Flee!

Benjamin Ducket born at Marietta, a plantation and manor house in northern central Prince George's County, Benjamin Duckett was enslaved by the Duval Family. Benjamin Duval (d. 1801) built Marietta upon a 150 acre tract purchased from part of a larger survey known as "Darnall's Grove." Gabriel Duval (1752-1844), Benjamin Duval's son, purchased the property from his father in 1784. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Gabriel Duval established himself as a country gentlemen among the economic elite in the county. As an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1811-1835), Duval resided in Washington, D.C. for several weeks each year. Likewise, his duties on the Circuit Court saw him travel widely throughout Maryland and Delaware.

He also conducted a private practice from a small law office on his plantation. Duval, like many Maryland elites, bred race horses, and traveled to competitions around the state. Gabriel Duval moved in the highest social circles, and James Madison spent a day and night at Marietta while on a country jaunt during his presidency (1809-1817). Official duties and visitors aside, life at Marietta was centered on families. Foremost in this way were the planter's family: the Duvals. Yet, the slave quarters at Marietta were home to numerous families as well. The total number of slaves at Marietta during the Antebellum years fluctuated between thirty-five and fifty. Along with Gabriel, other Duvals living at Marietta during the nineteenth century held African Americans there. Included among these slaveholders were Gabriel's son, Edmund (d. 1831), Gabriel's sister Delila, and his orphaned grandchildren, Marcus, Edmund, Mary, and Gabriella, who came to live with him and his wife Jane (d. 1834) in 1832. Life at Marietta remained active throughout the Antebellum Era.