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Eleanor (Irish Nell) and Charles Butler - Southern Maryland Equity in History Coalition
Because of carefully crafted colonial Maryland marriage laws, Eleanor (Irish Nell) went from indentured servant to enslaved. How did this impact her descendants?
www.equityinhistory.org
Eleanor (Irish Nell) was a 16-year-old indentured servant when she married Charles Butler, an African enslaved man. She gave up her freedom in order to marry Charles.
Nell, of Irish origin, came to the Colonies as an indentured servant of Charles Calvert, the 3rd Lord Baltimore. She worked as a laundress on his estate. During that time servants and enslaved people often worked together and became friends.
When Irish Nell told Lord Baltimore she wanted to marry Charles, Baltimore warned her that the 1664 law decreed that a free-borne woman who married an enslaved man would lose her legal status and become enslaved to her husband’s master. The Butler children would also be born enslaved. According to Court depositions, Lord Baltimore warned Nell that “she would…enslave herself and her property,” but Nell replied she would “rather have Charles than your lordship.”
Charles and Nell were married in 1681 at the home of Charles’s enslaver, Major William Boarman in Charles County. Nell lost her freedom for life. She worked as a midwife and spinner on Boarman’s estate near Zekiah Swamp.
Charles and Nell’s eight children were born enslaved. In 1770, some of the descendants of Charles and Nell filed for and won their freedom suits on the basis that their ancestor, Irish Nell, was a free white woman. Because of oral storytelling traditions, later generations remembered the couple’s tale, sued for their freedom, and won—if they could prove they were Eleanor Butler’s descendants through a direct female line.