National Park Service The U.S. Department of the Interior Network To Freedom Program National Capital Region Washington, D.C.

The official newsletter of The National Capital Region THE CONDUCTOR Network to Freedom Program Summer 2005 Issue no. 15

2 NPS Unveils New 3 National Trust 4 D.C. Profiles: 5 Mary Mauzy’s Civil War Web Site Lists UGRR Site As Charlotte Forten Nightmare.... Endangered Grimke The official NPS Civil War Web Site The National Trust for Historic Charlotte Forten Grimke (1837 - We still live with the legacy of will enable youth to connect with a Preservation has featured UGRR 1913) was an important African John Brown's Raid. Mary Mauzy, historic national crisis. "We are on this year's list of the 11 most American abolitionist. She was her Armory worker husband, and excited about this new website.... endangered sites in the USA... the granddaughter of.... their son, George, became .... New DC Area Members of the Network to Freedom Program The National Underground second is an NPS park unit Railroad (UGRR) Network to Hampton NHS (Towson, Freedom now has more than MD) which during 200 years 225 members. The Network of enslaved labor had at least to Freedom proudly 75 escapes (surely because of announces new members in the proximity of the greater Washington and the Pennsylvania line). metropolitan area determined eligible in In southern Maryland a Indianapolis on April. In number of sites were Virginia, there was one new Coordinators pose in front of the Georgtown accepted: Jefferson Patterson National Historic Landmark in Madison, Indiana. site, Birch's Slave Pen (also NPS Photo. Park and Museum, Old Jail of known as Franklin & was tried there. Frederick St. Mary's County, Point Armfield) a former slave pen Douglass Freedom & Lookout State Park, and Port used to house refugees from Heritage Trail & Tour of Tobacco Courthouse during the Civil War. UGRR Sites (Baltimore, MD) showing the range of UGRR- Dorchester County is a walking tour as is In Their related activities - enlistment Courthouse (Maryland) is Steps (Rockville, MD). Also and stationing of US Colored significantly related to the in the Baltimore area two Troops, detention of freedom UGRR because Harriet properties were nominated, seekers in jail, escapes to the Tubman's niece escaped from estates associated with iron British, and the start of an the auction block in front and furnaces. The first is Mount armed escape of men that because Rev. Samuel Green Clare (Baltimore City). The made it as far as Rockville. NPS Unveils New Civil War Web Site

The official NPS Civil War on battlefield preservation." directly from enslavement. Web Site Among the listed parks are The Sesquicentennial of the (http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/) some of the Network's will run will enable youth to connect members (either for 2011 through 2015. In addition with a historic national crisis. programs or as sites): to commemorating four years "We are excited about this Arlington House, C & O of war, it will highlight events new web site," said Fran Canal NHP (for Ferry Hill), leading up to and serving as a Mainella, NPS Director. "The Hampton NHS, Frederick catalyst for the war. The NPS has more than 70 parks Douglass NHS, Fort official NPS Web Site will with resources related to the Donelson NB, Fort Pulaski provide links, not only to the history of the Civil War NM, Boston African national parks, but also to where our visitors can tour American NHS, Stones River resources about the events, the real places where this NB, and Harpers Ferry NHP. participants, leading figures, struggle occurred nearly 150 The Network to Freedom and historical context, and years ago… We are hopes to have its web site about other organizations particularly pleased that our linked too, given that Civil commemorating the Civil web site will link to two War "contrabands" were War. The web offers the major partners, National refugees from enslavement opportunity to search for Geographic and the Civil War and that many bondsmen ancestors through the Civil Preservation Trust, for more enlisted in the USColored War Soldiers & Sailors information on mapping and Troops and Union Navy System.

Apply For “Save Our History” Lightening Strikes! Grants Network Grants Available in FY ‘05 In 2004- 2005, the History principals, teachers, or Channel awarded youth groups about Lightening has struck. Congress has $250,000 to 29 local participating in the Save given the Network to Freedom over history organizations in 27 Our History initiative by $200,000 in community grants to states. Again, history applying for a grant in distribute to Network to Freedom organizations can apply 2005-2006. The History members by the end of FY 05. The for up to $10,000 each to Channel is collaborating deadline, June 15, meant a quick help fund unique, hands- with the National Council on student projects to for Social Studies on the turn-around time for members who teach about local history development of new Save were only notified about the grants and to actively engage Our History activities to in April. Members applied for 1:1 students in the use in the classroom or in matching grants for bricks and preservation of their local local history mortar preservation and for research heritage. To answer organizations. The projects related to UGRR stories in questions on grants, History Channel will contact: provide FREE Save Our their nominations to the Network to [email protected]. History Educator's Freedom. By July 8 the applications Talk to local school Manuals to you or your for grants were reviewed. Awardees superintendents and partner educators. have been notified.

2 THE CONDUCTOR National Trust Lists An UGRR Site As Endangered The National Trust for Historic corridor follows US Route 15 Preservation has featured and Route 20 on a 175-mile UGRR on this year's list of the meandering course from 11 most endangered sites in the Gettysburg, PA, through USA. On the list is Eleutherian Frederick Co., MD, and ending College in IN, one of the first in Charlottesville, VA. Possible UGRR sites included are Aldie US colleges pre-Civil War to Mill District, Waterford, Bremo accept students regardless of Slave Chapel, Goose Creek gender or race. It is a Network (home of an antislavery Friends to Freedom member and has Eleutherian College in Indiana. meeting), Oatlands, and NPS Photo. received a grant from the Loudoun Museum as well as "Journey Through Hallowed Network to Freedom. Despite the plantations of Jefferson, Ground,” supported by a being a NHL, it is dilapidated Monroe, and Madison. and vandalized. It was involved Coalition of the same name, stretching from Gettysburg to in escapes to freedom. Monticello. The "Journey Visit: Also on the list is a region, Through Hallowed Ground" http://www.hallowedground.org/.

UGRR Training Held At DC Preservation League Three Park Sites Puts MLK Library on A total of 48 students participated in the Watch List UGRR training sessions at Harpers Ferry, NCR Headquarters, and GWMP. The goals of When DC Preservation League issued the training were to orient participants to the its local version of the National Trust's Network to Freedom and to educate them on the NPS definition of UGRR, UGRR activities Most Endangered List, it included a in NCR, and strategies to find out more about "Watch List." Sadly the Martin Luther UGRR in NCR. Do YOU know who Leonard Grimes and William Chaplin were? What King, Jr., Library, DC's central library escape started outside the White House gates? and the home of the Washingtoniana Have you ever visited the Moorland Spingarn Collection, is on the list. Remember Research Center at Howard University? What constitutes strong evidence for UGRR activity? your commitment to rescue DC's Your friendly trainer, the NCR Network to libraries? Freedom coordinator, is ready and willing to educate wherever requested. Meanwhile, take advantage of UGRR training materials (includ- ing a bibliography) posted to the NCR internal web, in the UGRR section. Create greater awareness of UGRR history at your site!

THE CONDUCTOR 3 D.C. Profiles: Charlotte Forten Grimke

by Antonietta Neri, Intern, National Capital Region

Charlotte Forten Grimke until she finished a one the program with an (1837 -1913) was an year course at the State idealist perspective, she important African Normal School at Salem, was disappointed and fell American abolitionist. She MA. In Salem she was then into a depression, feeling was the granddaughter of hired as a teacher at the that her teaching was less James Forten, a successful Epes Grammar School in and less rewarding. She businessman of his 1856, the first African left the island and went generation who was a American to instruct white back to Philadelphia where strong supporter of the children. She taught for she spent seven years living anti-slavery movement. three years until she fell ill a quiet life. Grimke Although she wasn't the to what was referred to as occasionally published first in her family to take a "lung fever." various articles, taught, and strong stand for something studied poets. she believed in, she was Grimke spent time able to make her own mark recovering in Philadelphia on the world around her. until the Civil War began. In 1871-72 she moved to As a child, she spent a lot of Then, when Union soldiers Washington, DC, to assist time at the homes of her took over cotton an African American edu- grandfather and Robert plantations on St. Helena cator, Richard Greener, Purvis, president of the Island, SC, situated during his principalship of Philadelphia Vigilance between Charleston and the Sumner High School. Committee, which allowed Savannah, they In 1873 she took a clerkship her to be inundated by implemented a program position in the federal contact with the leading where they planned to Treasury Department. She spirits of the movement enable to excel joined D.C.'s Fifteenth almost daily. and live as free citizens. Street Presbyterian Church This became known as the where she met her future When she reached school Port Royal Experiment. husband, the pastor Francis age her father refused to The goal was to offer James Grimke, who was send her to Philadelphia's African American freed- from SC, a natural enslaved segregated schools, men the education pro- son of Henry Grimke. She choosing instead to get her grams spent the remainder of her private tutors. With all the necessary to ensure that life in DC with her opportunities she was they could be successful as husband, the only low afforded, Charlotte equal citizens. Charlotte point being the death of developed an excellent was among the volunteer their only child, Theodora sense of self and acquired teachers; she wanted to do Cornelia, in infancy. an intense need to prove all she could to help her Charlotte Grimke passed herself as an African race. away in Washington at the American woman. She age of seventy-six in 1914 continued her education Because she approached and was buried in

4 THE CONDUCTOR Mary Mauzy’s Nightmare: Local Reaction to John Brown’s 1859 Raid

by Melinda Day, Harpers Ferry NHP We still live with the legacy of I have been fortunate enough John Brown's Raid. Mary to get a good capable woman Mauzy, her Armory worker this year. You remember Lucy, husband, and their son, Charlotte Piper's daughter. It's George, became eyewitnesses her. She is the best I ever had. to the revolutionary raid by She is a nice cook and so John Brown. John Brown cleanly about everything. How seized the Armory on the do you get along with white night of October 16th, 1859, help? You said in your letters with his "Provisional Army" you expected I almost despised of 16 white and 5 black men, the sight of a Negro. No attempting to arm slaves and John Brown re-inactor Emmanuel Dabney. indeed. Since the insurrection, start a war on slavery. By the NPS Photo. the poor niggers have been so morning of the 18th, Brown Mary interpreted this as lack frightened. None of them and the surviving raiders of support and instead feared believed that old Brown were captured by US white abolitionists. wanted to free them. Marines. Brown's ill-fated attempt to seize weapons from the US armory to arm Mary wrote to her Several months after the raid and free slaves ended in his stepdaughter, Eugenia, and in fear of future attacks, a capture, imprisonment, trial living in England, on how committee of eleven women, and execution for conspiring Brown's Raid had including Mary Mauzy, wrote insurrection, treason, and transformed the hearts and the Secretary of War asking murder in 1859. The Raid minds of Harpers Ferry's permission to hold a fund hastened the Civil War and white and black citizens. raiser in a government the emancipation of African building for the benefit of the Americans. militia company, the Floyd Eugenia, . . . everyone, chil- Rifles. The specter of John After the Raid, Mary's letters dren and all seem to have a Brown lingered in the streets written from Harpers Ferry warlike feeling. I made little of Harpers Ferry. Mary and contain resolve that life will George a blue jacket with gilt other women helped ready continue as before but with a buttons, on Saturday evening friends and neighbors for new edge of awareness and he wore it and the boys called future attacks and eventual preparedness. Even the him Captain of the Marines. civil war should the state of children were aware, her son His papa gave him a double VA secede from the Union for example learning to fire a barrel pistol and sometimes he and declare independence. weapon and play war against will hold it and let little George Elsewhere, too, support of slave insurrectionists. Mary shoot. Little George says to tell local militia companies believed in the peaceful and you "I've a pistol and I am boomed. The streets of faithful nature of her black going to shoot slaves with it. Harpers Ferry were patrolled neighbors in the slaveholding nightly by armed citizens in south. She believed her black the fear of renewed violence neighbors were frightened by She demonstrated her lack of by antislavery supporters. Brown's plan. Because fear when she hired a free When Civil War arrived, Harpers Ferry's enslaved and African American woman to Mary and her family cast free African -Americans did cook and clean. She noted to their lot with the not participate in the Raid, Eugenia, Confederacy.

THE CONDUCTOR 5 NCR UGRR PARK UPDATES & ACTIVITIES

54th Massachusetts OXON COVE Infantry Visits Frederick DOCUMENTS Douglass NHS FREEDOM SEEKER

On May 15, NHS Wherever slavery existed, there was attempted commemorated a "Day of Remembrance" for flight to freedom. On the Berry farm, at least the men of the famed 54th Massachusetts one person is known to have escaped. On Dec. USCT (featured in the movie “Glory”). The 5, 1840, Thomas Berry placed an advertisement program featured a living history encampment in the Daily National Intelligencer requesting on the lawn of Cedar Hill by the 54th information and/or the return of an enslaved Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, B person named Jacob Shaw. In the same paper a Company, Washington, D.C., and a talk by Hari second ad was placed by a neighboring farmer Jones of the African American Civil War at Salubria, John Bayne, seeking the return of Museum. The participating volunteers are dedicated to preserving the history of the regi- Samuel Tyler, thought to have fled at the same ment. Frederick Douglass, the great orator and time as Shaw. The fate of these men is abolitionist, recruited soldiers for the USCT unknown, but given the proximity of the free with the assistance of his son Frederick black community of Washington, DC, it is Douglass, Jr., who even recruited his brothers. quite possible they sought shelter there.

FAIRFAX/PRINCE WILLIAM GATHERING MOBILIZES UGRR INTEREST On May 27, at the antebellum black community of Gum Springs, the Network to Freedom and the Gum Springs Historical Society sponsored the first UGRR Gathering for Fairfax and Prince William Counties. The goal was to mobilize interest in runaway bondsmen, antislavery activities, USCT, and contrabands in those two counties. So far, the only Network to Freedom member from either county is Sully Historic Site in Fairfax. There were three panels - two on interpretation (documentation of association with UGRR and reaching new constituencies) and the other on funding sources (National Endowment for the Humanities, VA Foundation for the Humanities, Virginia Department of Transportation, and Virginia State Historic Preservation Office). Representatives from the RELIC Room (Bull Run Library), Mount Vernon, Manassas NB, Sully, Gunston Hall, and the Alexandria City Archeologist appeared on the panels. Alan Spears of the National Park Conservation Association, facilitated a quick discussion at the end.

6 THE CONDUCTOR ANNOUNCEMENTS & CALENDAR EVENTS

People Call For Papers & This summer we welcome Antonietta Neri Articles (Toney), a Communications major from **The Virginia Forum, planned for April 7-8, Western Illinois University. She will be 2006, at Shenandoah University, encourages interning with the UGRR NCR coordinator proposals for presentations on research on for 8 weeks before her senior year. One of VA prehistory and history. Warren Hofstra, her many duties this summer is to serve as Shenandoah University, and Brent Tarter, guest editor of this issue! Library of VA, are conference chairs. Submit proposals and a brief c.v. by September 15, Goodbye, Vincent deForest. We will miss 2005, to: Warren R. Hofstra, Shenandoah your expertise and enthusiasm. You worked University, 1460 University Dr., Winchester, long and hard to promote the history of VA 22601, [email protected] UGRR starting before the passage of the Special Resource Study legislation and the **Greenwood Press will publish a two -vol- 1998 Act. You reached out to constituencies ume encyclopedia the primary focus of which all over the US. will be not slavery itself, but rather the assaults worldwide against slavery and the course of its demise. Key entries remain unassigned; if interested, contact Professor Slave Burial Project McKivigan [email protected] or Dr. Hinks [email protected]. The American Slave Burial Project is dedi- cated to researching all burial grounds of enslaved African Americans of the African Conference Alert: Diaspora. They are currently collecting data The Maritime Heritage Education on any burial ground in the US that would Conference will bring formal and informal hold valuable information regarding slave educators together to promote maritime and plantation life and/or possesses rare and heritage & related educational partnerships, uncommon facts. For more detail relating to programs and products. The meeting will be this project you can contact: on November 18-20, 2005, at Nauticus: the Sandra Arnold National Maritime Center in Norfolk, VA. To (212) 252-6990 (voice) learn more, visit [email protected] (e-mail) http://www.sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education/mhec/welcome.html

How do you deal with sensitive issues of slavery and UGRR? Direct your contributions to: [email protected]

THE CONDUCTOR 7 National Park Service First Class Mail U.S. Department of the Interior Postage and Fees PAID National Capital Region City, State 1100 Ohio Drive SW Permit Number Washington, DC20242

National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom (NTF) was created by Congress in 1998 to honor those who resisted slavery through flight. The Conductor Newsletter was established to inform readers about areas of interest as it relates to the NTF program within the National Capital Region.

Jenny Masur, Editor Network to Freedom Coordinator, National Capital Region

Antonietta Neri, Assistant Editor Intern, National Capital Region

Monta Coleman, Design & Layout National Capital Region

Comments? Please send to: Jenny Masur [email protected]

Special thanks to Sean Tull for website assistance.