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Monday, July 06, 2015

Rare stone slave quarters unearthed at Belvoir

CROWNSVILLE, Md. (AP) — Janice Hayes-Williams held a shard of a plate at the slave quarters archaeological dig at Belvoir, the site of an 18th-century plantation in Crownsville.

‘Oh, my, I found another one,” said the historian, an Annapolis resident.

Hayes-Williams was having a fruitful first day volunteering at the dig, carefully scraping and brushing thin layers of earth around a hearth in what was once a 34-by-34-foot structure that housed slaves — unusually big for slave quarters.

The property, now owned by the Rockbridge Academy, a private Christian school, had been occupied by a cross section of people over the last 300 years — the landed gentry, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks and soldiers from the Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since it not "PC" to have reminders of slavery, shouldn't this be destroyed?

Anonymous said...

Correct 4:27PM, it should be bulldozed and forgotten.

Anonymous said...

By all means, let's make a national monument out of the place (only half kidding)

Unknown said...

It WAS bulldozed and forgotten, right after emancipation....along with the history of the enslaved African Americans. By discovering the homes of the people who also lived and worked on the Belvoir plantation, we can learn something about their lives and OUR history. If you want to accurately tell the history of a southern tobacco plantation you need to include everyone who was part of that economy and culture.