Showing respect
Two handmade coffins bring ‘an old country boy’ and historian together
James Howard taught himself how to make coffins when the bones of two 19th-century African Americans needed a respectful burial.
James Howard’s Annapolis living room seems, at first glance, like any other.
He’s got a couch, a fish tank with a flat-screen television mounted above it, a few lamps, and sitting on the coffee table between a couple of large, plush recliners are two small, ornate wooden coffins.
Howard’s living room will look normal again soon. On Nov. 1, the bones of two bodies forgotten about for decades will be placed in the coffins and given a proper burial.
The bones come from a man in his 50s and a preteen whose remains were dug up years ago during an urban renewal project that built townhouses in Annapolis. For almost 30 years, they’ve been stored in the archives of the Jefferson Patterson Park museum in Calvert County.
Historian Janice Hayes-Williams suspects one of the skeletons belongs to Smith Price, a freed slave who founded the first African American church in Anne Arundel County in1803. That church is now Asbury United Methodist on West Street in Annapolis.
So while Hayes-Williams waits on DNA tests that could determine whom the bones belong to, she turned to Howard to help lay them to rest with respect.
When the 43-year-old Department of Public Works engineer manager learned
Hayes-Williams was looking for someone to build two custom coffins, he didn’t think he could help. He does woodburning art as a hobby but had never actually built anything before.
When she told him what the coffins were for, he knew it was worth learning. And he wanted to do it for free.
“Doing something like this, giving respect to someone who wasn’t treated as a top-notch citizen, can start to right the wrongs we did in the past,” he said.
Growing up in places like southern Ohio, Howard said, he wasn’t taught about African American history and is trying to educate himself.
“I’m just an old country boy trying to do the right thing,” Howard said.
Given just the required dimensions, Howard spent 50 hours over less than a month sawing, sanding smooth and even hand-chiseling dark walnut and light maple into respectful coffins to replace the cardboard museum boxes in which the bones have been lying.
“It was a lot of watching YouTube and figuring out what I wanted to do,” he said.
The pins from the original coffin that was sliced into during construction on City Gate Lane, behind Asbury United Methodist, in the 1980s will be placed into the new coffins before the bones are laid to rest at St. Anne’s Cemetery.
Howard built the coffins without actually meeting Hayes-Williams, but the two already have formed a powerful connection. When he asked for a picture of Asbury United Methodist’s insignia to add as a finishing touch — wood-burned and painted onto both coffins in red, green and black — Hayes-Williams said she cried. “I just want to hug him,” she said. Howard is glad people appreciate his work, but he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to himself. He’ll be out of town during next month’s ceremony and plans to visit the graves at St. Anne’s on his own.
“You won’t see (the coffins) anymore, but it honors somebody,” Howard said. “That was a crappy thing that happened to them. This restores some of that respect. It’s worth the hard work.”
Smith Price: The Homecoming
A repatriation, reunion and reburial ceremony for the bones will be held at Asbury United Methodist Chruch, 87 West St., at 11 a.m. Nov. 1. Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford is scheduled to give the keynote address.
An interment processional will follow at St. Anne’s Cemetery, 199 Duke of Gloucester St., at noon. A repast meal will follow at the Stanton Community Center, 92 W. Washington St.