African Americans in Talbot County
Subtitle: An Important Aspect of Talbot’s Original History
Free Blacks have been part of Talbot County’s earliest history and during the colonial period most came to Maryland as indentured servants. Once their contracts were fulfilled, they became freemen and some owned land on the Eastern Shore and throughout Maryland. With the rapid increase of tobacco cultivation during the late seventeenth century, planters turned to acquiring slaves to meet their labor requirements. By 1750 the slave population of Maryland had exploded to over 40,000. In 1790 there were slightly over 1,000 free Blacks in Talbot County and by the eve of the Civil War there were 2,964 free and 3,725 enslaved Blacks living in Talbot. The 1860 census data credits Talbot County with 506 slave owners. This equates to approximately 4.5% of the free population.
Slave owners in Maryland had the right to manumit (free) their slaves. This practice accelerated in the years before and after the American Revolution, driven by changing agricultural practices from labor intensive tobacco to grain production, along with early farm mechanization that decreased labor requirements. Religious convictions among Quakers and Methodists who opposed slavery contributed to this shift, as did revolutionary-era political ideals of liberty and equality.
By the 19th century slavery was steadily declining in Maryland. However, with the extensive expansion of the cotton belt of the deep South causing an almost insatiable demand for enslaved labor, many Maryland enslaved persons were caught up in the “second middle passage” where enslaved persons from the upper South, to include Maryland, were forced to migrate to the Southern cotton states. It is estimated that 20,000 enslaved people were forced to leave Maryland during this period permanently breaking apart many families.
“The Hill” community right here in Easton, is one of the oldest free African American neighborhoods in the United States still in existence today. The Hill Community was firmly established here by the 1780s. In fact, the first census in 1790 showed 410 free African Americans living there and a handful owning property. Remarkably, some of those families still live in that community. That makes The Hill the oldest, continuously-inhabited Black community in the country. Some families have 16 generations of history on that spot. Free people of color lived alongside white neighbors working as merchants, sailors, carpenters, midwives, and farm laborers. They worked to buy freedom for their relatives while pursuing full equality and liberty for themselves. While the exact boundaries varied over the years, Dover, South, Harrison and Higgins Streets are the informal boundaries.
The John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church (JWMC) of Oxford Neck, on Oxford Road between Easton and Oxford, was organized in 1838 and served Oxford Neck communities, the location of many plantations and many now-forgotten black communities like Mills Town and Screamersville. By 1851, the Easton Circuit register documents there were 31 White and 26 black members in the Oxford Neck Church, worshiping together as a church community. This church and its members were an important and integral aspect in moving abolition forward in Talbot County.