Historian
This September 14th marks the 160th anniversary of the Battle of South Mountain, three days before and a few miles away from the dreadful Battle of Antietam. South Mountain gets swallowed up in the greater horror that …
Continue Reading about A Black Child Witness of the Battle of Crampton’s Gap
I’m warning you now, this story ends badly. But let’s start with the good parts. Early in the twentieth century, a young black man named Allen B. Wilson graduated from Leonard College, the medical school of Shaw University …
Continue Reading about A Black Doctor and an Abortion in 1941
I remember when the original Roots first came out on TV, and it suddenly seemed as if everyone—black and white—was interested in genealogy. Those were pre-internet days, of course. Today companies like Ancestry.com put …
Continue Reading about Twelve Easy Family History Projects for Beginners
Slave names are a topic that most people seem to know something about. It’s common knowledge that enslaved people frequently had the same family names (surnames) as their enslavers. Not all the time, of course… but fairly …
African Americans living in Washington County had to face the Confederate invasion of Maryland in 1862, including the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. Below is an excerpt about the invasion, from my forthcoming book, …
Continue Reading about African Americans Face the Invasion of Maryland, 1862
Traditional African American healers go by many names in history and today, but in the slave era “root doctor” was the most common term.[1] Today I’m looking at some western Maryland men who practiced this folk medicine, and …
