"The Once Great Plantation is Now a Wilderness" Investigations at the Josiah Henson SIte, Montgomery County, Maryland
Author(s): cassandra michaud
Year: 2015
Summary
In 2006, Montgomery Parks purchased a house and one acre of land in suburban Maryland, beginning historical and archaeological investigations into the site and its association with Josiah Henson, a Reverend, Underground Railroad conductor, and escaped slave. Known to local residents for its relationship to Harriett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the 19th century abolitionist novel, the site was the subject of much myth about the existing structures and their link to Henson, who was enslaved on this farm as a young man in the first quarter of the 19th century. Continued research has established a clearer understanding of the chronology and landscape of the site. This paper will discuss the results of that research and the challenges of parsing out the lived life of Henson from the popular view of the fictional character of Uncle Tom, as well as the change in landscape over the last two hundred years.
Cite this Record
"The Once Great Plantation is Now a Wilderness" Investigations at the Josiah Henson SIte, Montgomery County, Maryland. cassandra michaud. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 434102)
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Keywords
General
19th Century
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Landscape
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slave narrative
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Temporal Keywords
1800-Present
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 564