[13] Furthermore, according to professional historians, Woolfolk was a pioneer magnate of Baltimore-based slave trading, along with figures like Joseph S. Donovan, Bernard M. Campbell, and Hope H.

A reviewer in the Journal of Southern History commended the 2004 Woolfolk book as an "exemplar of modern genealogical work" but criticized the author's "hagiographic slant...Moreover, Woolfolk subtly presents the Civil War in the 'Lost Cause' mode...In one of several instances of this, she writes: 'Woolfolk family members...supported the Confederate cause for states' rights' as if states' rights was the cause of the Civil War.

The subscriber has on hand seventy-five likely young Virginia-born Negroes, of various descriptions, which he offers to sell low for cash, or good acceptance; any person wishing to purchase would do well to call and suit themselves.—I will have a constant supply through the season.—I can be found at Purnell's Tavern.

"[16]More than 30 years after his death, a newspaper described Woolfolk's former premises:[17] The stranger, in passing along West Platt street, between Fremont and Poppleton, in this conservative old city of Baltimore, will notice with interest an old-fashioned house that stands on the north side of the way high above the sidewalk.

It is in the centre of an old yard that might have been green with verdure when the big gaunt trees that are bending and splitting under their far-reaching boughs were much younger than they are now; the walls are blackened by the hand of time, and the steep roof is crumbling under the coating of soft moss.

Light your way along either of the passages, amid the dust and cobwebs, frightening the rats and spiders in their solitary domain, and you would emerge into a square cell, floored and walled with solid blocks of granite, with here and there a rusty iron ring imbedded in the stone, which at once suggests to your mind the nature of the place you are in.

Some of them have trap doors at the top opening into the old house above, and in others rusty chains still hang from bolted rings, awakening sad visions of oppression.

There is not much more to be seen here but damp dirt, spreading cobwebs and perhaps the wreck of a beer keg from the bar up-stairs, for the old house is now used as a saloon by an humble Teuton and his wife, while the surrounding grounds are a popular evening resort with the poor but worthy residents of the neighborhood, where they sip their lager and gossip beneath the broad foliage of the noble old trees.

According to historian William Calderhead, "The movement of his charges to Baltimore was accomplished either by steamboat or small sailing vessel from the outports along the Chesapeake or by wagon or hack from nearby land connections.