George Kephart (February 7, 1811August 26, 1888) was a 19th-century American slave trader, land owner, farmer, and philanthropist. A native of Maryland, he was an agent of the interstate trading firm Franklin & Armfield early in his career, and later occupied, owned, and finally leased out that company's infamous slave jail in Alexandria (originally District of Columbia, after March 13, 1847, Alexandria, Virginia). In 1862, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts mentioned Kephart by name in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate as one of the traders who had "polluted the capital of the nation with this brutalizing traffic" of selling people.
Biography
Early life and family
Kephart was born in what was then Frederick County, Maryland (later Carroll County), most likely on his parents' farm, which was then known was Brick Mills, and was renamed Trevanion by a subsequent owner. Brick Mills was named for its large brick gristmill that used Big Pipe Creek for water power. Other outbuildings constructed in the Kephart era included a still house built by David Kephart II, George Kephart's father. George Kephart had a number of siblings who survived to adulthood, including Philip Kephart, who became a doctor and settled in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and Peter Kephart, who engineered and marketed home refrigeration appliances. On his mother's side, Kephart was a Reister, and lived out his later life in Reistertown, Baltimore, which was founded by an ancestor. The family were of the Lutheran Protestant faith and Kephart's parents and grandfather were buried in the community's Lutheran cemetery. Kephart inherited Brick Mills after his father's death in 1836.
Slave trading (~1827–1852)
Kephart may have been trading as early as 1827, when he was just 16, buying locally and selling in New Orleans and Natchez, Mississippi. Historian Frederic Bancroft introduced Kephart in Slave-Trading in the Old South with the description "Early in the 'thirties a small trader, living near a little ferry on the upper Potomac, was searching for slaves throughout Montgomery and Frederick counties, Maryland. He knew all the country roads, the names and the financial condition of most of the slaveholders. He was regularly at certain taverns and stores in Fredericktown and Bockville to get letters from or to meet persons that had been attracted by reports of his liberal offers. And he promptly inspected all proffered slaves." Per the Negro History Bulletin, Kephart and his regional compatriots were the right men at the right place at the right time for the job the abolitionists called soul-driving: "Because Alexandria was the best point from which to start both coast-wise shipments and overland coffles, large numbers of slaves passed through Washington from Maryland to Alexandria. In 1827 Benjamin Lundy wrote: 'It is my decided opinion that were we to search the globe from Kamchatka to the southern pole, we could not find a people more tyrannical, more completely lost to feelings of humanity and justice, than the heartless wretches who carry on the United States slave trade through Maryland and the District of Columbia.'"
There is reason to believe that Kephart had one or more slave prisons on his own Maryland farm: