Thomas Ringgold
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Thomas Ringgold IV | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 5, 1715 |
| Died | April 1, 1772 (aged 56) |
Burial place | Chester Cemetery, Chestertown, Maryland |
| Occupations | Merchant, plantation owner and slave trader |
| Known for | American slave trader, Maryland delegate to the Stamp Act Congress |
| Relatives | Tench Ringgold (grandson) Samuel Ringgold (grandson) Samuel B. Ringgold (great-grandson) Cadwalader Ringgold (great-grandson) |
Thomas Ringgold IV (1715 – 1772) was an American lawyer, slave trader and merchant from Chestertown, Maryland. Along with his business partner Samuel Galloway III, he operated the largest slave trade operation in the Chesapeake Bay and was responsible for importing one of the last shipments of slaves in the transatlantic slave trade to Maryland. Later in life, Ringgold became a revolutionary and served as a Maryland delegate to the Stamp Act Congress.
Law and business pursuits
Ringgold was born on December 5, 1715, on Kent Island in Kent County, Maryland, where he was a fifth-generation Marylander.[1] He would inherit considerable landholdings from his relatives, and as a young man became a wealthy planter and slave owner. On October 24, 1743, he married Anna Maria Earle Ringgold.[2][1] The couple would have one child, Thomas Ringgold V.[1]
In the 1720s and 1730s, Ringgold's family moved to Chestertown, which had become Maryland's second largest port after Annapolis.[3] The family began buying property in the city and Ringgold IV trained to become a lawyer. He was admitted to the bar in Queen Anne's County in August 1745 and Kent County by the next year. Alongside his brother William Ringgold, Ringgold diversified his business interests as a merchant, importing goods such as port and molasses, as well as expelled convicts and indentured servants to the colonies.[4] Through trade and property holdings, the Ringgold family would eventually control much of the port and inner city of Chestertown.[3] A diversified entrepreneur, Thomas IV additionally became involved with the African slave trade as a merchant with Liverpool-based James Clements and Company, and as a factor for London merchants Sedgley and Cheston. As his mercantile enterprises developed, he would practice law rarely after 1757.[1] Around this time, Ringgold became Benjamin Franklin's agent on the Eastern shore, helping him collect debts owed from the Pennsylvania Gazette.[5]
Slave trader
In 1746, Ringgold completed works on a grand house for his family and mercantile business in the heart of Chestertown which would become known as the Chestertown Custom House.[6][7][8] There, Ringgold would join with business partner, Samuel Galloway III to create one of the largest slave trading enterprises in Maryland history.[9][10] Ringgold and Galloway were in partnership in the slave trade in Maryland from 1750 to Ringgold's death, where they were responsible for the enslavement and sale of thousands of African people in colonial America.[11][12]
Ringgold was vocal about his trade, despite considering the slave trade a difficult and dangerous business.[13] He maintained that slaves from The Gambia were "the best", whereas those from Biafra tended to travel poorly.[14] Describing the losses incurred on one of the journeys of his slave ships in 1761, which left the coast of Africa with 320 enslaved persons, Ringgold wrote to an associate,
“we had but 105 left alive to sell, 11 of them so bad we were glad to get 11 pounds per Head for them.”[15]
Ringgold would later involve his son, Thomas Ringgold V in his slave trading enterprise. Ringgold V would marry Mary, the first daughter of his father's business partner, Samuel Galloway III.[16]