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