African American Voices, Memories and Places: A Four Rivers Heritage Trail
This virtual trail and its companion guide highlight publicly accessible historic sites that provide a tangible place to visit, explore, and contemplate important African American individuals, families, people, historic places, events, struggles, and accomplishments. It also included many privately-owned sites, and in far too many cases, sites physically lost to time. This interactive tour acknowledges and celebrates contributions by African-Americans over the County’s 370-year history; those who tilled the soil on farms that made Anne Arundel County prosper prior to Emancipation, those who harvested, processed and shipped the Bay’s seafood to feed an expanding Country, and those who physically built the grand colonial houses for wealthy landowners, many of whom were enslaved. We honor those families and individuals that came together in good times and bad, to start a church and a congregation, to found a school, to build a community, and to create a legacy.
Please note that many of the tour stops are privately owned and not accessible for visitation. Thank you for respecting the privacy of these properties. Sites open to the public are clearly marked.
Explore the Civil Rights Era in Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Relying upon more than 50 oral histories, this virtual tour is a rare opportunity to hear about local history through the eyes, voices, and memories of those who experienced it first-hand. Highlighting local places, residents, and their stories, the project offers accounts of everyday activities during a time of segregation. It documents spaces of leisure and recreation, where people of color could gather and enjoy solidarity and empowerment; places like stores, ballfields, beaches, juke joints, movie theaters, beauty salons, and barber shops. A team of historians, led by Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt) and Dr. John Kille worked with citizens who generously shared their memories of what life was like during segregation, and uncovered compelling stories of injustice, resistance, and sacrifice, as well as perseverance and triumph. The full interviews and transcriptions are accessible by request from the Maryland State Archives.
By Jennifer J. Babiarz (Anne Arundel County), C. Jane Cox (Anne Arundel County), and Lisa H. Robbins (Lost Towns Project consultant). This blog post was originally published on Our History, Our Heritage, the blog of the Maryland Historical Trust, and is cross-posted here.
In 2022, The Lost Towns Project, Inc., in collaboration with the Anne Arundel County Office of Planning and Zoning’s Cultural Resources Section, began a county-wide study—documenting and contextualizing architectural and archaeological sites representing African American households living through enslavement, resistance, and freedom during the 19th century. This project was possible thanks to an FY 2022 Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grant Award from the Maryland Historical Trust.
Products of the study include a comprehensive database of these site types in Anne Arundel County; a report providing an historical, architectural, and archaeological context for Anne Arundel County’s 19th-century African American households; and updates to, or creation of, over a dozen historic archaeological inventory forms to ensure that the state’s inventory more fully and holistically reflects the existence and importance of African American households in 19th-century Anne Arundel County.
The work undertaken at the Whitehall Overseer’s Quarters (AA-326A) was one of the more compelling sites the team studied not only because it was poorly documented in state inventory records, but also because it sparked a new level of engagement, interest, and connection with the area’s descendant community and the possibility of future partnerships and discoveries.
(*Note: This building and site is on private property, and should not be visited without the express permission of the owner(s).)
The Whitehall Overseer’s House, which stands about 40 feet west of the Overseer’s Quarters, was built in 1750 by Governor Horatio Sharpe as a one-and-a-half story frame, whitewashed house with an attached kitchen. After Sharpe’s death in 1790, Whitehall and its associated properties were willed to John Ridout, and the Whitehall Overseer’s House (AA-326) remained in the Ridout family until 2022. Horatio Ridout II and his wife Jemima Duvall were the first Ridouts to live in the Overseer’s House and likely constructed the duplex quarter for enslaved families.
The Whitehall Overseer’s Quarters is a 1½-story log structure that rests on a roughly coursed, cut stone foundation. Its style is referred to as a double-pen saddlebag, or duplex, and consists of two independent dwellings under one roof, which were separated by a central chimney with a partition wall and likely would have housed two families. This is a common vernacular architectural form in the mid-Atlantic and the South, though this is the only surviving double-pen log quarters in Anne Arundel County and one of only a few surviving double-pen log quarters in Maryland.
Surviving evidence indicates that the building was originally constructed as one story with an accessible attic/loft, arranged in two bays (each about 14’x12’), with doorways in each corner of the façade. Based on the evidence of the surviving fasteners and finishes, the building likely was constructed between 1840-1860. Remnants of whitewash survive on surfaces throughout the interior of the building, including both logs that were added to create the half-story and logs forming the walls below. The exposed end grain of the logs forming the dovetail corner notches is remarkably unweathered, suggesting that the building may always have been enclosed with siding.
The Whitehall Overseer’s Quarter, viewed from the northeast; the sheathing boards and the shingles are 20th century; the roof frame was replaced in the 19th century.
In the 1840 Census, Horatio S. Ridout II is documented as enslaving 24 individuals; by the 1850 Census the number of individuals he enslaved was 13, and in 1860 the count had dropped to nine.
There is only one recorded manumission by Horatio Ridout II: a man named John Wright in March of 1864 based on his service in the 30th Regiment of the US Colored Troops during the Civil War. Records referred to as the “Slave Statistics,” are particularly important due to their recordation of the full given name and surname of those persons who had been enslaved until the enactment of the Constitution, as well as their age, physical condition, and term of service. In reference to Horatio Ridout II, the statistics are as follows:
John Wright, 35, Male, Good, For Life, Enlisted in US services Thomas Kemble, 34, Male, Good, For Life Benjamin Simpson, 22, Male, Good, For Life Gilbert Calvert, 16, Male, 16, Good, For Life Moses Bullen, 16, Male, Good, For Life May Smith, 30, Female, Good, 8 Years to Serve Hester A. Simpson, 7, Female, Good, 28 Years to Serve Isaac Smith, 3, Male, Good, 32 Years to Serve
Benjamin and Nellie Ross were interviewed by George McDaniel about the log house they moved into in the 1880s in Charles County, Maryland:
“Everybody pretty much lived in log houses back then. There were very few frame houses, and let me tell you, White and colored lived in log houses.”(McDaniel 1982:139)
The roofs of frame and log structures were typically covered with shingles, clapboards/planks, or thatch (made from grass and possibly straw in Southern Maryland).
Detail of the northeast corner of the log crib with well-carpentered full-dovetail joints exposed below the current wall covering.
Being located on private property, and now under the stewardship of relatively new owners, the team’s initial site visit was designed to develop a rapport with the new owners, and to gather previously unrecorded details about what we found to be a rapidly deteriorating structure. Dr. Dennis J. Pogue and MHT staff joined on some of the first visits to the site, working with the team to document and interpret this rare surviving building type. Pogue generously shared his extensive experience documenting enslaved housing for the last 15 years with the Virginia Slave Housing Project. The original MIHP form, last updated in 1976, sorely lacked architectural details, a clear statement of significance, and any consideration of possible archaeological value.
While the research design included developing measured drawings and taking photos for architectural documentation, the team also gained the trust and support of the new owners, who agreed to allow a limited Phase I archaeological survey around the Quarters. Excitement built as we began to realize the rare chance to see if there might be undisturbed and archaeologically significant deposits here, that might tell us about the families that had lived in the building during the last half of the 19th century. The team set to developing an achievable research plan for a brief one-to-two-day field session.
Having worked on other nearby sites in the area in previous months, we had also cultivated several points of contact within the local descendant communities, and knowing that they would be interested, and some had even received some limited archaeological training on other projects—we invited them to participate in the archaeological fieldwork. Our hope was that in addition to having their help with the dig, that their collective and individual memories shared through generations of their communities would also help to inform the interpretation of the site—and perhaps guide future research. In fact, we got so much more!
Volunteers and Descendants Doing Fieldwork in April 2023
Over two days in April 2023, more than a dozen volunteers signed on to help excavate 21 close-interval shovel test pits on the lawns and terraces surrounding the Quarters. Everyone pitched in on every level of work that needed to be done, from paperwork to wielding a shovel, and their stories, laughter, and curiosity made the excavation days fly by. As volunteers from the first day shared this experience with their family and friends, the numbers swelled on the second day and cars packed in along the edge of this narrow dead-end end single-lane driveway. As they trickled in over the day, several shared that they had grown up in the area, and could connect their roots back to those who had been enslaved on the Broadneck Peninsula. Team members scrambled to monitor the digging, while also giving impromptu tours—explaining the history of the site and detailing the architecture of the building. One couldn’t help make the connection that their forefathers and mothers may well have lived in dwellings much like this one—yet most all traces of such old homes have been lost to time.
While some joined us just to see the site and spent a short time visiting, others were so intrigued that they stuck around, and jumped right in getting their hands dirty. In addition to two of our favorite volunteers April Chapman and Ann Green, we were visited by representatives from the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, including Director Chanel Compton and Commissioner Elinor Thompson. Well-known local historians Janice Hayes-Williams and Bernadette Pulley-Pruitt, both of whom have direct and profound connections to Broadneck, the Whitehall properties, and the Ridout family were there. Members of several organizations that have missions to help raise up and celebrate this local history also joined us, including representatives of Rev. Samuel Green, Sr. Foundation, Inc., the Annual Fathers Day Foundation such as Devon Edwards and Rev. Randy Rowe Sr, as well as representatives from the Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Task Force at St Margaret’s Church.
The archaeology was successful. We found evidence of historic compacted living surfaces, likely indicating swept yard spaces to the east and south of the structure, and recovered domestic and architectural artifacts that could yield new information about the historic use and layout of the space, including lead glazed redware, cut nails, and coal slag. The work clearly demonstrated that the site has research potential and further archaeological work could provide important details of everyday life for those enslaved, and later tenant families, living in this building. The archaeology however was also important to better acknowledge and appreciate such a site for state and local history, including for generations of descendants.
For the descendants of those who resisted violence and coercive control by building families, and vibrant households that have survived through generations in the same area, the chance to discover and hold everyday items that had likely been part of their everyday lives during that process was very moving. Many of the descendants that we worked with us expressed feeling closer to their ancestors than ever before; though not necessarily peaceful, it was very meaningful to them. Black spaces are being erased from the landscape at an alarming rate throughout the state and county. It is through ongoing partnership building with descendant communities and landowners that these spaces can be more fully identified and documented through the Maryland Inventory of Historic Places forms. African Americans’ crucial contributions to the economic and cultural development of Anne Arundel County should be acknowledged and celebrated through their representation in the official documentation of local and state histories.
Volunteers, Supporters, and Descendants at Whitehall Overseer’s Quarters-April 2023
References Cited:
ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY COMMISSIONER OF SLAVE STATISTICS (Slave Statistics). 1867, MSA C142, pg 87, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
This internship is designed to be educational in nature and is best for undergraduate students seeking hands-on experience in a wide variety of archaeological topics in a local government/non-profit setting. Graduate students may still apply but are invited to contact the internship coordinator in advance.
Internship Description:
Interns will learn the basics of archaeological labwork and collections management by participating alongside professional archaeologists and volunteers in the lab and at curation facilities. There may be limited opportunities for fieldwork, but there is no definite fieldwork planned at this time.
With training, the intern will be required to:
Participate in artifact processing (washing, labeling, cataloging, and curation preparation) at the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Laboratory at 839 Londontown Road in Edgewater, MD (60% of time);
Conduct collections assessment of existing archaeological collections in Edgewater and Glen Burnie, MD, and record them in a collections management database (30% of time);
Attend field trips to regional archaeological sites, labs, and curation facilities (10% of time);
(Optional) Assist with public programs on weekends;
(Dependant on availability) Participate in Phase I and Phase II excavations at one or more archaeological sites across Anne Arundel County;
Work with other interns and volunteers as needed;
Contribute to blog, social media, and/or webpage posts; and
Write a final report on their activities.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the internship, the intern should be able to:
1. Conduct laboratory processing of artifacts (washing, labeling, cataloging, and curation preparation) to Maryland State Archaeological Standards; 2. Assess curated archaeological collections (artifacts and paper/digital records) as part of a management plan; and 3. (Dependant on availability) Perform archaeological fieldwork techniques, including excavation, artifact identification, and record keeping.
Qualifications:
Students who can pursue academic credit through their institution are strongly preferred. Students unable to pursue credit or recent graduates will be considered.
Students who are pursuing a major or minor in Anthropology, Archaeology, Historic Preservation, or Museum Studies are preferred.
Applicants should have some familiarity with archaeology and/or local history, either through coursework or extracurricular activities.
Interns should be self-motivated and able to work both independently and in small teams with intermittent supervision.
Interns should possess basic computer skills, organization skills, record keeping, and attention to detail. They should be comfortable working in office, laboratory, and outdoor environments.
Interns will need independent transportation; work sites are not accessible via public transit.
Duration:
Interns will be expected to work three days a week for a total of 150 hours. A schedule will be coordinated between the student and internship coordinator. Lab days are generally 6 hours long; field days can be 7 hours long. Most interns complete the internship in 9-10 weeks. The internship will start in late May or early June and must be completed by August 31, 2024.
Compensation:
College interns will receive a stipend of $1,000 upon completion of 150 hours.
For More Information or To Apply:
To apply, email a cover letter and a resume or CV to Drew Webster at [email protected]. Applications are due April 21, 2024. Candidates will be chosen and notified by May 3.
April is Maryland Archaeology Month! Here is how we are getting involved. Find more archaeology events across the state at marylandarcheologymonth.org.
Archaeology Lab Open House (Maryland Day Weekend)
Saturday and Sunday, March 23-24 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Anne Arundel County Archaeology Lab 839 Londontown Rd, Edgewater, MD
Dig into local history at the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Lab! View a wide variety of artifacts from recent excavations across Anne Arundel County, from 19th-century African-American tenant farms to 13,000-year-old Native American camps.
Kids and adults can try their hand at sorting artifacts, discover educational resources about local history, and learn how to get involved in archaeological digs and labwork, right here in Anne Arundel County.
No registration is required; drop in any time between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm.
Lisa Robbins will be presenting the findings of an 18-month study on the housing of enslaved and free-Black tenants in Anne Arundel County during the 19th century. The study will also cover the notable architectural changes that occurred during the transition period immediately after emancipation. Lisa will use several case studies from the county to demonstrate the significance of documenting and preserving these cultural resources that are disappearing.
Discovering Archaeology Day
Saturday, April 13th 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum 10515 Mackall Road St. Leonard, MD
A day of interactive learning and fun with archaeologists from across Maryland and Virginia, including hands-on activities for kids, tours, exhibits, games, giveaways, and cool crafts. Free & open to the public!
The Archaeology of Jug Bay: A Hike through History
Sunday, April 14th 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary 1361 Wrighton Road Lothian, MD
Join archaeologist Drew Webster, from the Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Section, to celebrate Archaeology Month with a hike from the Jug Bay Visitor’s Center to the Jug Bay River Farm. Along the hike (approximately 2.5-3 miles) you will learn about the many archaeological findings and research sites ranging in occupations from 13,000 years ago to the historic period. Drew will share how these archaeological sites inform us about past ways of life for people occupying the landscape of Jug Bay. The hike will include an artifact show-and-tell.
Enjoy a day of guided hikes exploring the heart of the conserved Bacon Ridge Natural Area in Crownsville. Experts in wildlife, native plants, birds, history, archaeology, and more will be on-site and available to attendees. Plus, self-guided hike options will be offered, complete with trail maps and educational signage posted along the trails, as well as other fun educational activities.
Registration for guided hikes will open in early April. The hike schedule and link to registration will be announced on www.SRLT.org.
Mario Harley, a citizen of the Piscataway Indian tribe and a member of the Wild Turkey Clan will speak about the culture and history of the Piscataway People through modern times.
The Lost Towns Project will discuss the numerous archaeological sites along the Patuxent River at Jug Bay and what archaeology can tell us about the people who lived at these sites.
This project has been financed in part by the Maryland Center for History and Culture’s Thomas V. “Mike” Miller History Fund. However, Project contents or opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Maryland Center for History and Culture.
The Archaeology of Jug Bay initiative won the Heritage Partnership of the Year Award. Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary has partnered with archaeologists from Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section and the Lost Towns Project since 2015 to research the area’s 13,000+ year-old human history and to share these discoveries with the public. The Jug Bay area is home to some of the most important archaeological sites in the state; Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary alone has 24 registered archaeological sites between the three properties they manage. Citizen science projects at these sites have brought hundreds of volunteers and grade school students to participate in discovering their community’s heritage through archaeology.
Over the past year, these three organizations have worked together to host three archaeology paddle tours, one archaeology hike, and one homeschool program. They also debuted the Native American Heritage Toolbox an online resource that shares the discoveries of Jug Bay archaeology with the general public.
Public/Private Initiative Award
Anne Arundel County’s Historic Markers Program, run by its Cultural Resources Section, won the Public/Private Initiative Award. The program began in 2021 and is a collaboration between public agencies, heritage organizations, and local historians which highlights and celebrates local history.
The program seeks to recognize often under-represented history and places that may not be recognized by the conventional historic preservation mechanisms. Some important sites lack an aboveground presence (as in archaeological resources, or the location of historic houses that have been demolished). In other cases, surviving physical resources are on private property, not necessarily visible from the public way, and thus are not publicly accessible. This makes applying conventional heritage tourism tools and methods challenging, and results in limitations to the public’s understanding of the full range of resources and historic landscapes that tell the whole story of the County’s historic development.
In the three years that the program has been in operation, the County and dozens of non-profit and private community partners have developed, produced, and installed 24 wayside interpretive signs, 24 roadside markers, and 18 signs for small family cemeteries. These markers, which commemorate historic structures, archaeological sites, and cultural landscapes, provide a powerful means of communicating with the public on important historic places that matter across the Heritage Area.
C. Jane Cox was honored with the Patricia Barland Leadership Award, awarded for the highest level of achievement over a career with long-lasting contributions to local history and heritage. Jane currently serves as the Administrator of the Cultural Resources Section of Anne Arundel County’s Office of Planning & Zoning and is a founding board member of the Lost Towns Project.
Over decades of public service, Jane has participated and then overseen archaeological and historic preservation research and compliance projects at dozens of sites across Anne Arundel County. She has also developed public programs, museum exhibits, websites, and more for training and education. A short sampling of projects she has worked with support from with the Heritage Area includes “Paddle Through History” kayak tours, archaeology displays for the public, a cemetery symposium, and the much-lauded Story Map project, “African American Voices, Memories and Places: A Four Rivers Heritage Trail.”
She thrives on bringing the rediscovery of the past to the citizens who live in and visit the County. Her extensive knowledge of the heritage assets of the County has made her a sought-after expert on matters of local archaeology, history, and heritage, and her efforts have had a long-lasting effect on historic preservation and interpretation.
Congratulations, Jane!
With contributions from Heather Ersts and Dr. Carol Benson
Photos courtesy of Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage Area
