Brandywine people, or simply the Brandywine (sometimes known as the "Brandywine deme" by sociologists), are a mixed-race group of free African American descent in southern Maryland, some of whom claim to be descended from the Piscataway people. The term "Brandywine people" references the Brandywine area of the Prince George's and Charles County border line where the majority have historically resided.
The sometimes-used label "Wesorts" is regarded as derogatory and a pejorative
by some. It was listed as a self-identified "Other race" on the 2000 census.
Families with the surnames Proctor, Swann, Savoy, Newman, Harley, Butler and Thompson comprise the group, documented to be descended from free Black ancestors. They are described as a network of lighter-skinned African-American families that practice intermarriage.
History
Modern genealogical analysis traces the Brandywine people as originating from free African-Americans, in this case the free offspring of Black men and white women. However, a 1664 law enacted by the Maryland General Assembly dictated that any children of enslaved fathers would be enslaved for life, lessening the willingness of the Brandywine to disclose parentage. In 1681, Eleanor Butler married Charles, a slave of Nigerian origin, and their children were enslaved. Several members of the Savoy family were freed from 1704-1705, later becoming a visible free African-American tenant farmer family in Southern Maryland with social capital.
From 1702 to 1720, there were nine court convictions in Charles County for illegitimacy from women with Brandywine surnames. In Maryland, unlike women who had children with Native Americans and faced the lesser charge of fornication, white and free mulatto women who had children with Black men were sentenced to seven years of servitude under the charge of illegitimacy. One of these was Elizabeth Proctor, who had two mulatto children between 1705-1709. In 1740, she left her estate to her elder son, Charles. The Proctor family owned farmland in Maryland by 1762, and some members later became Brandywine people. In 1787, Mary Butler, a descendant of Eleanor and Charles, successfully sued for her freedom, after which other members of the Butler family filed similar suits. Members of the Butler family later became part of the Brandywine. In 1788, Maryland ceded land to form the capital, where members of the Proctor, Butler, and Savoy families were residing.
By the 1790 United States census, the Brandywine numbered 190 people, or 36.2% of people marked mulatto in Charles County. At this time, Brandywine people were regionally segregated by surname, with the integration of the six core families into a population isolate still in its early stages.
Antebellum to mid-20th century
On the 1830 Census, the district with the largest proportion of Brandywine in the county also had the most varied surnames. Many free Black people with Brandywine surnames began living in the District of Columbia later on, often descending from white women, which they would present as proof of their freedom. In 1865, Oswell Swann, a free Black man of Brandywine lineage, was paid to be a guide for John Wilkes Booth during his escape. He later informed to Union soldiers.
Past 1870, the core six Brandywine surnames were joined by ten "marginal" surnames entering through in-marriage. They were likely to be mostly of free Black origin from the Antebellum South, but three were possibly from white men. Core families practiced higher rates of endogamy than marginal ones, but Brandywine people still had higher rates of exogamy than other local populations.
It was recorded in 1939 that some Black Marylanders disliked the Brandywine for disdaining them socially. A 1940 report noted them to have been illiterate due to a refusal to attend Black schools. However by the 1950s, Brandywine people were recorded to attend both white and Black schools, and were engaging in outmarriage at increasing rates. They sat in the pews behind white people at church, while Black people sat in the balcony; a similar arrangement was noted in the nearby graveyard. Some were noted to be living in Washington D.C. and Baltimore by this time, with a general trend of migration to urban areas over the decade. Unlike other urban minorities at the time, they tended to not concentrate in ghettos, and thus had higher rates of outmarriage. Free African-Americans in DC began working for the government, such as Edward Augustine Savoy, whose parents had both worked for Hamilton Fish before he hired him in 1869.
Midcentury to present
Scholar Jodi McFarland Friedman noted that by 1970, the predominant origin narrative of the group ignored African ancestry, which she proposed was because classification as Black conferred no advantages during the first half of the 20th century. She also noted writers tended to downplay the African ancestry of the Brandywine, which she suggested was informed by a climate of pro-segregation and eugenicist sentiments in America at the time. Some of the Brandywine began moving away by this period, passing as white in new areas.
Philip Sheridan Proctor and his son, both of Proctor lineage, founded the Piscataway Indian Nation and received government funding in the 1970s, citing the ostracization of Black people from their community in their petition. Their claim to indigeneity was challenged by sociologist Thomas Brown, wherein he stated their narrative of separateness from African-Americans was false, noting the group intermarrying with Black people before the Civil War, only developing a separate identity from recently freed slaves during Jim Crow to obtain separate schools and churches.
After Philip's death, the organization split into three entities. They attempted to receive access to Piscataway remains in the year 2000, but failed due to the split and a lack of federal recognition. Members of the Piscataway Indian Nation stated the other two entities were of Wesort[sic] ancestry, rather than Piscataway, with Gabrielle Tayac stating members of Proctor families in other entities only shared free Black ancestors with Philip. She claimed that the members of her own entity did not possess Wesort[sic] lineage.
In 1990, James E. Proctor Jr., another member of the Proctor family, was elected as the delegate for District 27A, which represents the Brandywine area, and was a member of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. His wife Susie Proctor, also a Proctor, became the delegate for the same district after his death in 2015. Academic J. Lorand Matory writes that members of the Proctor and Savoy families become more likely to identify as Black after attending Howard University, sometimes distinguishing them from their families.
Genetic analysis
A 1969 report by Frank B. Livingstone on the Brandywine concluded that a deleterious gene for sickle-cell anemia had been magnified over time in the population. He stated this was due to high rate of endogamous marriage in the isolate, which he claimed was ninety percent. A 1966 report by Carl Witkop documented albinism (tyrosinase-positive albinism) among the Brandywine, which he credited to inbreeding. The group was later incorrectly characterized as having the highest rate of albinism on earth.
Sub-Saharan African
EuropeanAdmixture proportions of 128 African Americans. Each vertical bar represents an individual. Note individuals on far left of chart with higher levels of European admixture.
In 2016, Rock Newman, producer and WHUT-TV radio host of Brandywine origin, had geneticist Rick Kittles on his show to present the results of his DNA analysis. The testing showed Newman to be of 78-82% European and 18-22% Sub-Saharan African descent. Kittles noted the results reflected Newman's family history, referencing the part of Maryland he grew up in. He stated that Newman's parents had similar levels of European admixture, and that certain African-American families with light skin and higher European admixture maintained their ancestry proportion across generations via mate preference (endogamy), specifically across the East Coast of the United States. When Newman inquired about Amerindian admixture, Kittles replied that he did not have any. J. Lorand Matory describes the Brandywine as a network of lighter-skinned families in the eastern United States that practice intermarriage, similar to the Louisiana Creoles.
Wayne Karlin's novel The Wished For Country (2002) represents the origins and struggles of the Brandywine as a multicultural people in the early days of Maryland's first European settlement at St. Mary's City. The Los Angeles Times reviewed The Wished-For Country as a contribution to the history of "the common people," calling the book "an attempt in novel form to bring to life the original Wesorts and their turbulent world."
Leslie Tucker, an African-American with descent from the Brandywine people, and Henry Horenstein published We Sort of People in 2006, which referred to them simply as "Proctors". The book contains pictures and interviews with Brandywine people, often from Leslie's family.
1234Harte, Thomas J. (1963). "Social Origins of the Brandywine Population". Phylon. 24 (4). Clark Atlanta University: 371–372. doi:10.2307/273378. JSTOR273378. Retrieved 18 January 2026. It is indeed noteworthy that for the years 1702 through 1720, the Charles County Court records include nine convictions for illegitimacy of persons with Brandywine names. All of these, except one, the only "marginal" name in the group, were females with "core" surnames.
123456789Heinegg, Paul (2000). Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware From the Colonial Period to 1810. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company. pp.1, 3, 5–7, 53–67, 258, 286–290, 318, 321, 334–339. ISBN978-0-8063-5042-4. Retrieved 2 January 2026. One such community in Charles and Prince George's Counties made up of members of the Proctor, Butler, Newman, Savoy, Swann, and Thompson families has been called "Piscataway Indians" or "Wesorts" [Gilberts, Surviving Indian Groups of the Eastern United States]. However, the court records of Charles and Prince George's County clearly identify their ancestors as being white women who had children by persons of African descent.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
1234Mitrano, Erica (3 August 2007). "A tribe divided: Piscataway Indians' search for identity sparks squabbles". Maryland Independent. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 26 March 2026. Turkey Tayac had been born Phillip Sheridan Proctor, but Gabrielle Tayac said it was unlikely that her grandfather was related to the Proctors of the Cedarville band. 'Proctor is a [name of a] large number among free people of color, people who are descended from free blacks,' Gabrielle Tayac said. 'It seems that it's a name that emerged as a widespread name among people in the Port Tobacco area. If there is a relation it's somewhat remote. So if they were cousins at all, it's far back.'""In an emotional conversation, Shirley Tayac, wife of Piscataway Indian Nation chief Billy 'Redwing' Tayac, denounced Brown and members of the other two organizations as frauds. 'How do you think there got to be so many groups?' Shirley Tayac said. 'If they don't get enrolled with the Piscataway nation, they get their own. They went to the state of Maryland [with a petition for recognition] ... and it was denied. And now we are still fighting with those people, and you say they are Piscataway? ... I've never known them to be called 'Piscataway' before a certain time.'
12Newman, Rock (9 June 2016). DNA Reveal show with Rock Newman. The Rock Newman Show (Radio broadcast). Washington, DC: WHUT-TV. Event occurs at 30m17s. Retrieved 27 March 2026.
↑Winch, Julie (4 April 2014). Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America from Settlement to the Civil War (The African American History Series). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p.7.
12Brooks, Rodney A. (15 June 2023). "This writer just traced his enslaved ancestors all the way to Africa. Here's how". National Geographic. Retrieved 27 March 2026. Their daughter, Mary Butler, sued in 1787, and won. In excerpts from In 'The Heritage Within Us, The Butler Family of Pamunkey,' the Butler family included in the book, Butler descendant, James Frank Williams, traces a number of Butler descendants through the more than 40 court cases, which were brought by members of the Butler family following Mary Butler's successful suit.
↑Brown 1972, pp.26–27pg. 26: "A seven-year term of servitude was decree for any white woman having a child by a Negro, slave or free."pg. 27 "Penalties for free mulatto women who had children by Negro men...were added in 1728. Service for a term of seven years was provided for each..."Heinegg 2000, pp.5–6pg. 5-6: "Women convicted of "Mulatto bastardy" were sold as servants for seven years. Women convicted of having children by native Indians were prosecuted for the lesser offense of fornication and had to pay a fine or suffer corporal punishment."
↑Brown, Letita Woods (1972). Free Negroes in the District of Columbia 1790-1846. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp.26–27, 30–31, 66–67, 70, 136, 143–146, 148, 158–159, 161, 162. ISBN0195015525. Retrieved 20 January 2026. Several of the large free Negro families in the area which became the District, when required to "exhibit their right to freedom," claimed descent from a "free white woman." In the Maryland segment, the Rounds, Fletchers, Thomases, Butlers, Shorters, Savoys, Proctors, Harmons, Hollands, and Days claimed such descent.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
↑Friedman 2023, p.247, 249, 253-254pg. 247: Origin stories avoided uncomfortable truths about slavery’s rape culture and also ignored illegal yet consensual interracial relations, such as those among seventeenth-century Maryland’s freed and enslaved Black residents and White indentured servants.pg. 249: The writers took pains to parse the past, suggesting the existence of enslaved African American ancestors would confer on the castes the lowest order of pedigree.pg. 253: "Viewed with the overlay of prosegregation American jurisprudence and the ascendant fields of anthropology and eugenics as pseudoscientific inquiry, the coverage exposes racist social patterns of readers, journalists, and the groups themselves, who dissociated from African Americans socially and through their own origin stories"pg. 254: "Supremacist thinking was revealed as authors took pains to parse the triracial isolate groups from having had African antecedents. With their emphasis on Whiteness over Blackness, and when acknowledged, free versus enslaved ancestors, the articles revealed the caste-mindedness of journalists from 1880 to 1943 as they struggled to place these enclaves in society."
↑Chresfield, Michell (2022). "Genetics, Health and the Making of America's Triracial Isolates, 1950–80". In Halliwell, Martin; Jones, Sophie A. (eds.). The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp.469–471. ISBN978-1-4744-5099-7.
↑Newman, Rock (23 September 2013). Elder Rico Newman on The Rock Newman Show. The Rock Newman Show (Radio broadcast). Washington, DC: WPWC. Event occurs at 3m52s. Retrieved 27 March 2026.
↑Huth KC, Paschos E, Sagner T, Hickel R (September 2002). "Diagnostic features and pedodontic-orthodontic management in dentinogenesis imperfecta type II: a case report". International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry. 12 (5): 316–321. doi:10.1046/j.1365-263X.2002.00390.x. PMID12199890.
↑Pettiette MT, Wright JT, Trope M (December 1998). "Dentinogenesis imperfecta: endodontic implications. Case report". Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology, and Endodontics. 86 (6): 733–737. doi:10.1016/s1079-2104(98)90213-x. PMID9868734.
↑Soliman S, Meyer-Marcotty P, Hahn B, Halbleib K, Krastl G (September 2018). "Treatment of an Adolescent Patient with Dentinogenesis Imperfecta Using Indirect Composite Restorations - A Case Report and Literature Review". The Journal of Adhesive Dentistry. 20 (4): 345–354. doi:10.3290/j.jad.a40991. PMID30206577.
