In 1673, Charles Calvert, the Third Lord Baltimore, granted 1000 acres of land to Thomas Sprigg, who named the property Northampton in what later became Prince George's County, where the Sprigg family, their slaves, and their servants lived for nearly 200 years. Tobacco production in Prince George's County relied on white servant and black slave labor, and as Colonial Maryland's largest export it drove an intensive labor system that helped slavery grow quickly in the early 1700s, while Northampton, like other plantations, also raised grains, livestock, and dairy. From 1704 to 1710, the enslaved population in the county more than doubled from 436 to 1297, and in the late 1700s sixty percent of the population where Northampton was located was enslaved; by the 1800s, African Americans outnumbered whites in Prince George's County. Over the years, some enslaved people at Northampton were granted freedom, and in 1814 Osborn Sprigg's will freed 13 enslaved people and their children, with Tom and Frank left livestock and property, Betsey left money, and William left clothing and furniture. Others remained in bondage and sought freedom through escape, and some are documented in runaway advertisements placed by Osborn Sprigg, Jr., in a Washington, D.C., newspaper for the capture of Bob and Charles. Samuel Sprigg, governor of Maryland from 1819 to 1822, inherited Northampton around 1814/1815 after the death of his uncle, Osborn Sprigg Jr., and the 1840 U.S. Census recorded 117 slaves there. In 1865, Dr. John Contee Fairfax, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, purchased Northampton, and some freed African Americans and their descendants remained there as tenant farmers until the 1930s. Today many descendants of those enslaved at Northampton still live in Prince George's County, and archaeologists and descendants have created a research program combining the archaeology of the slave quarters with oral histories.
