Background
Ishmael Day was the son of Edward and Mary Day in the 11th District of Baltimore County in Maryland.
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Ishmael Day
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Day is remembered in poems and ballads of the civil war era. Born on March 20, 1792 in Baltimore County and Christened June 16, 1793 at Saint James Protestant Episcopal Parish, Baltimore, Maryland. His birthplace was off of the current Mount Vista Road.
Ishmael Day died December 27, 1873.
Day freed his slave woman, Eliza, in 1846, declaring in the manumission document that he lived "under a Republican Government & believing as I most sincrely do that all the Human Race without respect to sex or Coulour (sic) should & ought to be free."
Little is known of his life, except that during the American Civil War he was sympathetic to the Union Army in a neighborhood that had sympathy for the Confederate Army. His home on Sunshine Avenue in Fork, Maryland near Mount Vista Estates and the intersection of Harford Road was the site of a tragedy on July 11, 1864.
When the advance guard for Harry Gilmor"s raiders was in the area, Ishmael Day placed a large Union flag over his gate. Gilmor"s Ordnance Sergeant Eugene Fields told Day to take the flag down.
After Day refused, an argument followed and Ishmael Day shot Sergeant
Field at close range with a shotgun. Gilmor"s men burned Day"s home and Day immediately fledhiding under a cider press for days until the passing troops were gone. The mortally wounded Sergeant
Field was taken to Wright"s Hotel operated by West.O.B. Wright on Harford Road accompanied by Gilmor where Field later died.
After this incident, Day fled into the nearby fields and hid under a cider press for several days until he could escape into the city of Baltimore. After a time, he returned and rebuilt his home.
The State Convention of Maryland, formed to construct a new constitution, formally ordered that Day be thanked for his actions. Day is remembered in the poem The Patriot Ishmael Day by William H. Hayward and the anonymous Ballad of Ishmael Day.
There is also a modern fictional account of his life by William R. Bell.
