The O'Neal Genealogy Association Newsletter

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TOGA NEWS Volume III, Issue 9, September, 2003

While searching Montgomery County Census records recently, Bev Crowe and I stumbled across an O'Neal relationship that appears to have hitherto gone unnoticed. While we've known for some time that Anne O'Neale Middleton's daughter Matilda married a Mister Isaac Riley, we've never realized who Isaac Riley was. While going through census records and looking at old land deeds we realized that the Riley family was much more involved with the O'Neales than we realized at first glance, so we began taking a closer look at the family, and that's where the revelation came.

As you already know the O'Neale's in ante bellum Maryland were pretty prosperous, owning large amounts of land and plantations and most of them were slave owners. So, it was no shock to learn that Isaac Riley was also a slave owner. What stood out out though, was the name of one of Isaac's slaves, Josiah Henson. If you've ever read Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", you may be aware that Tom, the principle character in the book was modeled after Isaac Riley's runaway slave, Josiah Henson.

It's been said that one of the underlying motivations of northern sympathy for the anti slavery movement was the book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. This book pointed out the inhumanities of slavery and played an important role in the precipitation the anti slavery sentiment. I find it interesting and rather ironic that the O'Neale and Riley families were in part responsible for molding the iron which gave the northerners so much sympathy towards slavery, while Rose O'Neale, the confederate spy, best known as Rebel Rose, did everything in her power to thwart the northern movement and ultimately died defending the confederate cause.