Hagerstown Historic District - African American Presence

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Hagerstown is named for German immigrant Jonathan Hager, who first settled in Pennsylvania and, in 1739 purchased 200 acres of land in Maryland.

Asbury United Methodist Church, Hagerstown, Maryland

Washington County, especially Hagerstown, has a rich concentration of African American history. Even though the county had a lower slave population than Maryland counties to the east, it was the site of frequent slave auctions and underground railroad activity. In 1819 a group of citizens petitioned the Maryland legislature to end the slave trade in their county and complained that their jail was being used to hold enslaved people. In 1825 the county’s Grand Jury asked the sheriff to remove the jailer from office, as he was profiting from apprehending freedom seekers. In 1847, a group of free blacks tried to free fugitive slaves being held in the jail, but they were themselves arrested and jailed. After living some years in Pennsylvania, Jacob D. Green, a freedom seeker from the Eastern Shore, was apprehended and sold and kept for a time in the Hagerstown jail. He published his autobiography in 1864 and relates harrowing stories of slavery there and his own three escapes.

Despite the challenges of life in a slave society near a land of freedom, Washington County’s African American community was strong enough that by 1818, black members of St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church (now John Wesley United Methodist Church) formed their own congregation, Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church. It remained under St. Paul’s supervision until after the Civil War. During the war, in 1864, a fire damaged the building to such an extent that they replaced it in 1879.

In 1840 some members of Asbury Church, seeking even more autonomy in their worship and the right to purchase property, founded Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. The A.M.E. Church was a new denomination organized by free African Americans and upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1816. The Hagerstown congregation used a series of different buildings along West Bethel Street. Ebenezer Church was used as a hospital During the Civil War. Its last historic building was demolished in the 1990s. Two other African American congregations founded in the nineteenth century remain: Second Christian and Zion Baptist.

Resources

• Hagerstown Convention Visitors Bureau. African American Heritage Guide, Washington County, Maryland.
• J. [Jacob] D. Green, b. 1813. Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky, Containing an Account of His Three Escapes, in 1839, 1846, and 1848.
  Huddersfield, [Eng.]: Printed by Henry Fielding, Pack Horse Yard, 1864.

People in the Places

Thomas W. Henry (1794-1877)

Ebenezer A.M.E. Church, Hagerstown, Maryland, ca. 1910. (Viola Steward)

Among the papers found in the Kennedy farmhouse after John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, was a letter recommending “Mr. Thomas Henrie” to Brown as a reliable friend. At that time, the Thomas Henry referenced was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a branch of the denomination that was decidedly antislavery and whose ministers and members often aided freedom seekers.

Thomas Henry worked hard and kept religion, family, and community central in his life. Born in slavery in Leonardtown, Maryland, his owner died in 1804 and freed his slaves in his will. The terms varied depending upon the age and sex of the enslaved—Thomas Henry was age 9 and would not become free until he turned 23. He was taken northwest to Washington County and apprenticed to a blacksmith in Hagerstown at about age 15. Raised Roman Catholic, Henry converted to Methodism while he lived with Abraham King, a white member of the Church of the Brethren whose children became Methodists. In 1821 he gained his freedom, became a full member in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and married Catherine Craig, an enslaved woman in Hagerstown. She had been promised her freedom at age thirty-one, but by 1826 Henry raised enough money to purchase his wife and four children. To his dismay, their owners raised the price and he had to leave two in slavery. They were sold away and lost to him before Henry could raise the additional money. He became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, but grew disillusioned by conflicts and switched to the African Methodist Episcopal denomination in 1835. His first charge was a small congregation at Bethel Church in Frederick, Maryland. Soon after, he established Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Hagerstown. At times in his career Thomas Henry supplemented his meager wages as a minister with work at the iron furnaces in the area and by selling medicinal linaments he learned to make in his early life. As he grew in his ministerial profession, he was assigned to circuits and churches in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. In 1872 the church published his autobiography. In it he relates his perspective on John Brown and reveals much about life at the Maryland ironworks and the early history of the A.M.E. Church. His life was devoted to service. To many, he was indeed a reliable friend.

Resources

• Henry, Thomas W. Autobiography of Rev. Thomas W. Henry, of the A. M. E. Church.
  [Baltimore]: [The Author], [1872]. See also From Slavery to Salvation: The Autobiography of Rev. Thomas W. Henry, of the A. M. E. Church. Edited, with an introduction and historical essay, by Jean Libby. Foreward by Edward C. Papenfuse. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1994; reprint Palo Alto, California: Allies for Freedom publishers, 2005.

Interest-African American, Washington County, >African-American, >AF Washington County, Maryland