Tracing Ancestry: The Hampton Project's Enslaved Individuals

During the time I spent working with Dr. LaRoche on the Hampton project, which in its essence is an attempt to compile a list of names for those who were enslaved by the Ridgely’s in East Towson in Baltimore County. The project focus was on two specific sites, the Hampton plantation and the Northampton ironworks, both of those estates were for several generations owned by the Ridgely family.

The project’s main aim is to collect the names of hundreds of slaves, from the end of the eighteenth century, till the abolishment of slavery in the eighteenth hundreds. In efforts to, eventually, trace and find their descendant who might still be living today, and are currently residing in or around Baltimore County. Since the beginning of my involvement

It is vital to acknowledge, that when it came to education for the majority of slaves, the only exception was teaching them skills which revolved mostly around learning the crafts they were assigned to do, whether that was; ironwork, farming, or serving in the house (Bullock, 10). Moreover, they were most often taught the faith of their masters. For example, taking the words of James Dane, a freed man, when he opened up about the education he received in the plantation as a slave: “No one was taught to read, We were taught the Lord’s Prayers and catechism” (Maryland, 5, 9). All this had and apparent effect on the lack or scarcity of written evidence or testimonies by slaves, which if existed, might reflect the experiences of slavery more accurately. Nevertheless, Even the very few of those slaves, who managed to learn how to read and write, and thus had the possible chance of writing their testimonies, they however, faced many attempts to silence their voice, and hide their stories. Furthermore, even in cases where those slaves’ testimonies were able to see the light of day, those stories were most often ignored and neglected, especially in the dominant narrative (Bontemps, 8, 10). For instance, Booker T. Washington, an African American author who wrote several books, including his autobiography “Up From Slavery” where he talked about

Those documents if found, could be used to contradict the dominant narrative, that is provided by and serves the white slave owners. Moreover, documents and testimonies of that kind can provide evidence to trace the journeys of millions of slaves, and what they have gone through, that being through The Atlantic or within the lands of The New World. The main tool one can use, is to take into consideration looking through documents from official sources, such as court papers. Those documents are not only hard to find, they are also in best cases are biased against the slaves, taking into accounts the fact that slaves were not allowed to testify in courts, especially not against whites, let alone their owners (Morris). This just shows that in most cases, the atrocities and the fates that many of those slaves have faced, have never be officially recorded, thus both the people and their stories remain unknown (Gowin, 90). Even though slaves’ testimonies were not accepted in court, still they were punished by the court for committing “crimes”, which can include killing your rapist master (Roberts, 44). In fact, the court did not just look into life felonies that is committed by slaves against the slaveholder, but also, it can punish slaves for minor assaults, such as “neglecting their duty”, if the master filed a