Bibliography: “Early Black Dorchester, 1776-1870: A history of the struggle of African-Americans in Dorchester County, Maryland, to be free to make their own choices”

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Early Black Dorchester, 1776-1870: A history of the struggle of African-Americans in Dorchester County, Maryland, to be free to make their own choices

Author: McElvey, Kay Najiyyah

Publication info: University of Maryland, College Park, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1991. 9133192.

ProQuest document link

Abstract:

Early Black Dorchester is a narrative account of selected events that demonstrate the struggle of Dorchester County’s African Americans to be free to make their own political, economic, religious, and educational choices between 1776 and 1870. This book describes how the black people’s struggle for freedom of choice was centered within a larger power struggle among opposing white interest groups in the county, state, and nation. The book also describes how, during times when the struggle favored strong anti-blackforces, black leaders (enslaved and free) emerged to voice or demonstrate the black point of view. The book explains how these leaders, by solicitation and example, encouraged other black people to join forces with white supporters in order to counteract the anti-black interest groups. This book demonstrates how Dorchester’s African Americans proved themselves deserving of full citizenship status and capable of making their own political, economic, religious, and educational choices.

Lost History: Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass in Salisbury and The Lower Shore @ Chipman Cultural Center -> Sat., September 21, 2019 @ 2:00 PM — FREE!

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**LOST HISTORY**

Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass in Salisbury and The Lower Shore

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In continued recognition of the lost Eastern Shore history of Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass, a special presentation on his 1880 visit to Salisbury and connections to the Lower Shore will be offered for *FREE* Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 2:00 PM at the Dr. Charles H. Chipman Cultural Center in the old Georgetown neighborhood of Old Salisbury City in Wicomico County, Maryland. 

Introductory remarks will be offered by Shanie Shields of the Chipman Cultural Center, local activist and media personality Amber Green and Mayor of Salisbury City Honorable Jacob Day. Special acknowledgments will be offered to Salisbury Historical Marker Task Force Chairwoman Linda Duyer and Prof. Jefferson Boyer, former member of the board of the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture at Salisbury University.

Following presentations of “The Lost History of Frederick Douglass in Cambridge, Maryland,” at the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center and “Lost History: Rev. H. A. Monroe, Godson to Frederick Douglass and Publisher of The Eastern Shore’s Only Black Newspaper” at the Dorchester County Historical Society local historian and Washington City journalist John Muller makes his debut in Salisbury and the Lower Eastern Shore with LOST HISTORY: Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass in Salisbury and The Lower Shore.

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*U. S. Marshal Frederick Douglass visits Salisbury City on the Lower Shore*

Returning to the Eastern Shore less than six months after a fall 1879 visit to Centreville in Queen Anne’s County, in February 1880 Douglass traveled from Washington City to Baltimore, where he lodged in the home of Rev. James H. Brown, founding instructor and organizer of Centenary Biblical Institute. He then proceeded across the Chesapeake Bay to the Church Street home of Salisbury’s Solomon “Saul” T. Houston, a member of the boards of Morgan College and the Princess Anne Academy. Houston is prominently buried today in Salisbury’s Houston Cemetery.

Maintaining a lifelong commitment to the moral and educational improvement of his people, the lecture of United States Marshal of the District of Columbia Frederick (Bailey) Douglass was advertised as benefiting the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church in Salisbury. Proceeds from the lecture Dr. Douglass delivered in the extant Wicomico County Court House assisted covering the costs of an addition of a second floor to the original John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church built in 1838. 

The extant building stands today as the oldest structure on the Delmarva independently built by people of African descent, serving the present-day community as the Charles H. Chipman Cultural Center.

Information on the 1880 visit of Frederick Douglass to Salisbury was first introduced several years ago to the public’s awareness and attention by Master Eastern Shore Historian Linda Duyer in the pages of the Salisbury Independent and Dorchester Banner.

Q&A will follow the 45 minute presentation

Light Refreshments

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Featured Presenter

John Muller is the author of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C: The Lion of Anacostia (2012) and Mark Twain in Washington, D.C.: The Adventures of a Capital Correspondent (2013) and is at work on Lost History: Frederick Douglass and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. 

Over the past year he has reported on the Shore for The Washington Informer and been featured in the pages of the Star Democrat and airwaves of Delmarva Public Radio for his scholarship on the lost history of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Muller’s lectures have been broadcast by C-SPAN’s BOOK TV and American History TV. He is a frequent guest on Washington, D.C. radio stations and has been cited by the Washington Post, Washington City Paper and other publications for his local history research and subject expertise. 

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 — Event is FREE !! — 

  Students of Wicomico County Public Schools, Chesapeake College, Salisbury University and University of Maryland – Eastern Shore are encouraged to attend. 

For more information visit www.chipmancenter.org

Dr. Charles H. Chipman Cultural Center 

325 Broad Street   

Salisbury, Maryland 21801

Schedule of Steamboat Lines from Baltimore City; December 1877

Baltimore Sun, 13 Dec 1877.

Did Enoch E. Hughes hear Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass speak in Cambridge (1877 / 1878) then hear Douglass speak in Washington City while enrolled at Howard University in the early 1880s?

Courtesy of the Historical Society of Kent County — This is almost certainly a picture of Rev. E. E. Hughes, pastor of the Bethel A.M. E. Church in Chestertown after leading camp meetings in Cecil County in the late 1880s.

Nearly a decade ago, Kevin Hemstock, a newspaperman out of Kent County published a substantial article in the Kent County News about African Methodist Episcopal Church minister Rev. Enoch E. Hughes, a man otherwise lost to memory and nowhere to be found represented on local historic markers or within rudimentary heritage brochures.

In 2015 Hemstock inserted a photo and caption of Rev. Hughes in a book without further mention in the text.

During a recent research quest we came across Injustice on the Eastern Shore: Race and the Hill Murder Trial and upon reading the caption our street historian instincts begin to harmonize.

Enoch E. Hughes of Cambridge, Maryland and Howard University

Free-born in the Bucktown area of Dorchester County in 1860, the record indicates as a late teen Hughes and members of his family were living in Dorchester County during the September 1877 and subsequent November 1878 visit of United States Marshal Frederick Douglass to Cambridge.

Was Hughes in the audience that greeted Douglass, escorted him through town and heard him speak behind Bethel AME in September 1877 and/or was Hughes seated in the present-day Dorchester County courthouse in November 1878 where Douglass spoke to benefit a local cause?

Enoch E. Hughes of Cambridge, Maryland was a student at Howard University in the early 1880s. Dr. Douglass was a member of Howard’s BOT from 1871 until his passing.

During the 1882 – 1883 school year at Howard University in Washington City Hughes, according to existing records, was the only student in any department from the Eastern Shore’s Dorchester County.

For that academic year Howard University enrolled two other students from Maryland’s Eastern Shore with Saint Michaels in Talbot County and Chesapeake [City] in Cecil County properly accounted for.

I am still tracking how and/or how well Douglass knew Hughes. Based on quantifiable and qualified scholarship, Douglass was an active presence on the campus of Howard University, serving as an active member of Howard’s Board of Trustees from 1871 until his passing in 1895.

According to existing records, accounts and oral tradition Dr. Douglass often knew the parents and sometimes even the grandparents of Howard students. Some of the students Douglass had known since their infancy.

This history has yet to be told due the proclivity of mainstream scholars to embrace and endorse diabolical scandal-mongering speculations and conjectures that have minimized and dishonored the people’s history of Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass.

It is the informed interpretation of Old Anacostia Douglassonians and Shore street historians that hereby, as it is formally known Dr. Douglass looked out for young people the entirety of his life and heretofore it is acknowledged Dr. Douglass was closer connected to the Eastern Shore following the Civil War than any previous historian other than Master Historian Dickson Preston has advanced, it is hereby our declaration it is highly probable Douglass would have known and/or met a young Enoch E. Hughes and his family during visits to Cambridge in the late 1870s and in subsequent years Dr. Douglass would have continued his relationship with a young Hughes in the early 1880s while Hughes was one of only three students from the Eastern Shore enrolled at Howard University.

It is our position their shared identity as Eastern Shoremen would would have been a discussion point for them, if nothing else.

The research continues …

2019 chicken sammich wars vs. 1885 Oyster War of the Eastern Shore

Baltimore Sun article from 1885.

Shared in the spirit of levity, as many Facebook timelines have been taken over in recent days by memes, “lives” and news reporting and commentary on the 2019 chicken sammich wars lest we lose historic perspective on past “real wars,” such as the Oyster Wars of the 1880s.

The Oyster War on the Delmarava Peninsula was so entangled in local and state politics in 1885 that Maryland Governor Henry Lloyd, himself a Shoreman, had to intervene from Annapolis.

Whereas those who lived through and survived the chicken sammich war of the summer of 2019 will never forget it, lest we never forget the Oyster Wars of the Shore and the watermen who served.

Harper’s Weekly from 1886.

Honorable Winifred Monroe Howard, grand-daughter of Rev. Henry A. Monroe (2013 photo courtesy of Museum of African American History – Boston and Nantucket)

Honorable Winifred Monroe Howard, grand-daughter of Rev. Henry A. Monroe, in 2013.
Courtesy of Museum of African American History – Boston and Nantucket

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When the “Freedom Rising” exhibit opened in 2013 at the Museum of African American History – Boston and Nantucket, Rev. Henry A. Monroe’s granddaughter, Winifred Monroe Howard, came to the exhibit opening and posed for a picture with his image.

According to Honorable Sharon Lucas, shortly after this photo was taken Honorable Winifred Monroe passed.

At the September 20, 2019 presentation of Lost History: Rev. H. A. Monroe, Godson to Frederick Douglass and Publisher of The Eastern Shore’s Only Black Newspaper Hon. Sharon Lucas will speak about her aunt’s guardianship and preservation of the history of Rev. Monroe.

No language can express our gratitude to the family of Rev. Monroe for their collective commitment to the community and public service to all of humanity across generations and centuries.

Funeral Services for Honorable Devin, Old Anacostia Douglassonian (Fri., August 23, 2019; viewing 10-11am / services 11am – 12 noon @ Historic Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2498 Alabama Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. 20020)

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Honorable Devin is an Old Anacostia Douglassonian in life and afterlife.

While he protected, guarded and honored the history of his community during his life we have an additional responsibility henceforth in uplifting the history to do so with honor and respect for his name and memory and contributions to his community.

It is with bowed head and clasped hands we take a knee and pray on the corners for the memory of Honorable Devin and all Old Anacostia Douglassonians who have joined the Lord’s Army of Guardian Angels to watch and guard the living.

With the sincerest sympathies and deepest of heartfelt courtesies we send our condolences and love to Honorable Devin’s family, friends, loved ones and community of Old Anacostia.

The historicity of Allen Chapel AME Church, known as the “Cathedral of Southeast,” cannot be expressed in language.

Prior to the American Civil War a community of free peoples of African descent in the area of Good Hope Hill received blessing from the Baltimore Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent religious denomination founded by peoples of African descent in America, to establish Allen Chapel.

Before the American Civil War Allen Chapel AME has been a sanctuary for the community.

President Obama visited and attended services at the Cathedral of Southeast while serving as President of the United States of America.

The loss and void felt in our hearts is eternal as is the history Honorable Devin contributed to his community and our knowing his history will remain forever.

JM

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Editor’s Note:

Douglass on the Shore, as a blog, is an outgrowth of The Lion of Anacostia, which we have maintained since 2011. This post appeared on The Lion of Anacostia earlier and we felt compelled to share in this space.

Our historical detective and community work in Old Anacostia and on the Old Shore are one in the same.

Our orientation and responsibility as street historians and community historians is not the same as the diabolical Ivory Tower scandalmongering historians with no history who have never step foot into the community.

The history of Dr. Frederick (Bailey) Douglass will never be understood in infinite lifetimes by those afraid to look into the eye of community historians on the corners.

Our sense of loss and sentiment will not leave us soon and will inform our work on the Shore moving forward with and within Douglassonian communities that understand without language the sentiments of loss and grief we feel with the loss of Honorable Devin, Old Anacostia Douglassonian.

Video: Frederick Douglass Library at University of Maryland – Eastern Shore

Bibliography Note: “The Road to Jim Crow: The African American Struggle on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, 1860 – 1915” [1]

The Road to Jim Crow: The African American Struggle on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, 1860 – 1915 was first recommended to us by Dr. Edward Papenfuse, Maryland State Archivist (retired).

Authored by attorney C. Christopher Brown and published in 2016 by the Maryland Historical Society we have found the book to be comprehensive, revealing and groundbreaking within the modern field of Delmarva Studies.

In future posts we will be featuring excerpts of the book which deal with several subjects, persons, places and events of our scholastic investigation.

As previously noted, the closure of local Eastern Shore publishers within recent decades has surely changed the conditions and dynamics for local historians of the Delmarva.

It is duly noted and recognized the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore published Brown’s important work of local scholarship in 2016, as well as Stealing Freedom Along the Mason-Dixon Line: Thomas McCreary, the Notorious Slave Catcher from Maryland by Milt Diggins.

We applaud all who body forth new scholarship and more complete history.

JM

Bibliography Note: “A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore” (1997)

A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore (1997) Edited by Carole C. Marks.

In our review of the existing Delmarva bibliography we have noticed within the past two decades there has been a shift, of sorts, which nonetheless has not yet told the proper history of Dr. Douglass on the Shore.

With the 2009 closure of Tidewater Publishers, which produced several invaluable titles, and the seeming disappearance of the Queen Anne Press, which published titles from Dickson J. Preston, it would appear book publishing on the Eastern Shore has seen better days.

Within the past two decades Dr. Carole C. Marks, formerly director of the “Black American Studies Program” at the University of Delaware, has published and edited, Lift Every Voice: Echoes from the Black Community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1999 and A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1997.

When we read sentences, such as the one below, we understand why and how the history of Dr. Douglass on the Shore has been lost.

A second Eastern Shore slave of significance was Frederick Augustus Bailey Douglass. Born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, in Dorchester County, he experienced forced separation from family members and the horrors of slavery at an early age.

A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore, p. 57. [PDF]

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TOC: A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore