Benjamin Banneker was an African-American naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author. He was a landowner who also worked as a surveyor and farmer.
Thomas Johnson was an 18th-century American lawyer, politician, and patriot. He was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, where he signed the Continental Association; commander of the Maryland militia in 1776; and elected first (non-Colonial) governor of Maryland in 1777. Throughout his career, Johnson maintained a personal and political friendship with George Washington, who gave him a recess appointment as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in August 1791. He served only briefly, resigning in January 1793, citing health issues.
Charles John Mahoney was an English-American actor. He was known for playing Martin Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier (1993–2004), and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for the role in 2000. Mahoney started his career in Chicago as a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company alongside John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, and Laurie Metcalf. He received the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer in 1986. Later that year, his performance in the Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves earned him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Ashton Court is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. Although the estate lies mainly in North Somerset, it is owned by the City of Bristol. The mansion and stables are a Grade I listed building. Other structures on the estate are also listed.
William Cranch was a United States circuit judge and chief judge of the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. A staunch Federalist and nephew of President John Adams, Cranch moved his legal practice from Massachusetts to the new national capital, where he became one of three city land commissioners for Washington, D.C., and during his judicial service also was the 2nd Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and a Professor of law at Columbian College.
John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy though is primarily an institutionalist. He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and, from the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018 to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, he had been regarded as the primary swing vote on the Court.
Anthony Johnson was a man known for achieving wealth in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia. Born in Angola, he was the first person to own a slave as recognized by the Virginia courts. Held as an indentured servant in 1621, he earned his freedom after several years, and was granted land by the colony.
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and Magna Carta (1215).
Henry Harford, 5th Proprietor of Maryland, was the last proprietary owner of the British colony of Maryland. He was born in 1758 the eldest — but illegitimate — son of Frederick Calvert 6th Baron Baltimore and his mistress Mrs. Hester Whelan. Harford inherited his father's estates in 1771, at the age of thirteen, but by 1776 events in America had overtaken his proprietary authority and he would soon lose all his wealth and power in the New World, though remaining wealthy thanks to his estates in England.
West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. 401 (1791), was the first United States Supreme Court decision and the earliest case calling for oral argument. Van Staphorst v. Maryland (1791) was docketed prior to West v. Barnes but settled before the Court heard the case: West was argued on August 2 and decided on August 3, 1791. Collet v. Collet (1792) was the first appellate case docketed with the Court but was dropped before it could be heard. Supreme Court Reporter Alexander Dallas did not publish the justices' full opinions in West v. Barnes, which were published in various newspapers around the country at the time, but he published an abbreviated summary of the decision.
Roger Brooke Taney was the fifth chief justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. Taney infamously delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), ruling that African Americans could not be considered U.S. citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories. Prior to joining the U.S. Supreme Court, Taney served as the U.S. attorney general and U.S. secretary of the treasury under President Andrew Jackson. He was the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
Thomas Law, was a reformer of British policy in India, where he served as collector of revenue for the East India Company. Working with Lord Cornwallis, governor-general of India, Law formulated a major policy known as the Permanent Settlement, which served as the basis for land tenure and taxation policy for natives during subsequent decades of British rule. He returned to England for his health in 1791, taking with him his three illegitimate sons borne of his Indian mistress.
According to accounts that began to appear during the 1960s or earlier, a substantial mythology has exaggerated the accomplishments of Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), an African-American naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author who also worked as a surveyor and farmer.
Joe Thompson vs Walter Clarke was decided in December 1817.
Henry Darnall II (1682-1759) was a wealthy Roman Catholic planter in Colonial Maryland. He was the son of the politician and planter Henry Darnall, who was the Proprietary Agent of Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, and served for a time as Deputy Governor of the Province. During the Protestant Revolution of 1689, Henry Darnall I's proprietarial army was defeated by the Puritan army of Colonel John Coode, and he was stripped of his numerous colonial offices. After his father's death, Henry Darnall II did not enjoy political power in Maryland, but he remained wealthy thanks to his family's extensive estates. He married twice, fathering many children. His eldest son Henry Darnall III (c1702-c1783) inherited the bulk of what remained of his estates, and one of his grandchildren, Daniel Carroll, would become one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A small portion of Darnall's former property, now called Darnall's Chance, can still be visited today.
Daniel Bell was a formerly enslaved man who gained his freedom and then sought the freedom of his wife, Mary, and their children. Due to a series of unfortunate events, it took decades for the Bell family to obtain their freedom. Daniel and his wife had both been enslaved again after they had obtained their freedom. Two of their children who were born free were enslaved.
Mima Queen and Child v. Hepburn, 11 U.S. 290 (1813), was a United States Supreme Court case, affirming a denial of a petition for freedom. By refusing to create a new exception to the hearsay rule, which would admit second-hand testimony of an ancestor's freedom into evidence, the case had important implications for the law of evidence and the American antislavery movement.
On 3 June 1991, 21 year old Alison Shaughnessy was stabbed to death in the stairwell of her flat near Clapham Junction station. Shaughnessy was newly married, but her husband was having an affair with a 20-year-old woman, Michelle Taylor. A witness reported seeing two women running from Shaughnessy's building after the murder, and fingerprints found at the scene matched Michelle and her sister Lisa Taylor, who claimed never to have been there. Michelle's diary included an entry reading "my dream solution would be for Alison to disappear, as if she never existed".
Anna "Ann" Williams was an enslaved woman who successfully sued for freedom for herself and her children before the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Her lawsuit and her infamous jump from the window of the F Street Tavern heightened public awareness of the terror and suffering caused by the slave trade in the United States.
