Anne Arundel County – Page 9 – The Lost Towns Project

County Executive Announces Oral History Virtual Tour of Civil Rights Era in Anne Arundel County

18February2022Drew Webster20th century, African American history, Anne Arundel County, civil rights, story map, web resource

New site features more than 50 oral history interviews with residents documenting Civil Rights Era

Annapolis, MD (February 8, 2022) Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman announced the launch of an oral history virtual tour of the Civil Rights Era in Anne Arundel County. The virtual tour, completed by Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Section in partnership with local historians, can be found at www.aacounty.org/civil-rights-era.“Having stayed up way too late the other night watching the interviews on this site, I can tell you that they are captivating, inspiring, and uplifting,” County Executive Steuart Pittman said. “I am so grateful to the men and women who shared their history and the historians who are bringing it to the public and to our students. This is the kind of honest, direct presentation of history that makes us a better community.”

The new site features more than 50 oral history interviews collected from residents across the County, and is presented as a tour of local places, people, and everyday experiences 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.

“Historic preservation is not only about saving grand old buildings, but about preserving the stories of the people and the places that have profoundly influenced County history,” said C. Jane Cox, Administrator of the County’s Cultural Resources Section in the Office of Planning and Zoning. “Documenting this chapter of local history from the not so distant past helps our Office in its mission to preserve diverse aspects of local history for future generations.”

The project began in 2017 with funding from the National Park Service’s Civil Rights Grants Program. A team of historians from Anne Arundel County in partnership with the non-profit Lost Towns Project, Inc worked with citizens who generously shared memories of what life was like during segregation, and uncovered their compelling stories of injustice, resistance, and sacrifice, perseverance and triumph. Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt) was the lead historian on the project, supported by Dr. John Kille.

“What I love about the Civil Rights Oral History Project: it connects people with their memories and with the way life was during the Civil Rights Era,” lead historian Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt) said. “These stories give a glimpse into the many ways residents engaged in recreation and leisure during segregation. They found creative ways to have fun times with family and friends in spite of being blocked from public spaces or they became owners of social spaces.”

*Map of locations highlighted in the virtual tour*

The project has also resulted in a ground-breaking partnership between Anne Arundel County and the Maryland State Archives. The Archives has established a dedicated Special Collection where the full length oral history footage and transcriptions are to be housed in perpetuity, and can be found here.

Katara West from the Office of Equity & Accelerated Student Achievement and the Social Studies Office at Anne Arundel County Public Schools lauded the tour as a “valuable resource for learners of all ages. The AACPS Local History Initiative plans to utilize this site to educate students and staff about the stories of perseverance, triumph, and strong community bond of African Americans in Anne Arundel County during the Civil Rights Era and beyond! This site will serve as another valuable tool in building social studies and other curriculum that is inclusive of Anne Arundel County history.”

To view the virtual tour and experience local history through the eyes and stories of those who lived it, visit www.aacounty.org/Civil-Rights-Era.

Lost Towns Project Receives Grant to Study Black Housing

15December2021Drew Webster19th century, African American history, Anne Arundel County, fieldwork

The Lost Towns is grateful to have been selected as a recipient of an FY 2022 Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grant Awards from the Maryland Historical Trust. Titled “Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom: Recording Anne Arundel County’s Past,” the goal of this project is to create a more inclusive history by researching, documenting, and sharing the diversity of Black households in nineteenth-century Anne Arundel County, including sites inhabited by both enslaved and free African-Americans, before and after emancipation.

This project will undertake a detailed archival and literature review of nineteenth-century Black housing in the Chesapeake. The investigators will create a database of approximately 100 such sites, conduct field visits to approximately 20 sites to assess their condition, create or update Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties site data, and write a summary report to disseminate the findings. Through this study, the project aims to broaden public support for the protection and preservation of Black historical spaces.

This is a multidisciplinary project that may employ documentation techniques such as remote sensing. In this photo, Lost Towns uses ground penetrating radar to investigate the slave cemetery at Whitehall.

Colonial-Period Archaeological Site Discovered at Jug Bay

7September2021Drew Webster17th century, 18th century, Anne Arundel County, archival research, colonial history, fieldwork, jug bay, Native Americans, Paleoindian period, Patuxent River

Archaeologists with Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Section have uncovered a previously unknown 17th-century archaeological site in Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in southwest Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The discovery was announced at a public event at Jug Bay on May 14th by C. Jane Cox, Chief of Cultural Resources for Anne Arundel County.

Anne Arundel County, in collaboration with the nonprofit organization the Lost Towns Project, has been exploring archaeological sites within and around the County-owned Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary since the early 2000s. Along the Jug Bay segment of the Patuxent River there are nearly 80 unique archaeological sites recorded. The sites range in type and time period, representing a unique continuity of human habitation from the earliest sites, dating to 13,000 years old, through the European arrival of ca. 1650, and on to the present day. Work is largely supported by competitive research grants, and the labor-intensive work of archaeology is supplemented by the incredible contributions of volunteers. Our citizen science based model has, over the past 30 years, resulted in intensive excavations of nearly 200 sites across the County.

*Map of Anne Arundel County with locations mentioned in the text*

In early 2019, the archaeology crew discovered a new site, now named Pindell Bluff (18AN1672), as part of a state grant-funded project to survey and document archaeological sites around Jug Bay and to assess how natural processes like sea level rise and climate change might be affecting the archaeological record. Excavations in the summer of 2019, as part of a field school with Washington College led by Dr. Julie Markin, produced a rich variety of native-period artifacts, including a rare Clovis Point dating to up to 13,000 years ago. Between the prehistoric ceramics, projectile points, and occasional burnt animal bones the team would occasionally find a tiny fragment of historic-period pottery or deteriorated iron nails. However, the intensity of the prehistoric material overshadowed those small hints that people were also in this same space during the historic period.

In 2020, and with volunteer assistance, the crew conducted a systematic metal detector survey on the perimeter of the site and uncovered the blade of a broad hoe dating to ca. 1680-1700. Unfortunately, after this discovery, the pandemic hit and all work was put on hold. The crew was able to return in April 2021 to finish the last few excavation units and conduct one final shovel test pit survey before closing the site for the season. On the final day of the project, the crew, led by Shawn Sharpe and Drew Webster, alongside volunteers Barry Gay, Kevin McCurley, and Dani Tafolla, encountered several shovel test pits with high concentrations of colonial-era artifacts. The survey definitively showed that there had been a domestic occupation of this same bluff sometime between 1670-1730. Diagnostic artifacts included English and German ceramics dating to the late 17th and early 18th centuries as well as clay tobacco pipes from the same period.

This discovery marks the earliest confirmed colonial-period site at Jug Bay, and is among the earliest historic sites in Anne Arundel County! Of the more than 1,700 recorded archaeological sites in the county, only 23 are historic sites that predate 1700. Most of those are located along the Chesapeake Bay shoreline. This site has the potential to tell us about a much less understood period of history; the first generation of people who settled Anne Arundel County along the Patuxent River.

Permanent European settlement in Anne Arundel County began in earnest in 1649, when 300 settlers–landowners, families, indentured servants, and later, enslaved Africans–arrived from St Mary’s City and Southeast Virginia to start a new settlement they called Providence along the Severn River and in the Broadneck peninsula area. Soon the European population spread across lands in the West River area and on Herring Bay. From those first 300 settlers, the population grew, and across all of the colony, historians estimate that there were about 33,000 people living in Maryland by 1680. Who might have been living at Pindell Bluff?

*Tobacco pipe bowl with possible makers mark*

Archival research by Pat Melville and Dave Linthicum shows that the 300-acre property was first patented by Ninial Beall and called “Bachelors Choice” in 1669. While Beall first arrived in Maryland as an indentured servant, serving a Richard Hall of Calvert County for five years, he did not arrive in quite the same fashion as most other indentured servants. The Scotsman was captured by Oliver Cromwell’s forces at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, and transported to Barbados as a prisoner. He was sent to Calvert County, MD in 1655, and placed with Richard Hall to serve out his sentence.

While Beall owned the property, records indicate that he likely never lived there. By sponsoring new settlers to Maryland colony, Beall was granted over 4,000 acres of land by the time he passed in 1717. Initial research uncovered two leases associated with the parcel of land, from 1702 and 1704,that suggest the land was owned by Jonas Jordan, a carpenter, and his wife Mary and son Thomas. It is possible that the Jordan family lived on the land in the late 17th century, until Jonas Jordan passed away. By 1702, Mary Jordan had remarried and leased all of Bachelors Choice to Seth Biggs, a tobacco planter and merchant. Court cases suggest he was living near the Western Branch of the Patuxent between 1680 and 1698, thus making him a likely suspect for our site’s resident. Biggs died without an heir in 1711. Combined with information from the artifacts, this archival research places the likely occupation of the site between 1680 and 1710.

This is just the beginning of research on the property. The cultural resources team has begun exploring research grant opportunities to fund more work, and plans to reach out to our partners at area colleges to see if there is interest in a future academic field school. The goal is for this site to become a project where interested citizens can participate through the County’s Preservation Stewardship Program, which encourages local citizens, students, and scholars to get involved in exploring local history. To learn more about Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section or get involved, visit aacounty.org/cr

These little ceramic sherds pack a big attitude!

29September2020Drew Webster19th century, Anne Arundel County, ceramics, Gibson Island, Magothy River, Ohio

These little ceramic sherds pack a big attitude! These pieces of black transfer-printed whiteware come from a site on Gibson Island near the Magothy River. The wing design and text are part of the makers mark for Homer Laughlin China Co. of East Liverpool, Ohio, which dates the vessel to between 1877 and 1890, the early years of the American whiteware industry.

The full makers mark depicts the American Eagle attacking the British Lion, in what was surely a political dig about the rise of the American pottery industry in a market dominated by British wares.

Homer Laughlin China Co. formed in 1877 and is still operating today. They are perhaps best known for their Fiestaware line of brightly colored dinnerware.

Relevant source: Debolt’s Dictionary of American Pottery Marks (1994)