fWSft S^ 5SZI-I' HALL OF RECORDS LIBRARY Spring 2008 ANNAPOL'S, MARYLAND ivnnrYT AND Historical Magazine Coming this summer from the MdHS Press! Treasure in the Cellar: A Tale of Gold in Depression-Era Baltimore LEONARD AUGSBURGER LEONARD iUGSIURGER rREAIURE IM THE CELLAR •^^1 ATALE OF GOLD IN OEPBEJSIOM-ERA SALTIMOBE Coin collectors and enthusiasts have long been familiar with the story of two boys who unearthed a fortune in gold coins while playing in a Baltimore basement in 1934. But the rest of the story trailed off to a few odd details. Lifelong coin collector Leonard Augsberger uncovered the rest of the story. What happened to the kids? The gold? Who buried it in the first place? The author is the guest speaker at the MdHS Annual Meeting, Thursday, June 26, 5:00 P.M. Advance copies of the book will be available. Please call 410-685-3750 x321 if you are planning to attend. Publication Date, September 2008. Paper, $26.00. ISBN 978-0-938420-97-6. 35 % discount for MdHS members. To order call the MdHS, 410-685-3750 x363, or contact our distributor, Johns Hopkins University Press, 410-516-6965. PUBLICATION OF THIS WORK WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE PRESS OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY Maryland Historical Society Founded 1844 Officers Henry Hodges Stansbury, Chair Thomas A. Collier, Vice President Alex. G. Fisher, President Richard T. Moreland, Vice President James W. Constable, Secretary Dorothy Mel. Scott, Vice President Frederick M. Hudson, Treasurer Martin Sullivan, Vice President Cecil E. Flamer, Assistant Treasurer David S. Thaler, Vice President Francis J. Carey, Vice President Board of Trustees Gregory H. Barnhill Lynn Springer Roberts Chairmen Emeriti William F. Chaney Walter Schamu L. Patrick Deering Ann Y. Fenwick David R Scheffenacker Jr. Jack S. Griswold Robert Gregory Stewart T. Shettle Samuel Hopkins Brian R Harrington The Hon. Casper R. Taylor Jr. Barbara P. Katz Louis G. Hecht Edward Walker Stanard T. Klinefelter David L. Hopkins Jr. H. Thomas Howell Presidents Emeriti Ex-Officio Trustees Lenwood M. Ivey John L. McShane The Hon. John P. Sarbanes M. Willis Macgill Brian B. Topping The Hon. David R. Craig Jayne Plank The Hon. Sheila Dixon Isabelle B. Obert The Hon. James T. Smith Jr. Robert W. Rogers, Director The Maryland Historical Magazine Patricia Dockman Anderson, Editor Robin Donaldson Coblentz, Christopher T. George, Jane Cashing Lange, Robert W. Barnes, Laura Rice, Editorial Associates Editorial Board H. Thomas Howell, Chair John S. Bainbridge Jr.; Jean H. Baker; James H. Bready; Robert J. Brugger; Deborah Cardin; Lois Green Carr; Suzanne E. Chapelle; Marilyn Davis; Toby L. Ditz; Jack G. Goellner; Norvell E. Miller III; Charles W. Mitchell; Jean B. Russo; David S. Thaler; Bertram Wyatt-Brown Members Emeriti David G. Fogel; Samuel Hopkins; Charles McC. Mathias; John W Mitchel ISSN 0025-4258 © 2008 by the Maryland Historical Society. Published as a benefit of membership in the Maryland Historical Society in March, June, September, and December. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and/or America: History and Life. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send address changes to the Maryland Historical Society, 201 West Monument Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. Printed by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, Pennsylvania 17331. Individual subscriptions $24.00. (Individual membership in the society with full benefits is $50.00; family membershp, $65.00.) Institutional and library subscriptions $50.00 per year, prepaid. MARYLAND Historical Magazine VOLUME 103, NO. 1 (Spring 2008) CONTENTS From Slave to Slaveowner, the Life of Robert Pearle of Maryland 4 MARY CLEMENT JESKE "The Horrors of Civil War": The Tilghman Family in the American Revolution 33 1ENNIFERA.BRYAN The Heirs of Augustine Gambrill and the Making of Nineteenth-Century Maryland 63 TRACY MATTHEW MELTON Research Notes and Maryland Miscellany 92 The Socialite Spy from Baltimore, Marguerite E. Harrison, 1918-1922 by Wallace Shugg Book Reviews 116 Breslaw, Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America: Expanding the Orbit of Scottish Culture, by Karen E. Robbins Blanton and King, eds., Indians and European Contact in Context: The Mid-Atlantic Region, by J. Frederick Fausz Heinemann, Kolp, et al., Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007, by Nancy Davis Coquillette and York, eds., Portrait of a Patriot: The Major Political and Legal Papers of Josiah Quincy Junior, Vol. I, by leffrey Sawyer Ward, George Washington's Enforcers: Policing the Continental Army, by Gary Ralph Latimer, 1812: War with America, by Christopher T. George Allen, A Republic in Time: Temporality and Social Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America, by Hillary Murtha Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, by Thomas R. Pegram Notices 126 Cover: The Casselman Hotel, Grantsville, Garrett County. (Maryland Historical Society.) The Maryland Historical Magazine welcomes submissions from authors and letters to the editor. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. All articles will be acknowledged, but only those accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope will be returned. Submissions should be printed or typed manuscript. Address Editor, Maryland Historical Magazine, 201 West Monument Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21201. Include name, address, and daytime telephone number. Once accepted, articles should be on 3.5-inch disks (MS Word or PC convertible format), or CDs, or may be emailed to [email protected]. The guidelines for contributors are available on our website at www.mdhs.org. Maryland Historical Magazine From Slave to Slave Owner: The Life of Robert Pearle of Maryland Mary Clement Jeske During his unusually long life, Robert Pearle (c. 1685-1765), a free mulatto who had been "born of a negroe Slave" in Calvert County, Maryland, achieved a level of success truly remarkable for the time and place in which he lived. "Manumitted by his late master's Will" with his wife and eldest son in 1720, Pearle established himself as a carpenter and began a rise to prosperity that would eclipse that of most men, black or white, in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake. Pearle probably never lost his identity as a former slave and even though not free until age thirty-five, he nevertheless attained a level of economic success that placed him among the ranks of the wealthiest white planters in Mary- land during the colonial era. The evidence and measure of that achievement—the fourteen slaves enumerated in Pearle's will—testify to just how far he had trav- eled—from slave to slave owner—during his life.1 No probate inventory survives to provide a detailed analysis of Pearle's per- sonal property, but his fourteen chattels were perhaps worth as much as £700, the value of which—exclusive of his other property—would have placed Pearle among the top 5 to 10 percent of all inventoried Chesapeake decedents during the colonial era.2 Pearle did not own any land when he died, choosing instead to live on the two hundred-acre tract on Carrollton Manor in Frederick County that he had rented from the Carroll family for more than two decades. Nevertheless, Pearle had ac- quired a level of wealth that placed him among the top ranks, though not at the very pinnacle, of Chesapeake wealth holders. Several factors seem to have contributed to Robert Pearle's success. First, while enslaved, Pearle had acquired a valuable skill, carpentry, that allowed him to find employment as a free man and probably provided the foundation for his eventual prosperity.3 In addition, he lived an extraordinarily long life by eighteenth century standards, dying at age eighty, years that allowed him time to accumulate property despite his long period of bondage. Most importantly, Pearle enjoyed the support of some members of the white ruling elite, beginning with his master, Richard Marsham (c. 1640-1713), the wealthy Prince George's County land and slave holder who gave Pearle his freedom.4 After Marsham's death, Pearle continued to enjoy the patron- age of some powerful whites, which proved critical to maintaining his rights and to The author is an editor at the Charles Carroll of Carrollton Family Papers Project. From Slave to Slave Owner . Robert Pearle h. h. Jean Nicholas Bellin, Carte de la Baye de Chesapeake, IJS?- Robert Pearle migrated to Frederick County in 1744. his eventual success in a world where whites controlled all access to power and most blacks were slaves. Pearle parlayed his unique advantages into economic success, which, once attained, exerted an equal or even greater influence than his race. Robert Pearle was born about 1685 and grew to maturity in the early eigh- teenth-century Chesapeake, simultaneously with the emergence of a slave-based plantation economy that shaped and defined his world. His was a very different world from the Chesapeake of the previous century, when white indentured ser- vants, the primary labor force, outnumbered slaves by as many as five to one. Blacks, both slave and free, comprised only a tiny part of the population, just 6 percent of the total in 1670. White servants and black slaves worked together in the same fields, usually alongside their masters, on small agricultural units, lived under the same roof with their owners, played together, ran away together, some- times enjoyed intimate sexual relationships, and occasionally married. Although most blacks were slaves, slavery was not yet legally codified, race and slavery were not synonymous, and race relations were more fluid than they would be in the eighteenth century. Before the 1680s the majority of slaves in the Chesapeake did not come directly from Africa, but had spent time in the Caribbean, other parts of the New World, or along the Atlantic coast.