The First Slave Owner in America Was Not a Black Man

Misbar’s investigation concluded that Anthony Johnson was not the first slave owner in America. Johnson arrived in Virginia as either an indentured servant or a slave (records aren’t exactly clear) in 1621 and worked on a tobacco plantation owned by Edward Bennett. 

Sometime between 1625 and 1640, Johnson was able to buy his way out of servitude and purchase some land. By 1650, he owned a 250-acre estate where he raised livestock.  Records from 1641 indicate that Johnson had a black indentured servant named John Casor. 

In 1654, a planter named Robert Parker helped to secure the freedom of Casor, claiming that he was being illegally detained as an indentured servant. Johnson fought this decision in court until Casor was returned to the Johnson family in 1655 as a servant for life. This court decision helped to set the precedent for slavery in Virginia. However, the first slave owner in America came years before this decision.

In 1640, an indentured servant named John Punch was the first man sentenced to lifelong slavery for attempting to flee from his servitude. Therefore, Hugh Gwyn, the owner of Punch, is recognized as the first legal slave owner in America. Additionally, a man named Samuel Maverick is said to have arrived in Boston with two slaves as far back as 1624.

The image that is often shared with the inaccurate claim does not feature Johnson either, but rather ex-slave and prominent abolitionist Lewis Hayden. Photography was not invented until the 1830s, more than a century after Johnson’s death in 1670.