the families explored in these pages, for the most part, lived and labored on the Western Shore of Maryland prior to migrating to the District of Columbia by the early 1900s
these pages hope to track their journey to the District
the Jackson & Reeder families
Henry Jackson and Alice were living in Louisa County, Virginia after the Civil War. They left Louisa County moved to Staunton Virginia before coming to DC in the 1880s. They settled in the neighborhood and alleys of Swampoodle, where Union Station would be built in the early 1900s.
Their son, Damon Jackson, married the daughter of Thomas Reeder and Martha Colbert. Thomas Reeder, enslaved in St. Mary’s County, had self-emancipated himself during the war, following the Union Army to the District with his brothers and sisters, where he met Martha Colbert, a refugee from slavery in Prince George’s County.
Frank Wilkes was born near Surrattsville (now present-day Clinton, MD) to unidentified parents. He married Rosa Ella Gantt the daughter of Hannibal Gantt and Agness Crack. Frank and Ella Wilkes, moved with their children to the District in the early 1900s to B Street.
The Gantt family lived on property that Hannibal Gantt and his father-in-law David Crack bought in the 1870s near Cheltenham, MD. They purchased land that had been subdivided from a tract of land called “Poplar Neck” and owned by the Brookes family in Prince George’s County. David Crack and his wife, Priscilla Carroll, had worked the land as enslaved laborers.
William Dent was the son of Bruce Dent and Cassandra Johnson, both Black people with free status in the District prior to the Civil War who worked as hucksters at the markets. He partnered with Alice after the Civil War. They lived on “The Island” south of the Mall.
She remarried Charles Graham, the son of Peter and Charity Graham. They had lived and labored on the land owned by George Washington Young across the Eastern River (now called Anacostia River). Post-emancipation, Charity lived in Good Hope, a village along what is now called Alabama Ave SE. Alice and her children took on the last name Graham, including William Henry. Alice and Charles Graham lived south of Capitol Hill and north of the Navy Yard.
William Henry Dent Graham married Mary “Mollie” Thomas, the daughter of William and MargaretThomas, who had moved from Charles County, Maryland around 1889. The Thomas family lived on the 1300 block of C Street SE with other families from Charles County. In Charles County, they lived in the northwest portion of the county between Pomonkey and Port Tobacco.
George Washington Wedge traces his family back to Mary Wedge, a British indentured servant who partnered with Daniel, an enslaved African, in the early 1700s. The Wedges lived in and around Hill’s Landing in both Prince George’s County and Anne Arundel.
George Wedge married Mary Elizabeth Sharps who had been enslaved in Anne Arundel County most likely by the Drury family. Their son, James Edward Wedge, married in Prince George’s County and then moved to the District in the 1910s.
Washington Lee married Sallie Stewart in 1870, in the Queen Anne’s District of Prince George’s County. Washington Lee was a USCT soldier in the Civil War. Washington Lee fled to District of Columbia to join the army and fight for liberation.
Washington Lee returned to Prince George’s County after the war and married Sallie Stewart, the daughter of James Stewart. They had been enslaved by Marsham Waring and his family in Queen Anne’s District.
genetic thread: a DNA connection A DNA match between descendants initiated an investigation into the probable shared ancestry of two Black individuals living in Prince George’s County after emancipation. Washington Lee, a Civil War veteran, appeared in the Western Branch Neighborhood of Queen Anne District after the Civil War without visible connections to any kinship…
Background Reading the tapestry of macgill’s estate The story of Polly is one of resistance against a world designed to commodify her existence. Sold from the estate of her long-time enslaver, she escaped her new owner in a daring attempt to re-stitch the torn fabric of her own kinship community. To understand her actions, one…
The Baltimore Sun’s printer placed the ad in the last column of page 2, underneath a bounty for Peter Culver who had absconded with a “free boy, hired by me, named Alexander” and an ad for Ohio Flour. Within this mundane context of commerce and control, William E. Peach’s advertisement primarily sought the conviction of…
introduction: a story rooted in place Antebellum Prince George’s County was a divided world. The world of planters and estates was visible through the creation of Martenet’s Map of Prince George’s County, which documented the landowners and their proximity to seats of power (Upper Marlborough, county seat, as well as the District of Columbia, the…
a man Undone merchant of queen anne William B. Harwood operated as a merchant in Queen Anne on the Patuxent River during the 1850s. The 1850 census enumerated his household, including a wife and child, and recorded his modest real estate valued at $1,200, likely a town lot and store. An 1852 Bill of Sale…
empires of Leaf and Labor Queen Anne District was situated in the “Forest of Prince George’s County”, and a contributor to the New York Times described it as “the great tobacco region of Maryland, and probably no other territory of equal extent in America produces so much of that famous weed.” [Dec 6, 1861] This…
A severe blizzard immobilized the Mid-Atlantic region in January 1857. For multiple days, the storm raged for over twenty-four hours, burying the landscape under a layer of snow that measured nearly fifteen inches on the level and accumulated in drifts reaching ten to fifteen feet. The storm paralyzed the economic infrastructure of the region, rendering…
The July 4, 1860, issue of the Planters’ Advocate and Southern Maryland Advertiser presented its readers with a portrait of a society celebrating freedom while actively profiting from its denial. One column announced a Fourth of July celebration at the Brick Church (St. Barnabas) in the Wootton’s Landing neighborhood. There, Gonsalvo Clagett was scheduled to…
The 1836 schedule for the deed of trust transferring the Goodwood plantation to Rosalie E. Carter from the Calverts lists Eleanor “Nelly” Brown at age 35, establishing her calculated birth year as 1801. Her youth unfolded during the Early Republic Generation (1790-1815), a period of significant economic volatility shaped by the Napoleonic Wars. Trade embargoes…
The 1851 marriage of Alice Carter, daughter of Charles H. Carter and Rosalie E. Calvert, to Oden Bowie, solidified a powerful alliance between two prominent enslaving networks. This union not only consolidated significant landholdings but also intertwined the complex kinship networks of the hundreds of Black people they held in bondage, whose forced labor was…
stories of Then 