Their father, Paul Edmonson, was set free by his owner's will. Maryland was a state with a high percentage of free black people. Most descended from enslaved people freed in the first two decades after the American Revolution, when enslavers were encouraged to manumission by the principles of the war and activist Quaker and Methodist preachers. By 1810, more than 10 percent of black people in the Upper South were free, with most of them in Maryland and Delaware. By 1860, 49.7 percent of black people in Maryland were free.