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."

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Oakland's Bethel A.M.E. Church (Part III)

The "main road" in this part of Garrett County is US Rt. 219. It runs roughly north-south and through the high Allegheny Plateau that lies between the higher Appalachian ridges. In the summer, there is wonderfully green farmland all around. In the winter, well...let me put it this way: Garrett County averages around 130 inches of snowfall per year. Of course, we are there in July, and it is lovely.

As we head south, Backbone Mountain rises to over 3,000 ft to our left/east; wind turbines that look like pinwheels for a race of giants line the ridge-top. Backbone Mountain is the Eastern Continental Divide in these parts. The water in the creeks along Rt. 219 flows into the Youghiogheny, thence into the Monongahela, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond the wind turbines on Backbone Mountain, the water flows into the Potomac, the Cheseapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Oakland's Bethel A.M.E. Church (Part II)

Our second mission in Garrett County was to try to track down what was known of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Oakland. So far as I knew, it was the only African-American church in Garrett County. Because we had already spied out the Quilt Corner of the TriState Relief Sale and had bought a quilt, we weren't too worried about missing any more gems there, as it were.

Our first stop in the second mission was the Garrett County Historical Museum on S. 2nd Street in downtown Oakland.We had of course been there before; it was there that I saw the exhibit of memorabilia from Oakland's great hotels that set me off on the trail of the African-Americans who worked at those hotels. Our visit this time was to see what the Museum might have on the old Bethel A.M.E. Church that served Oakland's small African-American community from around 1900 to 1930.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Oakland's Bethel A.M.E. Church (Part I)

Some time back, I wrote about our explorations in Garrett County, MD, starting here, and continuing here, here, and here.

I mentioned in Part III of those posts my discovery in the 1900 census the name of an African-American minister living in Oakland (MD): Rev. William Walker.

Oakland's African-American community grew: the 1900 census for East Oakland shows a black minister, the Rev. William H. Walker, living in East Oakland with his wife, Virginia, and his mother-in-law. Because the 1880 census didn't show a minister, the presumption is that by 1900, there were enough African-Americans to have formed at least one congregation.

And the on-line archives of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper confirm that there was indeed an A.M.E. church in Oakland around this time: Bethel A.M.E., part of the Baltimore District, along with Frostburg and Westernport. Preliminary indications are that Bethel A.M.E. was located near the corner of 5th and E. High Streets in Oakland. 

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland—Missing Persons in Garrett County (Part III)

I've long been interested in railroads, and learning about the B&O's climb up the Appalachians to Oakland and thence to the banks of the Ohio was no exception. But a whole new chapter of understanding the history of railroading in the U.S. opened up when I discovered Theodore Kornweibel's Railroads in the African American Experience: A Photographic Journey. (Johns Hopkins: 2010) That this is history in photographs makes it all the more powerful—to me, at least. I mean, I've read about A. Philip Randolph and the organizing of the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, but Kornweibel has found pictures that put faces to these stories and more.

The book is encyclopedic: from the slaves—both men and women—who built the railroads, to the porters and Pullman maids, who babysat for and read bedtime stories to little white children on the luxury trains, to the recurrent use of railroad themes and imagery in popular song and folk art, to the role that the trains played in the Great Migration so thoughtfully described by Isabel Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns (Random House: 2010): the railroads are an essential piece of this history.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland—Missing Persons in Garrett County (Part II)

Last July, Jane and I went to the Garrett County (MD) Fairgrounds overlooking Deep Creek Lake for the Tristate Relief Sale, an auction sponsored by local Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren churches to benefit the work of the Mennonite Central Committee. They sell all kinds of things, including—inevitably—shoofly pie. Jane was interested in the quilts. I had intended to do some fishing, but it was raining off and on, and, since I was feeling less waterproof than usual, I had given up on fishing for the day.

Deep Creek Lake (Garrett County, MD).
The Garrett County Fairgrounds are near the head of
the lake, which is at the top left corner of the photo.