Patty Cannon

Common card · No. 254675

Patty Cannon, whose birth name may have been Lucretia Patricia Hanly (c. 1759/1760 or 1769 – May 11, 1829), was an illegal slave trader, serial killer, and the co-leader of the multi-racial Cannon–Johnson Gang of Maryland–Delaware. The group operated for about a decade in the early 19th century and abducted hundreds of free Black people and fugitive slaves, along the Delmarva Peninsula, across multiple state lines to sell into slavery in southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi. The activity became known as the Reverse Underground Railroad. Mayor Joseph Watson of Philadelphia and Governor John Andrew Shulze of Pennsylvania worked to recover young free black people kidnapped by the gang in the summer of 1825 and to prosecute the gang members. They did not succeed in trying any of the white members. The only time any real effort was made to arrest and convict the gang was when authorities found the bodies of several white slave traders, a child and a baby. After being acquitted in...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Erastus Elmer Barclay, 1820 or 1821-1888, Public domain