Anthony Johnson - The United States first slave owner?

Anthony Johnson - The United States first slave owner? 

Born in Angola in 1600, Johnson was captured and sold into a type of slavery known as indentured servitude in the British colony of Virginia by Portuguese slave traders. He was eventually able to purchase his own freedom after seven years of toil at a white owned plantation but not before surviving the Jamestown Massacre of 1622.

Johnson went on to become a successful tobacco farmer and landowner. He was also the first person within the American colonies to own a slave as recognized by the Virginia courts. 

This occurred after one of his slaves, John Casor, escaped and later worked for a white owned plantation. Whilst here Anthony Johnson brought suit in Northampton County court against the plantation owner, Robert Parker, in 1654 for detaining his "Negro servant, John Casor," saying "Hee never did see any [indenture] but that hee had ye Negro for his life".

Johnson would win this case and Castor would be sentenced to a lifetime of indentured servitude and become the one of the first African men to be declared indentured for life. This has led to Anthony Johnson being considered by many to be the first slave owner in the American colonies. 

In a 1916 article, John H. Russell wrote, "Indeed no earlier record, to our knowledge, has been found of judicial support given to slavery in Virginia except as a punishment for a crime."

Many historians argue that John Punch, an African who was ordered indentured for life in 1640, should be considered the first documented slave in Virginia. Punch had escaped along with two white indentured servants, one from the United Provinces and the other from Scotland. When they were captured, all three were sentenced to whippings. The Dutchman and the Scotsman were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude. However, John Punch, was sentenced to servitude for the rest of his life.

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