Binah's Story, 1812
Handbill for the fugitive “Buinor” (Binah), 1812
Runaway from Mr. Emory Smyth’s of Queen Anne’s County, State of Maryland, last spring, a small negro woman named Buinor [Binah], [and]with her a small girl child about fifteen months old. This negro woman was once the property of Mr. John Hudson of Kent County. Buinor is the wife of Mr. John Irons’s [enslaved man] Abe, and it is supposed she may be in the neighborhood of Mr. Sims’s or in the neighborhood of Newmarket. Whosoever takes up said negroes and brings them to the subscriber [in] Queen Anne’s near Dixon’s Tavern, or secures them [so] that the owner may get them, shall be entitled to the above reward.
Daniel Smyth
[spelling and punctuation have been modernized]
A young woman named Binah (a name of West African origin, written here as “Buinor”) was another brave and successful freedom-seeker. In 1812, she escaped from her enslavers, who were members of the Smyth family living in Queen Anne’s County, near Sudlersville. She had previously been enslaved in Kent County, where her husband, Abe, was still enslaved on a farm near Chesterville.
This handwritten notice advertises for Binah’s recapture, offering a $30 reward. The Smyths described her as a “small negro woman” and noted that she had fled with her daughter, “a small Girl Child About fifteen months old.” They suspected that Binah was probably hiding out in Kent County to be near Abe.
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