African American Voices, Memories and Places: A Four Rivers Heritage Trail
This virtual trail and its companion guide highlight publicly accessible historic sites that provide a tangible place to visit, explore, and contemplate important African American individuals, families, people, historic places, events, struggles, and accomplishments. It also included many privately-owned sites, and in far too many cases, sites physically lost to time. This interactive tour acknowledges and celebrates contributions by African-Americans over the County’s 370-year history; those who tilled the soil on farms that made Anne Arundel County prosper prior to Emancipation, those who harvested, processed and shipped the Bay’s seafood to feed an expanding Country, and those who physically built the grand colonial houses for wealthy landowners, many of whom were enslaved. We honor those families and individuals that came together in good times and bad, to start a church and a congregation, to found a school, to build a community, and to create a legacy.
Please note that many of the tour stops are privately owned and not accessible for visitation. Thank you for respecting the privacy of these properties. Sites open to the public are clearly marked.
Explore the Civil Rights Era in Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Relying upon more than 50 oral histories, this virtual tour is a rare opportunity to hear about local history through the eyes, voices, and memories of those who experienced it first-hand. Highlighting local places, residents, and their stories, the project offers accounts of everyday activities 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. A team of historians, led by Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt) and Dr. John Kille worked with citizens who generously shared their memories of what life was like during segregation, and uncovered compelling stories of injustice, resistance, and sacrifice, as well as perseverance and triumph. The full interviews and transcriptions are accessible by request from the Maryland State Archives.
In 1848, Cinderella Brogden was “about 22 to 24 years old, pleasant when spoken to, of a light yellow complexion, and about 4’6″ tall.” She lived at Belvoir Plantation in Crownsville, Maryland, in a comfortable, well-appointed stone dwelling house with a central fireplace, brick floors and four rooms, with her mother Lydia, and her siblings Basil, John Henry, Lucinda, and Eliza. She had recently married Abraham Brogden, a well-respected laborer whose family had lived in Anne Arundel County for generations. Abraham grew up in the Millersville area, near the head of the Severn River and was likely familiar with Cinderella and her family living on a nearby farm. In 1848, he was 27 years old, employed by Mr. James Curly at his farm in the north of Anne Arundel County, and lived in Ward 10 of Baltimore City.
But here is where the fairytale stops.
George F. Worthington, an ordained protestant priest, inherited the Belvoir Plantation along present day Generals Highway, from his father in 1837. He also inherited 13 enslaved workers, including Lydia and her children, Basil, Cinderella, John Henry, Lucinda, and Eliza. Cinderella was likely born at Belvoir, and for her 24 years, had at least enjoyed a family structure and the support network of her siblings. Despite her enslaved status, she was allowed to marry, and wed a well-respected freedman named Abraham Brogden.
Shortly before Christmas of 1848, Cinderella received word that she “was about to be sold [out of state] under execution for her masters debts,” a reality that struck fear and dread, and promised to tear apart her life and family. On the evening of Thursday December 21st, Cinderella gathered a few of her personal belongings and clothes, bid her family goodbye, and fled to Baltimore City with the support of her husband Abraham.
While Worthington was not living at Belvoir, his Overseer Edward H Brown wasted no time in posting a runaway slave advertisement to the Baltimore Sun offerring $75 for her arrest or $100 if taken out of State. This is a chilling caveat to the ad, as Brown’s acknowledgement that she may escape “out of the state” suggests that Cinderella knew the gravity of her fate, and was trying to get as far away as possible to gain her freedom.
This advertisement was posted in the Baltimore Sun on December 23rd 1848, though by the time it was published, she and her husband Abraham had already been apprehended by the authorities. Admitted to a Baltimore jail on Dec 22nd, Cinderella remained incarcerated for 8 days, until ultimately being returned to her ‘owner’, Mr. Worthington. As she and her family had feared, upon her return to Worthington’s custody, she was quickly sold out of state.
For Abraham’s effort to save his wife, he was tried and found guilty of “enticing his wife away” by the Anne Arundel County Court on April 19, 1849, and sentenced to four years in a Maryland Penitentiary. While the law responded blindly, seeing Cinderella as nothing more than property that had been stolen by Abraham, more than 115 citizens petitioned the Governor, pleading for leniency. Sadly, their pleas did not extend so far as to bringing Cinderella back to Maryland.
Long time family friend Thomas D. Marriott wrote Governor Enoch Louis Lowe multiple times, pleading Brogden’s case and asking for his sentence to be reduced. On March 20 1851 he wrote, “Few can be found who do not look upon his attempt to save his wife from a sale to some far distant parts as an offense not deserving of the full penalty of the law.” A few months later he further pleaded that, “It should be borne in mind, that she was about to be sold, when Brogden ran off with her…The crime was in endeavoring to set his wife at liberty! Not that instigated by fanaticism, but one produced by feelings entirely different from those by which fanatics and political abolitionists are amazed.”
The appeals eventually brought the Governor to grant Abraham Brogden a pardon on May 23, 1851, and he was released from the Maryland penitentiary the very next day. They were sadly though never to be reunited, as Cinderella had died during his imprisonment.
Contributed by C. Jane Cox, Administrator, Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section
Abraham Brogden MSA SC 5496-003367 (Biographical Series)
George F. Worthington MSA SC 5496-00640 (Biographical Series)
“One Hundred Dollars Reward.” Baltimore Sun 23 December 1848.
R.S. Fisher. Gazetteer of the State of Maryland (Baltimore, MD: James S. Waters, 1852) 58.
Anne Arundel County District 2, Simon J. Martenet, Map of Anne Arundel County, 1860, Library of Congress, MSA SC 1213-1-117.
SECRETARY OF STATE (Pardon Papers) MSA S1031, Abraham Brogden, Box 48, Folder 28, 1851, [MSA S1031-10].
“One Hundred Dollars Reward.” Baltimore Sun 23 December 1848.
BALTIMORE CITY AND COUNTY JAIL (Runaway Docket) [MSA C 2064-2]. Cinderella Brogden, #1268. SECRETARY OF STATE (Pardon Papers) MSA S1031, Abraham Brogden, Box 48, Folder 28, 1851, [MSA S1031-10].
MARYLAND PENITENTIARY (Prisoners Record) MSA S275, Abraham Brogden, #4241, MSA S 275-2, MdHR 5656.
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU (Census Record, MD), Abram Brigton, 1840, Baltimore City, Ward 10, Page 3, Line 4 [MSA SM61-100, SCM 4714].
Ethan Allen, Clergy in Maryland of the Protestant Episcopal Church since the independence (Baltimore, MD: James S. Waters, 1860) 60.
1850 Census Record (D.C.) for George F. Worthington, Washington City, Ward 1, Page 56, Line 31. Ancestry.com.
Maryland Inventory of Historic Places Scott’s Plantation/ Belvoir AA-183
1860 Martenets Map: Excerpt of Round Bay/Crownsville/ Millersville Area.
In celebration of Women’s History Month this March, The Lost Towns Project and the Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section wish to highlight a number of significant women in the history of the County.
Margaret Mercer was born on July 1, 1791, daughter of John Mercer, the future 10th Governor of Maryland (1801-1803), and his wife Sophia Sprigg Mercer. Margaret was one of four children. Her father John had been a member of the Virginia House of Delegates after serving in the American Revolutionary War; however, after marrying Sophia he moved to her estate, Cedar Park, in Anne Arundel County. She grew up on the family estate in Galesville and read widely from her father’s library. Margaret determined two things at a young age: that she would not marry; and, more importantly, that slavery was immoral.
John Mercer died in 1821 with $17,000 of debt that he passed on to his children. At that time, Margaret inherited a number of her father’s 72 enslaved individuals. Creditors pushed Margaret to sell the men and women whom she had inherited but she refused, not wishing to break up families. While her brother, John, inherited Cedar Park and remained on the plantation, Margaret moved to Essex County, VA, where she lived with her uncle, James Mercer Garnett, a former member of Congress and prominent planter. Margaret worked with her cousins, Garnett’s daughters, teaching at a local school in Elmwood, VA for four years. During this time, Margaret joined the Virginia Colonization Society, a branch of the American Colonization Society. The society advocated purchasing the freedom of enslaved people and resettling them in Africa. In 1823, the American Colonization Society purchased land on the Guinea Coast of West Africa, naming it Liberia. Throughout those four years in Virginia, Margaret corresponded with prominent members of the Colonization Society, including her cousin Congressman Charles Fenton Mercer, one of the founders, and her cousin John H. B. Latrobe, a Baltimore architect.
Cedar Park in the 1930s
In 1825, Margaret returned to Galesville and Cedar Park, founding a girls school called “The Cedar Park Academy,” which she ran out of her family home until 1834. The school focused on teaching girls math, astronomy, natural sciences, philosophy, religion, agriculture, and public health. The profits she raised from running the school were used to settle the family debt. During this time she manumitted all of the enslaved men and women she had inherited from her father, including the Young family, John, Milly, and their son Forrester in 1830, and a woman named Nelly Sparrow. In 1832, six of the people whom she had manumitted were sent to Liberia under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. Sometime that year, they arrived in Liberia aboard the schooner “Margaret Mercer.” The Captain of the schooner, Abels, remained in Liberia for 13 days and wrote a letter about his positive experience there, which was published by the Colonization Society. Unfortunately, within three years the Liberia experiment proved unsuccessful: of the six people sent to Liberia by Margaret, three people had died, one had returned to the United States, one had moved elsewhere in Africa, and one was never heard from again. Margaret never sent any more people to Liberia, and similar results among many of the freedmen and women settling in Liberia led to a decline in the entire Colonization movement.
In 1836, Margaret heard from her cousin, Charles Fenton Mercer that Ludwell Lee, a Loudoun County, VA planter and politician who had co-founded the Loudoun County chapter of the American Colonization Society had died and his heirs had placed his 1,000 acre plantation, Belmont, up for sale to pay off debts. By that summer, Margaret had moved to Belmont. In the fall, she opened a second school for girls called the “Belmont Academy,” and in December she formally purchased 400 acres of the property for about $7,000 dollars (the modern equivalent of approximately $150,000). The purpose of the school was agricultural education as a way to remove the need for enslaved labor. Other courses were in philosophy, ethics, the Bible, French, Latin, geography, geology, and astronomy. Her commitment to ethical education was such that she even wrote a book on the topic for use in the classroom in 1841: Popular Lectures on Ethics, or Moral Obligation: For the Use of Schools.
Margaret Mercer
Most of the students at Belmont Academy were daughters of the local landed gentry, who paid $250 a year in tuition and $10 a year to board on the property. Local children also studied at the school, including the children of enslaved families and free African American women. At its peak enrollment under Margaret’s management there were 45 students enrolled and seven instructors employed. While the colonization efforts of Liberia waned, Margaret was continually committed to the abolitionist movement; in 1842 she purchased 22 enslaved men and women from her brother John Mercer, all of whom she manumitted.
Margaret Mercer died at Belmont on September 17, 1846 from tuberculosis. She was 55 years old. Belmont was subsequently purchased by George Kephart, whose eldest daughter, Eugenia Kephart, continued to run the school Margaret had started, moving it to Oak Hill Plantation in 1856, before it closed in the 1870s when Virginia’s new constitution enabled free public education. One of the executors of Margaret’s estate, her nephew Richard S. Mercer, most likely used some of the proceeds of the sale of Belmont to build the Parkhurst manor in Harwood, near to the family home of Cedar Park. In 1848, Casper Morris wrote a biography of Margaret Mercer, The Memoir of Miss Margaret Mercer. Margaret Mercer was a woman committed to her ideals and spent her entire life focusing on the causes of abolition and education.
by Amelia Chisholm, Archaeological Laboratory Director, Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section
A couple of sources used for this summary that are unlinked above include:
