Patty Cannon

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Martha "Patty" Cannon, who apparently settled in the United States from Canada in 1802, was the leader of a gang in the early 1800s that kidnapped slaves and free blacks and transported and sold them to plantation owners located further south. According to accounts, Cannon was a large, unruly woman with enormous strength and a ruthless streak.

Cannon was the wife of local farmer Jesse Cannon and lived near the town of Reliance, Maryland, U.S., then called Johnson's Corners, on the border at the convergence of Caroline County and Dorchester County, Maryland, and Sussex County, Delaware. Cannon led a band of kidnappers, which included her son-in-law Joe Johnson. Locals knew of the gang's activities and that they used a tavern, run by Johnson, as a headquarters and a holding place for the kidnap victims.

Victim accounts as printed in the abolitionist journal the African Observer state that captives were chained and hidden in the basement, the attic, and secret rooms in the house. Captives were taken in covered wagons to Cannon's Ferry (now Woodland Ferry). At the ferry, they would sometimes meet a schooner traveling down the Nanticoke River to the Chesapeake Bay and onto Georgia slave markets.

The site of the Patty Cannon House in Reliance, MD, mid-1930's - it is believed that this is not the original house. From: Willard Stewart Photographs for the WPA and HABS Collection. University of Delaware Library. Newark, Delaware.

The gang's activities continued for many years. Local law enforcement officials were reluctant to halt the illegal operations, given the lack of concern that most felt for blacks in those days, and may have been afraid of the gang's reputation for violence. When Patty Cannon learned the police were coming, she would slip across state lines away from local police forces.

The gang was finally caught in May 1822. Joe Johnson was sentenced to 39 lashes and records show the sentence was carried out. Based on witness accounts and the discovery of bodies on Cannon property, Patty Cannon was charged with suspicion of murder in 1829, including one count of murder of a child. While awaiting trial, however, she killed herself in her cell in Georgetown, Delaware.