Printed Booklet (2022):
The African American Community, ca. 1800-1960
Members and friends of the American Chestnut Land Trust (ACLT) are working to uncover and understand the history of African Americans who have lived in the Parkers Creek watershed during the past 350 years. This activity is part of the ACLT Parkers Creek Heritage Trail (PCHT) project, launched in 2020. In late 2022, the PCHT project assembled its research materials pertaining to Black families as of that date and summarized them in booklet form.
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African American Community of Parkers Creek, circa 1800-1960 (2022 edition)
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Download a PDF version of the booklet (Note: file size is 35 MB)
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Since the booklet was printed, we have learned more and have added information to the web pages featured on this PCHT web site. However, we know that there is more to discover. The project team looks forward to hearing from you about any material that should be added. We would also like to know if there are people still living who might consent to share their stories, photographs, or documents relating to the experience of residents of the area around Parkers Creek. In addition, it you spot any errors or omissions in the booklet or on the web site, please let us know. We are eager to make corrections.
Contact:
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Kirsti Uunila (k.uunila20@gmail.com)
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Darlene Harrod (DMHarrod@verizon.net)
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Excerpt from the booklet's introduction
From the early eighteenth almost until the mid-twentieth century, the population of Calvert County was majority African American. African Americans began to move out of the county after the Civil War, mainly because greater economic opportunity was to be found in areas where industry offered jobs and where there was greater social mobility.
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Many African American men enlisted for service in the Civil War, the first war in which the United States drafted men to fight. More than two hundred African American men from Calvert County were enrolled in the US Colored Troops (USCT). More than twenty of those men, such as Joseph H. Wallace of Parkers Creek, were free at the time they enlisted. Others were enslaved, and the people who held them in bondage applied for a cash bounty to free them for enlistment. For example, the Port Republic farmer John Sedwick had enslaved James D. Brooks who returned to the area after serving in the USCT.
There were few African American landowners before the end of slavery, but opportunities for land ownership expanded in the years following the Civil War. . . . In Parkers Creek, Joseph H. Wallace had acquired 300 acres of land by the time of his death in 1909. . . . Other African American individuals and families, such as Commodores, Parkers, and Scales also purchased land in the area in the years after the end of the Civil War. Still others followed a more typical pattern of settlement on smaller parcels, either as tenants or as landowners. Many of the early homes in the watershed are now archaeological sites having been abandoned as dwellings generations ago.