John Diggs-Dorsey, a Black man in his early twenties, lived and worked in Darnestown as a servant to James and Linnie Tschiffely. On July 25, 1880, Linnie Tschiffely accused Diggs-Dorsey of rape and physical assault, charges he denied. After a two-day manhunt, he was brought to the county jail in Rockville, at the present-day location of the County Council Building. On July 27, a lynch mob kidnapped him, marched him in leg-irons for one mile, and hanged him on Route 28. Four months later, the local jury and grand jury both returned verdicts of death by "violence committed by parties unknown." News of Diggs-Dorsey's murder appeared in dozens of newspapers nationwide under headlines such as "Lynch Law in Maryland," and he was described with derogatory terms meant to suggest he deserved his fate. Judge Richard Johns Bowie, who oversaw the grand jury inquest of the lynching, condemned the act even though he had been an enslaver and favored the relocation of formerly enslaved people to Liberia, telling jury members on November 12, "But who shall say that a man whom the law presumed to be innocent was not so, except a jury of the county by fair and full trial."
