Dr. Emily Wilson: A Pioneering Country Doctor

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Dr. Emily Hammond Wilson was a pioneer in the medical profession and accomplished a lot of firsts in her life, including practicing outside racial norms during the era of segregation.  Over her 53 year career, she garnered a lot of respect and endearment among her peers, friends, and the local community. 

Emily Wilson, 1930s

Born on July 8, 1904 in Beech Island, South Carolina, Emily graduated in 1927 from the Medical College of Georgia. She was the only woman in her class and only the second woman to graduate from the school. She would end up researching at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore before becoming the first female doctor in South Anne Arundel County.  In 1929, Emily borrowed money from her uncle and set up her practice in Lothian, MD.  She had to prove herself from the start, as many residents were wary of her capabilities as a female doctor.  In 2004, she was quoted in The Capital as saying “One woman told me she sent for me just to see what I looked like.  People weren’t real sure I knew what I was doing.”  Her first office was in a summer kitchen with no water and electricity.  She was very much a country doctor, making house calls by horseback or buggy when the local roads were too muddy to traverse by car. When patients did not have the cash money to pay her ($1 for office visits and $15 for at-home baby deliveries), they would often pay her with a bushel of oysters, chickens, or farm labor work. 

In 1932, she married her first husband, John Fletcher Wilson.  Together, they purchased the historic “Obligation” property in the 1940s.  Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the dwelling was built in 1743 for the locally prominent Stockett family.  Unfortunately, when the Wilsons purchased the property, it was in a deteriorated state, but they worked hard to restore it and it is where Dr. Wilson lived the remainder of her life.  Around the same time, she moved her office to the small building at the corner of Solomon’s Island Rd and Owensville Rd (Rt. 255) which was formerly a tea house that was owned and operated by local resident, Anne Cheston. Anne was the daughter of Dr. Caspar Morris Cheston and Sally Murray Cheston and was a  long time resident of Owensville.  She built the tea house when the State Road was built around 1910. 

Anne Cheston’s Tea House, c. 1920s

In early 20th century America, tea houses were women-owned and operated businesses and became a “third place” for other women to gather and socialize.  This was a huge milestone in the social and commercial history of women in this country, as most businesses and social clubs were male dominated. Many of Anne Cheston’s male forbearers, in fact, were members of the prominent Old South River Club (the longest surviving men’s club in America) that still stands today on South River Clubhouse Road.  Unfortunately, the tea house was not a successful venture and closed after a few years and then became a dwelling for many years prior to it becoming the office of Dr. Wilson.  The building still stands today as a commercial business.

Dr. Emily Wilson makes a house call, 1950s

Unlike many doctors’ offices in America that were segregated, Emily Wilson did not abide by those same constraints.  Her patients, both white and black, sat in the same waiting room and she showed no preference in the order that they were seen.  It was always on a first-come first-served basis and depended on the seriousness of the ailment.  She also made herself available to any sick person needing medical care, no matter who they were or what time of day it was.  She continued her groundbreaking career by becoming the president of the Anne Arundel Medical Society in 1951 and the Chief of Staff of Anne Arundel Hospital, now Anne Arundel Medical Center.  As Chief of Staff, she established clinics for pre-natal care and to treat syphilis.  Dr. Wilson gave up practicing at the age of 78 and is said to have delivered over 1,000 babies during her long career.  She remained living at Obligation in Harwood and was active in the community until her death on July 10, 2007 at 103 years old. 

Contributed by Darian Beverungen, Historic Sites Planner, Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section.  

References: 

Magnotti, Therese. Doc: The Life of Emily Hammond Wilson. Published by the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society.

“Emily Hammond Wilson Walker MD (1994-2007).” MSA SC 3520-14731.  Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series).

Crownsville Hospital: Sewing for Dress and Comfort

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Crownsville Hospital was founded in 1911 by the State of Maryland to house and care for African Americans with mental health problems. By mid-century, it became known for being understaffed and overcrowded.

Until 1948, all staff members at the hospital were white. By 1959, African Americans made up 45% of the hospital staff, and in 1963, the hospital was integrated.

Sewing at Crownsville Cemetery. Courtesy of Dorothea McCullers

Dorothea McCullers spent 38 years working for the hospital, beginning in 1964 as a seamstress and later as the supervisor of the clothing department. She still remembers all 21 pieces that stitched together to form uniforms for the hospital employees.

Hear what she has to say at Stop 16 on Anne Arundel County’s Civil Rights Era virtual tour.

SOURCES:

Oral history interview with Dorothea McCullers conducted on May 30, 2018, by Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt), oral historian, and filmed and edited by Anthony Smoot of Anthony A. Smoot Productions.

“Tragic Chapter of Crownsville State Hospital’s Legacy.” Capital Gazette. June 5, 2013.

a square brick building with trees in the background. The building has a central door with windows on either side.

A Not-So Cinderella Story

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The Life of Cinderella Brogden of Belvoir

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

Links to Learn More:

Archaeological Research at Belvoir

See an interactive 3-d reconstruction of the Belvoir Slave Barracks here

DNA Traces local citizens roots back to those enslaved at Belvoir

References

  • Cinderella Brogden, MSA SC 5496-287  (Biographical Series)
  • 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. 

(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Geraldine Whittington: Woman in the White House

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Geraldine Whittington (1931-1993), known to most as Gerri, is a notable woman of the Civil Rights Era. She left her mark on history as the first African American secretary to a U.S. President in the White House.

Gerri was born in Lothian, a historically important African American enclave in southern Anne Arundel County. As a child, she went to Lothian Elementary School, a Rosenwald school built in 1931, the year Gerri was born, to serve African American children during the period of segregation. In the 1940s, she attended Wiley H. Bates High School (now listed on the National Register of Historic Places), the only public high school available to black students in Anne Arundel County at the time. From there, Gerri went on to Virginia State College (now known as Virginia State University), historically renowned as one of the earliest, public colleges for both African American men and women in the southern United States.

Gerri left Virginia State College in 1950, where she pursued a bachelor’s degree in business administration, and promptly entered federal service with the Agency for International Development (AID) in the State Department, where she worked with Ralph Dungan. When Ralph Dungan became appointments secretary to President John F. Kennedy, Dungan invited Gerri to work with him in the White House, which she began starting in July of 1961. After JFK’s assassination in 1963, she continued to work in the White House at start of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, at first for Walter Jenkins and William Moyers, LBJ’s closest assistants. Very quickly, they referred her secretarial services to the President.

Gerri thought it was a prank when President Johnson called her to reassign her as her secretary to the White House. How do we know? LBJ taped this conversation (as he did every conversation in the White House) and we can listen to it today. She began working as LBJ’s personal secretary on Christmas of 1963. Her reassignment started on Air Force One, where she accompanied LBJ on his flight to Texas for the holiday.

On January 18, 1964, Geraldine Whittington stands in conversation in the White House with four prominent civil rights leaders: James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Whitney M. Young, and Martin Luther King.

Right at the start of Gerri’s tenure as LBJ’s personal secretary, she found herself walking into an all-white country club in Texas on the President’s arm, a calculated move on LBJ’s part to signal the end of segregation.  In that moment, she became a prominent face of the Civil Rights Movement. The setting, at the very end of 1963, was a New Year’s Eve party at the Forty Acres Club, a faculty club for the University of Texas. The previous year, the faculty club had signaled its refusal to integrate by infamously turning away an African American official of the Peace Corps, which spurred boycotting and faculty resignations in protest. It was a calculated move on LBJ’s part to signal his support of Civil Rights and effectively ended segregation at the club.[1]

Geraldine Whittington’s introduction to the nation as the first African American secretary to a US President was an unconventional one. On January 19, 1964, she made a guest appearance on episode #696 of the television show, What’s My Line?The game show consisted of a panel of celebrity judges that had to figure out the occupation of invited guests by deducting from the guest’s answers to 10 questions. You can actually watch Geraldine Whittington’s debut for yourself here.

Ms. Whittington was at the heart of an administration that oversaw the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shortly followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, important turning points in the history of the United States. In the photograph above, you can see her chatting with Civil Rights leaders at the forefront of the movement, including Martin Luther King. Geraldine stated that the proudest moment of her career was when she was the first to learn of the appointment of the first black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall. She would have been the first to shake his hand.[2] Gerri continued to work in the White House as LBJ’s personal secretary until the end of his term in 1969. Gerri was featured regularly in Jet and Sepia magazines as one of the success stories of the Civil Rights movement. She knew her position enabled her to represent and inspire African American women to break barriers.[3]

In February of 1969, Geraldine had to leave civil service after suffering a stroke at the young age of 38 due to cerebral thrombosis. Fighting for recovery from partial paralysis and some speech impediment, she was honored a year later at a party at the U.S. Capitol, where she was toasted by friends for her courage and for the mark she left on the White House.[4]

Geraldine Whittington continued on as a Civil Rights icon throughout her life. In 1993, at the age of 61, she lost a battle to cancer and is buried at home in southern Anne Arundel County with her mother in the cemetery of historic Mt. Zion U.M. Church in Lothian, a church that was an important epicenter of the African American congregation since the late 19th century.  Gerri passed away on January 24, 1993, the same day as Thurgood Marshall.

Contributed by Stacy Poulos, Archaeological Sites Planner, Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section

[1] https://deadpresidents.tumblr.com/post/53207381610/lbjs-historic-night-out

[2] Feb 15, 1993.  “LBJ’s Exec Secretary Dies: She was first to learn he named Marshall a Justice.” Jet, v. 83 (16): 56.  (Source)

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerylbrunner/2019/11/05/the-women-who-helped-shape-lbjs-administration/?sh=31599a64d1a1

[4] May 1, 1971. “A Little Help From Friends.” The Washington Post, page E2.

Margaret Mercer: Educator & Abolitionist

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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:

Loudoun Times-Mirror September 10, 2018: “More than a footnote: Locals honor the legacy of Margaret Mercer.”

The Washington Post March 17, 2002: “A Life Devoted to Freedom and Opportunity.”