properties—including the “Bright Seat Farm”—to Jesuit superior, Rev. George Thorold, S.J. Two of Mary’s daughters—Nanny and Phillis—remained at Fingaul, while she and her son, Ralph, were later sent to the ‘Old Bohemia’ plantation, in Warwick, Cecil County, Maryland. Many, if not all, of the Queen families enslaved by the Maryland Jesuits descend from the maternal lines of either Nanny Cooper (a.k.a. “Queen”) or Phillis Queen.

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In 1796, some of Mary Queen’s descendants petitioned for their freedom in the Courts of Maryland and the District of Columbia on the claim that she was born a free woman. Many recovered their freedom, while others were unsuccessful and remained enslaved by the Jesuits.

(--excerpt from the Queen Family Heritage Foundation website, see link here: https://queenfamily.org)

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