Series kicks off with stories of St. Mary's Church during the Civil War
When Robert Worden set about to compile a history of St. Mary’s Catholic Church during the Civil War, most of the stories he found had sad endings.
“Rachel Smothers is my happy story,” he said Saturday as he readied for a lecture on St. Mary’s during the war to kick off the 2019 Maryland History Lecture Series at St. John’s College 6 p.m. Tuesday night.
Rachel Teresia Smothers was born a slave in 1821, the property of Thomas Franklin at Oakland in south county near present day Franklin Manor.
She was called from the country to become a house slave at the Franklin home on State Circle and remained a slave until the Emanci-
pation Proclamation freed her.
But,she remained a house servant to the Franklin family until her death in 1899.
Worden ran across Smothers’ story as he meticulously researched baptism, christening, marriage and death records held by the church. He spent 10 years working on this material and a career as a researcher and writer at the Library of Congress where he specialized in research on Asian nations.
It seems Smothers, both while a slave and freewoman, had taken the Catholic faith and took her faith seriously.
As he went through records he saw Smothers’ name popping up again and again in the 1850s, 1860s and into the 1890s.
Once he pieced it all together, he found Smothers had stood as godmother to 84 children baptized at St. Mary’s. She was godmother to more than one generation of some families. She was very active in the church and many African-American families flocked to the Catholic church. Half of those families were free blacks before Emancipation, Worden said.
But Smothers’ story has other twists. Worden uncovered that even as a free woman she remained in the Franklin household as a servant until she died.
She saved money and acquired two properties in the city, one on Monument Street in the old Fourth Ward and the other on Shipwright Street around the corner from St. Mary’s. The Monument Street property she bought with her brother, Henry Smothers, who had served in the U.S. Colored Troops in the war.
Smothers rented the Shipwright property. When she died, the Maryland Gazette ran not one but two small stories. The first, on June 2, 1899, read in part “Old Rachel was active until the time of her death and got up as usual this morning, and was going about the kitchen when she fell dead over the kitchen table”.
In her will, she left the property it to a family of five black women, mothers, daughters and nieces, all of whom she was godmother to when they were baptized in the church. “When the last one of them died, the house went to the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first African American order of nuns,” Worden said. “Amazing.”
He’ll touch on 10 vignettes in his lecture including the story of Julia Prout Handy, a former slave in Annapolis who was arrested and imprisoned for “enticing” her children to run away from their master who had gone to court to “apprentice” them after Emancipation - in effect, continuing their bondage.
And the story of Private Joseph Daley, a member of an old St. Mary’s family and a printer’s apprentice who signed up in the Army during the war. At first, he was assigned to a guard unit, but when Robert E. Lee moved in to Maryland all troops were rushed to the front. He was killed in action amid the horror of the Bloody Lane at Antietam. His body was never found.
Two other events in the Maryland History Lecture Series, free and open to the public at Francis Scott Key Auditorium, include a performance, “Emancipation Continues: War and Peace” on Feb. 3, presented by the Northern Anne Arundel Cultural Preservation Society. It tells the story of a local community organization trying to narrow down a Black History Month program featuring orators, authors, artists, entertainers from the 1940s and 1950s. Their deliberations provide a stage for vocal and instrumental music, dance, poetry, oratory, history as they determine what makes the show.
On March 12, archaeologist Stephanie Sperling and photographer Jay Fleming will tell the tale of climate change in Chesapeake country.
Sperling will talk about the effects of sea level rise on historic and prehistoric sites. Professional archaeologists are working with concerned citizens to excavate sites and record data before more coastal history is lost.
Sperling, former director of archaeological research for Anne Arundel County Archaeology Group/Lost Towns Project, will discuss work she has undertaken to combat this problem over the last decade, including extensive work at River Farm along the shores of the Patuxent River, part of the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. She will also share stories from other archaeological digs throughout the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
Fleming will share his photographic work and stories on two subjects. His book “Working the Water” about the life of watermen on the Chesapeake Bay. Plus the upcoming book “Island Life” about life on Smith and Tangier islands, two of the most threatened places on the bay.
This year, the series — which has continued for over 35 years — is named in honor of William Royal Mumford, who stewarded the lecture series from 1999, until his passing last year.
For further information go to sjc.edu.