Tracing Lives in Slavery: Reclaiming Families in Freedom
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National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Ethnographic Program Northeast Region TRACING LIVES IN SLAVERY: RECLAIMING FAMILIES IN FREEDOM AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SOLUTION TO A HISTORICAL PROBLEM Special Ethnographic Report Hampton National Historic Site Towson, MD ETHNOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW AND ASSESSMENT HAMPTON NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE Principal Investigator Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, PhD (University of Maryland) Prepared under cooperative agreement with The University of Maryland - College Park Northeast Region Cultural Anthropology Program National Park Service Washington, D.C. MAY 2020 PROJECT OVERVIEW For the more than 70 years that Hampton has been a National Historic Site, the lives of the people who were enslaved there have been poorly understood and under-researched. The intent of this project was to trace into contemporary times, specifically the enslaved either immediately or gradually manumitted, or set free, by the codicil to the will of Charles Carnan Ridgely in 1829. Ridgely, 15th governor of the state of Maryland, owned at the time of his death Hampton mansion and surrounding plantation lands in addition to hundreds of enslaved workers. The project’s Principal Investigator sought approval to expand the research to include a broader discussion of slavery and forced labor at Hampton. The expanded narrative includes those who had gained freedom through escape from slavery and those who were forced to wait to gain their freedom through Maryland’s general emancipation in 1864. The research relies primarily on genealogical, ethnographic and cartographic methods. Through solid historical research buffered by electronic resources and social media sites, we have pieced together several heretofore unrecognized intermarried and intertwined families enslaved at Hampton. Building on the primary source data compiled by Dr. R. Kent Lancaster and contextualized by the Historic Resource Study of Robert Chase and Elizabeth Comer, this project was able to trace the lives of those enslaved at Hampton—follow them out of slavery and begin to understand their lives in freedom. To our great surprise, we have been able to identify hundreds of descendants across the generations. We followed them to the communities immediately surrounding Hampton, to Baltimore and across multiple states. The report is a collection of eight essays written by the multidisciplinary Ethnographic Team, as we came to call ourselves. Not only is this an ethnographic study of the people emancipated from Hampton and their descendants but also an illustration of the rigors of the research journey. i ii CONTRIBUTORS Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, PhD, Principal Investigator, University of Maryland Gregory Weidman, Curator and EOA Liaison, Hampton National Historic Site John Whitfield, Independent Researcher Camee Maddox-Wingfield, PhD, Ethnographer, University of Maryland Baltimore County Patsy M. Fletcher, Historical Consultant, Training, Historical Research & Economic Development Nora Holzinger, Mapping and GIS Intern, Towson University Samuel G. Collins, PhD, Cultural Anthropologist, Towson University Philip Merrill, African American Heritage Consultant, Nanny Jack & Company Archives Imania (Grace) Price, ArcGis Story Maps Consultant iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Project Overview .............................................................................................................. i Contributors ................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ v List of Figures................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables .................................................................................................................. ix ONE: Tracing Lives in Slavery: Reclaiming Families in Freedom Cheryl Janifer LaRoche ...................................................................................................................... 1 TWO: From Dry Documents to Full Lives: Discoveries from Historic Archival Materials and Documentary Sources Gregory R. Weidman ........ 23 THREE: The Power of the Apostrophe: Analyzing possessive prefix names to determine family relationships and kin groupings at Hampton Plantation Camee Wingfield- Maddox .................................................................................................................. 73 FOUR: Out of the Shadows of History: The Batty and Spencer Families John Whitfield ... 111 FIVE: Written on the Land: Locating Freedom Nora Holzinger...................... 155 SIX: Bright Dreams: Descendants of Manumitted and Emancipated People of Hampton Patsy M. Fletcher .. 193 SEVEN: Living in the Post-Plantation: Hampton Historical Mansion in the Context of Baltimore County Development Samuel G. Collins .......... 233 .......................................................................................................................................... EIGHT: Beyond Hampton’s Reach: Seton Hill Historic District, MD to Old West Baltimore Historic District, MD to Lincoln University, PA, Philip J. Merrill .. 257 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................ 275 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Newspaper announcement of Ambrose Brown Batty’s marriage ........ 11 Figure 1.2 Mr. John Gross with his family bible .................................................... 18 Figure 2.1 Manumission Certificate for Betsey Brown .......................................... 99 Figure 2.2 Charles Ridgely (of Hampton) Account of Sales ............................... 104 Figure 3.1 Property Owned by Colonel Charles Ridgely, 1772 .......................... 161 Figure 3.2 Ridgely Rolling Mills, Baltimore Patriot, July 7, 1830 ........................ 162 Figure 3.3 Property owned by Captain Charles Ridgely, 1790 ........................... 165 Figure 3.4 Poppleton’s 1822 Map ...................................................................... 167 Figure 3.5 Dispersal of Property owned by General Charles Ridgely of Hampton at his Death .................................................................................. 168 Figure 3.6 Google Maps “My Maps,” Hampton Ethnographic ............................ 181 Figure 3.7 Residential Security Map of Baltimore, MD, 1937 ............................. 184 Figure 3.8 Map from Baltimore County Office of Planning and Zoning (Towson, MD) ............................................................................................... 186 Figure 4.1 “John Ridgely, Jr., Jane Rodney Ridgely and Servant,” Hampton National Historic Site website ........................................................ 198 Figure 4.2 The Carriage House at Hampton .................................................... 200 Figure 4.3 Hampton Dairy, c. 1936 .................................................................... 204 Figure 4.4 Hopkins Atlas, 1878 .......................................................................... 205 Figure 4.5 “Sherdon, George H.” Adapted from Sheridan Muster Record .......... 210 Figure 4.6 “Nicholas Toogood,” Woods Baltimore City Directory, 1868.............. 215 Figure 4.7 Orchard Street, 1869 ........................................................................ 216 Figure 4.8 Orchard Street Church, Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church, 1890 ............................................................................................. 217 Figure 4.9 Grace Shimm Cummings, 1900 ........................................................ 221 Figure 4.10 Rev. Charles Gilmor Cummings, 1904 ............................................... 221 Figure 4.11 Shimm Family Home in Washington, DC ........................................... 222 Figure 4.12 Roberts Memorial United Methodist Church ...................................... 223 Figure 4.13 Roberts Church Parsonage and home of Newlyweds ........................ 223 Figure 4.14 Memoriam for Grace Shimm, Evening Star, June 7, 1922 ................. 224 Figure 5.1 Hampton Map, 1829 ......................................................................... 234 Figure 5.2 Hampton Map, 1948 ......................................................................... 234 Figure 5.3 Traces of Hampton in place names and signs: Ridgely Middle School........................................................................................... 236 Figure 5.4 Traces of Hampton in place names and signs: The Hampton subdivision in Baltimore County .................................................... 240 Figure 5.5 Mount Olive Baptist Church Parsonage: the last, surviving home in Sandy Bottom ............................................................................... 243 Figure 5.6 Carver Center ................................................................................... 244 vii Figure 5.7 Site of African Church and School .................................................... 245 Figure 5.8 Traces of Hampton in place names and signs: The Ridgely ............. 247 Figure 5.9 Jacob House .................................................................................... 248 Figure 5.10 Towson Mews project at the entrance to East Towson ...................... 249 Figure 6.1 Orchard Street Church....................................................................... 263 Figure 6.2 1925 Afro American Calendar ...........................................................