Dangerfield Newby
Dangerfield F. Newby (c. 1820 – October 17, 1859), described as a "huge mulatto", was the oldest of John Brown's raiders, one of the five black raiders. He died during Brown's raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Life. As was usual at the time, Newby's skin color was mentioned: he was "a tall and well built mulatto, aged about thirty years". Born into slavery in Culpeper County, Virginia, Newby's father was Henry Newby, a (white) landowner. His mother was Elsey Newby, who was a slave, owned not by Henry but by a  neighbor, John Fox. Elsey and Henry lived together for many years in Fauquier County, Virginia, and had several children; under Virginia law they could not marry. Dangerfield was their first child. Dangerfield Newby, his mother, and his siblings were later freed by his father when he moved them across the Ohio River into Bridgeport, Ohio. John Fox, who died in 1859, apparently did not attempt to reclaim Elsey, Dangerfield, or any of his siblings. Dangerfield's wife, Harriet Vincent Newby, was the property of Jesse Jennings, of Arlington or Warrenton, Virginia. She and their seven children remained enslaved in Virginia . Newby had been unable to purchase their freedom; their owner raised the price after Newby had saved the $1,500 that had previously been agreed on. A different source says that Newby had raised $742 of the $1,000 price, and this included only one of their seven children (the youngest). Letters from his wife were found on his body and revealed some of his motivation for joining John Brown and his raid on Harpers Ferry: he hoped to free them by force, since no other way had worked. The raid on Harpers Ferry. On 17 October 1859, the  citizens of Harpers Ferry set to put down the raid. Newby was one of the first shooting, killing a visiting Charles Town resident and friend of Lewis Washington, George Turner; the details are unknown. Harpers Ferry manufactured guns but the citizens had little ammunition, so during the assault on the raiders they fired anything they could fit into a gun barrel. One man was shooting six inch spikes from his rifle, one of which struck Newby in the throat, killing him instantly. His body remained in the street over 24 hours, "exposed to every indignity that could be heaped upon  it by the excited populace." The people of Harpers Ferry stabbed it repeatedly, and amputated his limbs. "The treatment the lifeless bodies of those wretched men received from some of the infuriated populace was far from creditable to the actors or to human nature in general." "Though dead and gory, vengeance was unsatisfied, and many, as they "ran sticks into his wound. or beat him with them," wished that he had a thousand lives, that all of them might be forfeited in expiation and avengement of the foul deed he had committed." The "Baltimore Sun", however, describes Newby's body  in the street thus: "No one seemed to notice him particularly, more than any other dead animal." Hogs were observed eating it. "Hog Alley" in Harpers Ferry is said to have gotten its name from this incident. Newby's body, and those of 7 of the 9 others killed, were thrown in a packing box which went in a pit, without ceremony, clergy, or marker. (The bodies of the other two were taken to Winchester Medical College for dissection by students.) In 1899 they were dug up and reburied in a single coffin on the former John Brown Farm in  North Elba, New York. Newby's family. Dangerfield's widow Harriet married a man named William Robinson, from Berkeley County, West Virginia, who served in the Union Army in Louisiana. They raised three children, along with Dangerfield's, and settled near Mount Vernon, Virginia. Harriet died in 1884, and as of 1991, Dangerfield's and her descendants "still live in the D.C. area and beyond." A niece of Newby, Ida Newby, graduated from Storer College in 1884. Letter from Harriet Newby. The following letter was found on Dangerfield Newby's body after the failed Harpers Ferry raid: