Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Marriage Licenses Issued to African-American Couples in Oakland (Garrett County) MD 1872 - 1902 (including residency)

I thought it might be useful to post the marriage license list again with the residences of the groom and bride included. The default residence is Garrett County, meaning that if no residence is indicated for either or both parties, the residence should be presumed to be Garrett County.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Marriage Licenses Issued to African-American Couples in Oakland (Garrett County) MD, 1870-1902

The small African-American community of southern Garrett County of the late 19th and very early 20th century remains elusive. We know they are there because their names are in the federal censuses, there are references to their church activities at Oakland's Bethel AME church in the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, and there are references to two "colored" schools in the annual reports from the county board of education to the Maryland State Department of Education.

It occurred to me to go through the marriage records for Garrett County to see if African-American couples are explicitly identified as such. And indeed they are. So I've been going through the Garrett County Circuit Court records to see what more we can learn about this community.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: African-American Schools in Garrett County

The 1880 and 1900 federal censuses for Oakland, MD, showed a number of school-age children, so the natural question that immediately arose was "In this era of segregation, where did these African-American children go to school?"

My first clue came from a more-or-less off-hand mention on the Western Maryland Historical Library website about the opening of an African-American school in Oakland. The entire mention was this:

From "The Republican" newspaper, November 29, 1884: "A colored school was opened in Oakland last week, with Mr. Patrick Stanton as teacher."