The Project Keeps On Growing

[L Verge]

About a year ago, I announced that the Surratt House Museum had received an indefinite loan of a private collection of slave manumission papers, freedom papers, and bills of sale related to enslaved people in our home county, Prince George's County, Maryland. The papers date from 1781 through 1858 and consist of over thirty separate pieces. They passed through one family in entirety.

Our research librarian has transcribed and digitized each piece; and due to my unexpected illness, she took on the project of mounting an exhibit of ten of the most significant and compelling ones for our Black History Month project. On February 11, the owner of the collection joined us at the museum for a meet and greet with interested visitors, and it was well-received. A reporter from the Washington Post newspaper is working on an article about the papers, and we have even been able to tie one of the 1838 documents to another historic house museum in our county. They will be using that document in a special exhibit that they are mounting on immigration history in their town.

Two of our museum volunteers may have ties to another of the papers because they live on property that was once a plantation known as Greenland. In the late-1700s and up until at least the post-Civil War era, the plantation was owned by a Benjamin Duvall and then his son. The son, the son's wife, and two daughters are buried on our volunteers' property; and they maintain the small graveyard.

Last Thursday, we had a lady visit and then come into my office to question whether or not we could give a lecture next February on these papers. Our librarian has become very well-versed on the subject, and she now has a directive to compose a lecture and PowerPoint presentation that will continue to spread the word. From little acorns, giant oaks do spring... and, we are fulfilling our mission to have the present teach the past to the future.