Johns Hopkins and Slavery
[in progress]
In sorting out the relationship of the Hopkins family to slavery, the focus is on the immediate family of Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) including his grandparents, his aunts and uncles, his parents, and his siblings.
Johns Hopkins (grandfather) was the first in the immediate family to be confronted with the anti-slavery discipline of the Friends.
In 1776 he was visited by Isaac Jackson, a Friend from Pennsylvania, who was canvasing Friends in Maryland who owned slaves to inquire about their views on manumitting their slaves.
In 1780 Johns Hopkins (grandfather) was chastised by the Indian Spring Meeting to which he belonged for manumitting for term rather than immediately.
Margaret Cook also visited Johns Hopkins (grandfather) in 1781 followed by a visit to Baltimore. The journals of Margaret Cook are transcriptions published in the Friends' Intelligencer and Journal copies of which are to be found on http://archive.org.