Patty Cannon
| Patty Cannon | |
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| Born |
Lucretia Patricia Hanly c. 1760 or 1759 or 1769 ? |
| Died | May 11, 1829 (aged 60-70) county jail, Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware |
| Resting place | county jail cemetery, Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware, later, reburied in potter's field, near jail, Georgetown, Sussex County, Delaware |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Lucretia P. Cannon, Patricia Cannon, Lucretia Hanly, Martha Cannon |
| Occupation | kidnapper, illegal slave trader, slave stealer |
| Employer | self employed, family business |
| Known for | For being an illegal slave trader and the co-leader of the Cannon-Johnson Gang of Maryland-Delaware, which operated for about a decade in the early 19th century kidnapping free blacks and fugitive slaves, to sell into slavery in the South, which came to be known as the Reverse Underground Railroad. |
| Spouse(s) | Jesse Cannon |
| Children | Jesse Cannon, Jr., Mary Cannon Johnson |
| Parent(s) | L.P. Hanly |
| Relatives | Joe Johnson (son-in-law), Ebenezer Johnson (son-in-law) |
Cannon-Johnson Gang, attacking legal slave traders, from the 1841 book, Narrative and confessions of Lucretia P. Cannon, who was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hung at Georgetown, Del....
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| Founded by | Patty Cannon, Joe Johnson |
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| Founding location | Reliance, Caroline County, Maryland and Reliance, Dorchester County, Maryland |
| Years active | early 1820s-1829 |
| Territory | Maryland, Delaware, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Chesapeake Bay, Southern United States |
| Ethnicity | European-American |
| Membership (est.) | ? |
| Criminal activities | kidnapping, illegal slave trading, slave stealing, murder |
"Patty" Cannon, whose birth name may have been, Lucretia Patricia Hanly (c. 1760 or 1759 or 1769-May 11, 1829) was an illegal slave trader and the co-leader of the Cannon-Johnson Gang of Maryland-Delaware, which operated for about a decade in the early 19th century kidnapping free blacks and fugitive slaves, to sell into slavery in the South, which came to be known as the Reverse Underground Railroad.
Mayor Joseph Watson, of Philadelphia and Governor John Andrew Shulze, of Pennsylvania, worked to recover young free blacks kidnapped by the gang in the summer of 1825 and to prosecute its members. They did not succeed in trying any of the white members. After being acquitted in Mayor's Court, in 1827 mulatto gang member John Purnell (alias John Smith and others) was convicted on two counts of kidnapping in Philadelphia County Court in Pennsylvania; he was sentenced to a fine and 42 years in jail. He died in jail five years later. In 1829 Cannon was indicted in Delaware for four murders, after the remains of four blacks (including three children) were discovered on property she owned. She confessed to nearly two dozen murders and died in prison while awaiting trial. Some sources say she committed suicide by poison.
Beginning in 1841, some popular accounts referred to the illegal slave trader, as Lucretia P. Cannon, although there is no evidence to indicate she used the name "Lucretia" in her lifetime. A popular 19th-century novel based on her exploits contributed to her mythic status as a ruthless figure. She has continued to be featured as a figure in fiction.
Cannon married local farmer Jesse Cannon and they lived near what is now Reliance, Delaware/Maryland (then called Johnson's Crossroads), on the border with Delaware at the convergence of Caroline and Dorchester counties in Maryland, and Sussex County, Delaware. Jesse Cannon died around 1826.
Cannon and her husband had at least one daughter, who twice married men known to engage in slave-stealing and kidnapping. The daughter first married Henry Brereton, a blacksmith who kidnapped free Black Americans for sale into slavery. Brereton was convicted and imprisoned in 1811 for such kidnapping, but escaped from the Georgetown, Delaware jail. Brereton was captured, convicted of murder in another case, and hanged with one of his criminal associates, Joseph Griffith.
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Wikipedia