MD's Eastern Shore: Oldest Free Black Community in the U.S.?

Dig at Eastern Shore site, built by freed slaves, shows it may be U.S.’s oldest black community -- it may be older than New Orleans's Treme. There's a video that goes with this story from yesterday in the Washington Post, which provides another level of  visual commentary to it worth contemplating.

There is another of these not unusual for Maryland free communities outside of Chestertown, also still inhabited, called Wharton. There's been an archeological explosion of illuminating finds in the last ten - fifteen years of digging down into Maryland and Virginia's soils.

This isn't true only about African American or colonial English history either; there's bits and pieces of Spanish and French history to be found on occasion.  As for the First Peoples of the Chesapeake, there is far more to be found than previously believed could be discovered..

The thing about Talbot County is, it’s rich in history,” said Carlene Phoenix, president of Historic Easton, who lobbied for the neighborhood research. “But when it comes to especially African American history, it was always about slavery. But now we’ve got another story.”

The project researchers found that many Talbot County slaves were freed after the abolitionist Quaker preacher John Woolman came through Easton in 1766, urging fellow Friends to abandon slavery.

Easton sea captain Jeremiah Banning, who personally bought his 21 slaves in Senegal, freed them in his will.

And the researchers came upon the story of a slave, Grace Brooks, who purchased her freedom and that of her children and grandchildren with money she earned as a midwife.

Many of these now-free blacks probably made their way to the Hill, which was fast becoming an island of liberty surrounded by plantations, Green said.

Well, Maryland, after Virginia, was the mother of slavery. But it wasn't all slavery in Maryland, was it?  Which is even more interesting and illuminating to the discovery of our earlier national history.

These communities such as in Easton and Wharton, were instrumental in helping the enslaved escape.  One of those who escaped via such assistance was Frederick Douglass.  His first wife was a free woman of color who lived in this community. In the 1850's these communities were vital to the formation of 'safe houses' along the "Underground Railroad's" route out of Virginia and Maryland, to Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey, and then on to Canada.  (With the Fugitive Slave Act and southern bounty hunters and slave traders forever abducting even free people of color born and bred in the north for sale down south, it wasn't safe for an escapee to stay in the U.S.)

Easton is where we C'towners go on Easter morning for a splendid service of Gospel, followed by a splendid church breakfast.   The church pictured above was originally built by Quakers, and not that much later turned over to African Americans so they too could have a place of worship.

Then there is this response from a reader of the above-linked article that brings more historical information about these free communities:

We have a community here in Staten Island, NY called "Sandy Ground" that was founded by free blacks from the Eastern Shore. We had huge oyster beds and the "Oystermen", who learned their trade in Maryland settled here in the early 1800s. Many of their decendents still live in the area and get together yearly for the Sandy Ground festival. Nice to know the roots of Sandy Ground. Keep digging, history is fascinating!