As Black History Month draws to a close, we would like to take a moment to honor the ways in which Africans and African Americans have shaped London Town’s history. London Town’s own economic growth is directly tied in with the explosion of slavery in the region in the early 1700s. As a port town, London Town was the destination for those sold into slavery and forced onto ships at Sierra Leone, Angola, and Bermuda. As a tobacco port, slavery’s impact on the town was also present in goods grown, harvested and processed by unfree hands.
Throughout its history, London Town was shaped by the contributions of its African American residents, free and unfree. Its most influential white residents: merchants, tradespeople, tavern owners all enslaved others. The success and prosperity they enjoyed would not have been possible without the unseen and unlauded labor of these people. For example, a flax spinner named Beck who raised a family in London Town during the American Revolution, was held in bondage by the Fergusons, along with her partner and children. Her efforts processing flax into linen played an essential role in the success of the Ferguson family’s tailoring and staymaking business.
Eight people: Sall, Osborne, Bett, Harry, Sampson, Jem, Jacob, and Delilah were enslaved by William Brown, whose 1760s brick home and tavern remains is the only structure still standing from colonial London Town. Not much is known about them other than their names, but their industry is what enabled Brown to maintain his businesses as a ferry master, tavern keeper, and carpenter and experience a rise in fortune that would never be shared with those who made it possible.
As the town died out and the brick house transitioned into Anne Arundel County Almshouse from 1823-1965, Black residents and Black labor continued to play a huge role in the site’s history. Besides the fact African Americans were residents through the mid-1900s, helping to maintain the space and making a mark on those who visited, Black labor was specifically sought out. In a physician’s report from 1830 it is recommended that “a healthy colored woman should be employed to cook and wash for such of the paupers as are unable to labor as well as to assist in nursing them when sick.” In an oral history, Dorothy Galloway, a Black domestic worker at Almshouse from the 1930s to the 1940s recounted that, “All my life was takin' care of old people and children. That's what I was born for, and I didn't want nobody mistreated. She [the Almshouse superintendent] said I was too nice to them. But I wanted to be nice to 'em.” A century later, the labor of Black women was still essential to the Almshouse’s daily operations.
When highlighting the impact that African American people had on London Town, it is important to recognize that much of this labor was stolen, in the profoundest sense. When it wasn’t, the jobs available to Black people on site were still often highly discriminatory. As we look back on our past, both at London Town and elsewhere, a balance must be stuck between honoring the work that made London Town what it was and recognizing the exploitation at the heart of these accomplishments.
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