40

668 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

is an equine disease that manifests as a congestion of the mucous membrane in the
hard palate of the mouth.
49.31 fetlocks] Part of a horse's leg where the tuft of hair grows behind the pastern
joint, a part analogous to the human ankle; the tuft itself.
50.20 William Wilks] William Wilks (c. 1791-?) was a slave of Edward
Lloyd V.
Sometime in the first half of the 1830s he purchased his freedom and moved to
Baltimore. In that city, Wilks worked as a general laborer and resided on Lexington
Street, east of Park Street. Return Book, 1 January 1824, Land Papers--Maintenance
of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi; Matchett's
Baltimore Director for 1835-6 (Baltimore, 1835), 275; Matchett's Baltimore Director
for 1837-8 (Baltimore, 1837), 472.
50.33 Austin Woolfolk] Austin Woolfolk of Augusta, Georgia, became a slave
trader serving the Southwest, which rapidly expanded following the Battle of New
Orleans in 1815. He settled in Baltimore in 1819 to avail himself of both the large
surplus slave population in the state and the excellent shipping facilities that the port
afforded. During the 1820s he lived on Pratt Street to the west of the city's commercial
center. Woolfolk's business prospered as he sent agents throughout Maryland
ready to pay high prices in cash for young black males. He annually transported from
230 and 460 slaves to markets in New Orleans, many of them having been purchased
from planters on the Eastern Shore. In the 1830s, however, Woolfolk's business
declined as a result of increased competition from larger firms, a decrease in the number
of slaves for sale owing to manumissions and owner emigrations, and the heightened
opposition of Marylanders to the interstate slave trade. Deyle, Carry Me Back,
98-100, 179-80; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 50, 58, 76-80, 96, 102; William
Calderhead, "The Role of the Professional Slave Trader in a Slave Economy: Austin
Woolfolk, a Case Study," CWH, 23:195-211 (September 1977).
52.8 Austin Gore] Austin Gore (1794-1871), also referred to as Orson Gore in
the Lloyd family account and cash books, was the overseer of Edward Lloyd V's
Davis's Farm plantation, where in 1822 a young slave named Bill Denby died. A
friend of Gore's later challenged Douglass's assertion that Gore coolly murdered
Denby, insisting that he was "a respectable citizen living near St. Michaels, and. . .a
worthy member of the Methodist Episcopal Church;. . .all who know him, think him
anything but a murderer." Lloyd apparently tolerated Gore's brutal actions, because
he later promoted him to be overseer of the much larger Wye House plantation. The
1830 U.S. census listed Gore as the head of a household that contained three boys
and two girls under age ten, his wife, and an elderly woman. A. C. C. Thompson,
'To the Public--Falsehood Refuted," reprinted in NASS, 25 November 1845, and in
Lib., 12 December 1845; Land Papers--Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39,
reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi; 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County,
14.
53.11 Bill Denby] Bill Denby (c. 1802-22) lived with twenty-two other slaves,
including his family, on Davis's Farm, one of several Talbot County plantations