Like Garrett County, Allegany County has long been overwhelmingly European—yet with an enduring African-American presence that had been almost completely forgotten. What Prof. Bowman has documented is the depth of the roots of that presence in Frostburg, as well as the hornswoggling that simply pushed nearly all of them out, removing them from the landscape and, ineluctably, from modern memory.
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Of course, travelers on the National Road needed food and lodging, and their horses needed rest, food and water. Bowman reports that by 1852, Frostburg had no fewer than four stagecoach taverns, with as many wagon stands. Much of the manual labor was provided by slaves. Bowman reports that, as early as the 1840 census, Frostburg had 342 whites, 15 Free Persons of Color, and 36 slaves: African-Americans were 13% of Frostburg's population. By 1860, the number of slaves had risen to 122 (even as the total number of slaves in Maryland was decreasing), with 29 Free Persons of Color. Most of the slave-owners were tavern-owners.
Bowman found the very mother of Brownsville: Tamer/Tamar Brown was a freed slave from near Leonardtown in Calvert County, MD. Her owner, one Thomas Johnson, apparently expanded his holdings to include property in western Maryland and sent Tamer/Tamar out to work there. At some point, she was manumitted and was recorded in the 1860 federal census as a Free Person of Color in Frostburg.
In 1866, Tamer Brown bought a piece of land in Frostburg from Nelson and Caroline Beall. The lot, in "Beall's First Addition," measured about 7500 square feet. She paid $150 for it. Brownsville, her namesake, grew from there.
In 1868, a group of African-Americans purchased a lot across the alley from Brown's house to build the Lincoln School, which by 1870, had twenty students attending.
Despite Jim Crow, Brownsville continued to thrive through the turn of the century. The Baltimore Afro-American reported regularly on the social and church doings in Frostburg, and Bowman provides plenty of cites.
But alongside the growth of Brownsville was the growth of the rest of Frostburg, including the 1899 founding of Frostburg Normal School No. 2, on property adjacent to Brownsville. In the 1920s, the town of Frostburg embarked on a campaign to enlarge Normal School No. 2 as a way of bringing more development to Frostburg. The state of Maryland agreed, and between 1927 and 1933, most of Brownsville was purchased to make way for the expansion of Normal School No. 2.
Here is Bowman describing the typical land purchase as witnessed to by the deeds recording the transactions:
"These deeds make me cry. They are truly the driest, dullest documents on the planet, and yet they make me cry. The most poignant of the group is that of Henry Abel, widower. A simple 'X' marks his consent to sell his house to the State of Maryland to accommodate the college expansion. And while Mr. Watson [ed. note: a white Frostburg proponent of the school's expansion] seemed to be worried about more rooms for dorms and classrooms, the expansion primarily provided more space for ball fields and 'the quad.' The state of Mayland valued Mr. Abel's property so highly that they paid the Normal School janitor $10.00 for his home. Was the 'X' Mr. Henry's quiet protest? Apparently he could read and write.... (p. 76)
"Only two of the 1920s and 1930s purchases were not finalized with $10.00 payments per lot to the owners. The Williams property involved 24 heirs who were paid $10.00 for two lots in 1927. (That's 21 cents per person per lot.) On the other end of the spectrum, the former Jackson home, Lot 8 Block 9, was the most expensive prize in the land buy-out. In 1928, the State of Maryland paid Clayton Purnell $1760.00 for the property he had acquired at a public sale after the Jackson family had lost the house in an equity suit...
"You'll remember Clayton Purnell as the Frostburg City Attorney involved in the Normal School arrangements. Purnell was also the attorney and agent for the Equitable Savings and Loan Society, which followed the Frostburg Perpetual Building Association in providing loans for the people of Frostburg.... (p. 79)
Another expansion of Normal School No. 2, accompanied by more displacement, happened in the late 1950s, with still another in the 1970s. Normal School No. 2 became Frostburg State Teachers College and now, Frostburg State University.
What was left of Brownsville has now been swallowed up by the Frostburg State campus. Some folks had stayed in the wake of the earlier expansions, but as of today, there are only a few buildings left: the second Lincoln School, rebuilt as a brick schoolhouse by the State just prior to Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483), has now been "rehabilitated" into the University police department headquarters, and the most recent John Wesley A.M.E. Church, relocated to its current location in 1933, has been converted to student housing.
Bowman's book goes far beyond this brief summary, particularly regarding the social history of Brownsville. The stories she tells are both heart-warming and heart-rending at once. From her intro:
"To the black people of Frostburg, the name Brownsville evokes warm memories of rocking on porches, of riding bikes on Park Ave., of walking to school on crisp cool mornings, of sledding on the Buckwheat, of fishing at the Tadpole Hole, of knitting circles, of book clubs, of voices raised in praise, of blues bands playing late into the night. To the white people, the name means nothing. What I found in my efforts to visit Brownsville opened my eyes to a social separatism, an apartheid of memory that I had not realized existed, even as I lived amongst it. The people of Brownsville, the black families of Frostburg, had proudly kept the memory of Brownsville alive, while most of the white people of Frostburg had not even known that it existed." (p. 7)
Source: Lynn Bowman, Being Black in Brownsville: Echoes of a "forgotten" Frostburg (Frostburg: 2011.) Prof. Bowman lives in Frostburg and teaches at Allegany Community College in Cumberland.
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