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O’Donnell, who was born in Limerick, Ireland, founded Canton as a plantation where he owned slaves after buying about 2,000 acres along the waterfront in 1786, The Baltimore Sun reports. The outlet says the nation’s first census listed 36 slaves living at O Donnell s plantation. He died in 1805 at the age of 56.
The statue was installed in O’Donnell Square park in 1980 by the Canton Improvement Association two years after the neighborhood was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
“Tonight, the hostile vestige to the notorious enslaver Captain John O’Donnell no longer stands in Canton Square,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott (D) said in a statement Monday.