Behind the Scenes

Just checking in. I have no clever title nor unifying theme to share with everyone. I judged for Maryland History Day on April 27 but I'd prefer to let my thoughts simmer before I publish them.

I spent much of my last two weeks performing test queries for the new mdlandrec website. The current website, commonly called “mdlandrec 2.0,” is a service provided by the Maryland State Archives to citizens and county governments. It allows persons to examine property matters in every Maryland county and Baltimore City with extensive search functionality; it is also a service by the MSA that provides significant sources of revenue from the courts. After all, it is a cost effective luxury because it minimizes expense for routine activities like verifying the content or deeds or boundaries. Testing consists of repetitive querying to discover any errors or gaps before the public does; imagine if you will, executing every possible action and combination on an interface and recording whether the results were optimal or unexpected. It is necessary behind the scenes work but also incredibly boring to share.

 My other occupation concerns case studies and preparation for a May 16 radio interview with Dr. Kay. I was given an unsolicited invitation to speak, probably the result of Legacy of Slavery in Maryland outreach on the Eastern Shore, and was happy to accept. My supervisors Chris Haley and Emily Oland-Squires suggested senior LOSIM employee Maya Davis, who has been with the program since the beginning and is well acquainted with Dr. Kay herself, join me. Although the program is based in Cambridge, a Dorchester County city, its reach extends throughout much of the southern Eastern Shore; possible discussion topics were already adequate but I decided to venture into Dorchester’s legacy of Slavery to better round out my catalog of case studies. I selected the case of Israel Coleman.

Coleman was young slave embroiled in a probate dispute between his original owner (Layton) and the husband (Collison) of the woman who inherited him. Although the Chancellor of the court ordered Coleman to be returned in 1838, I located manumission records and a certificate of freedom issued by Collison in 1848. A manumission record, whether in chattel, land, circuit court, or register of wills, states the conditions to which any given slave is or will be freed. A certificate of freedom, with which a manumission record is often confused, is simply a certified recognition of freedom; many free persons of color who were never slaves availed themselves of this. The manumission date of the certificate of freedom record was stated as January 29, 1849 and the manumission was legally recorded in 1853. This however was contradicted by a chattel record I found from 1848; this new record predated the certificate of freedom and declared on February 25, 1848 that Coleman was to be freed on December 30, 1855. I suspected that Mr. Collison passed on and willed his slave free but I cannot prove this because…

…the Dorchester County court house and nearly all its records burned in 1852. According to a well worn two part volume on the MSA circulation desk, the building was “by an incendiary act totally destroyed by fire…between the hours of 2 & 3 A.M . together with all the [long term] records and papers of this court.” Naturally other agencies were also affected and calls were made to reconstitute the records by appealing to copies and originals retained by the people. Unfortunately for me the will of Collison, and Collison’s wife’s father who bequeathed Coleman to her, is nigh impossible to find. Were Collison my ancestor I would probably wade into the un-indexed books as a Hail Mary but sadly I must leave it alone.

In the last two weeks I have also been in contact with history-minded people who became aware of my work through the blog or other publicity. A man from North Carolina asked to share notes regarding the Paca’s and my Robert Moody case study. Another person, who happens to be speaking at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Conference, read of my May 18 talk at the MSA with Tanner Sparks and Allison Seylor. I'm also delighted to report that the Capital Gazette printed a blurb out our forthcoming event in the Wednesday paper.

--Alex Champion, Maryland State Archives