Witnesses of Wallsville: Documenting a Southern Maryland Rural Community

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the decades following the Civil War, opportunities for land ownership for Black citizens both created and sustained rural communities in the second half of the 19th century. A recent NPS-funded interdisciplinary project studied the shifting demographics of land ownership in a small rural southern Maryland community known as Wallsville. Starting in the postbellum period and continuing to the mid-20th century, this project assessed patterns of land ownership and social and economic conditions using archaeological and documentary research, oral histories, and community consultation. The patterns seen in Wallsville mirror those seen throughout small communities in the Mid Atlantic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow