Harold et al.,

Thanks. Aside from inaccuracies, the Wikipedia entry on Johnson misleads 
the reader in one other important way--leading him or her to suppose 
that this is about all we know or can know about this individual. Not so.

Casar (who, by the way, was not "legally declared a slave" by the court 
but was, strictly speaking, only required to be released by Parker and 
returned to Johnson) was--as late as 1672--referred to in Maryland 
records as a "negro servant." Mary Johnson approved his request to enter 
his cattle mark in the records. Ironically, Casar's cattle had also 
played a small part in his 1654-55 dispute with the Johnsons and 
Parkers. there are at least a handful of Virginia court records showing 
that some slaves were permitted to own cattle.

This matter and many others are discussed in my book (Race and Class in 
Colonial Virginia), Breen and Innes's Myne Owne Ground, and Ira Berlin's 
Many Thousands Gone. There are about thirty separate references in the 
county court records to Johnson and his family in Virginia and Maryland 
through the 1670s, by which time their migration into Maryland and 
Delaware had begun. Their story is much more interesting and 
multifaceted than the Wikipedia entry suggests. It doesn't even refer 
the reader to any of the relevant, up-to-date secondary sources by 
historians (such as those just mentioned).

Doug Deal