Article on Nancy Hillman

   I wrote this article about how Nancy Hillman, Yarrow's niece, was one of the first African Americans to sue and win in federal court in Washington on a claim for money.  The article is published by the DC Circuit Court Historical Society.
http://dcchs.org/Articles/johnston.pdf

Yarrow's lot in 1859

    The earliest map of Yarrow's lot that I know of is the one published in 1861 based on A. Boschke's surveys.  It doesn't have street addresses, but it seems to show two buildings on the lot.  In the image below, Yarrow's lot would be beneath the "D" in "3324 Dent Place," which is in red. The map is one reason for believing that the eastern side of the backyard has not been disturbed by construction since Yarrow owned it.  The Boschke map for all of Washington is online at the Library of Congress.  http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_item.pl

Articles on Archaeology at Yarrow's lot

     Candace Wheeler's article in the Washington Post
     http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-search-for-yarrow-mamout/2012/12/26/aba8ae7e-3d7b-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html?hpid=z4
 
     Katie Pearce writing for the Georgetown Current reports on the archaeological work planned at Yarrow's.
     http://www.thegeorgetowndish.com/thedish/archaeological-work-delays-plan-georgetown-home  

     Freelance journalist Julienne Gage looks into preservation efforts on Search for Common Ground.
     http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=32335&lan=en&sp=0

     And I wrote for WETA's Boundary Stone blog.
     http://blogs.weta.org/boundarystones/2012/11/27/yarrow-mamouts-place-history 

Demolition update

    Demolition of the house on Yarrow's property nears as the Commission of Fine Arts, which is composed of three architects, met on October 18 and found that the house "was allowed to deteriorate excessively over many years and recently damaged by a fallen tree such that its architectural integrity has been lost."  The city preservation office said in an email that based on this ruling it must issue a demolition permit.

From Yarrow's Obituary

     The house itself was not the one Yarrow lived in, but there may be items from his occupancy on the land.  For one thing, Yarrow was buried there.  For another thing, the bricks that make up the cellar are older than the house. In fact, they are handmade and probably date from his time.  Since Yarrow was a brick maker, he may have made them.  In addition, the floor of the cellar could contain items from his time and so could the yard.  The yard has an overburden of up to five feet of dirt dumped there when a swimming pool was put in another section of the yard.

Bricks in cellar are handmade

      Whether demolition of the house will disturb the grave, bricks, and other artifacts is unclear.  It depends on whether the demolition permit allows the cellar to be bulldozed and yard torn up.

America's Islamic Heritage Museum

     On Sunday, October 21, I spoke and signed books at America’s Islamic Heritage Museum in Washington DC.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Islamic_Heritage_Museum.  The museum is the brain child of Amir Muhammad, who has done a great deal of original research to uncover America’s Islamic past. Who knew that Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the heart of the Bible-belt has the oldest purpose-built mosque in the United States.

      The museum was an appropriate venue at which to talk about Yarrow since it has the exhibit on the right about him and since the building housing the library used to be a carriage house for the Bealls, part of the extended family that had owned Yarrow.  Like my talks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Peabody Room of the Georgetown Public Library, Mt. Moriah Church in Pleasant Valley, Maryland, and the Balch Library in Leesburg, Virginia, I found myself talking in a place related to the people in the book.

The Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Va.

   On Sunday, September 30, I spoke at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Virginia.  The library started as a small, private subscription library in 1907.  In 1922, it moved into a new building, dedicated to Thomas Balch, a noted lawyer in Leesburg.  His bust, on the right, stands prominently in the library. 
    The library was an ironic venue for me.  Thomas Balch's uncle, Rev. Thomas Bloomer Balch of Georgetown in Washington DC, knew Yarrow Mamout.  Indeed, he delivered two noted lectures in Georgetown in 1859 in which he mentioned "Old Yarrah," who had died thirty-six years earlier.  Although Thomas Balch of Leesburg, the man at the right, was but two-years-old when Yarrow died and would not have known him, he may well have heard his uncle talk about the African.  His uncle's 1859 lectures were such a major event that he might have gone to Georgetown to hear them.  For me, this bust put a face to a family, the Balches, that were until my visit only names on a page. 
     The Leesburg library is unusual in several ways.  It is no longer private.  The town of Leesburg took over ownership in 1994.  And it is now primarily a research library.  Only a few books in its collection may be checked out. The Loudon County public library is the community's lending library.  And the Balch library, rather than a historical society, serves as repository for the town's historical material.
      In my tour of the library, I was shown a small painting of General Lafayette of American Revolution fame.  Lafayette had returned to the United States for a friendship tour in 1824.  He supposedly stopped in Leesburg where he was the guest of Thomas Balch's father.  The painting was done at that time.  I can't attest to the authenticity of the painting, although the library can, but I have seen other portraits of Lafayette that were done at about the same time, and the man in the library's painting is the same as the man in those portraits.  That reminded me of what a small, intimate place America once was.  Charles Willson Peale, who painted Yarrow, had painted Lafayette during the winter the Continental Army spent at Valley Forge.  More on the Thomas Balch library.

New York Times article- Ms. Yarrow and the Road to Antietam

    On Sept. 11, 2012, the New York Times Disunion series online carried my article about what Polly Yarrow and the Turners were doing as the Union and Confederate armies fought around Yarrowsburg on the way to the Battle of Antietam.  The article may be found here.

    Several people commented on the article, asking more or less, how I could know these things.  In response, I wrote:

    A few comments criticize this article, apparently because it isn't based on first-person accounts. The African Americans who are the subjects were illiterate and couldn't leave such accounts. They were illiterate because blacks were not allowed in schools in Maryland before the end of the Civil War and even teaching them privately to read was discouraged. This underscores the larger point of this article which is about the relationship between the Battle of Antietam, freedom, and education. If there is to be a narrative at all of what happened to this family, it has to be reconstructed from other evidence. This isn't unusual though. History is nothing more that the reconstruction of events from the available evidence. Sometimes there are no witnesses; sometimes they lie. In this article, I quote from General McLaws's after-action report of his conduct, saying that when told of Union troops to the north and east of Harpers Ferry, he thought it was "questionable." Was that true, or was the general trying to excuse his failure to be better prepared?
I would like to answer readers who want to know what the evidence is, but those answers go well beyond the space allowed here.

With respect to the movements of Polly Yarrow and her family, they had to be in Yarrowsburg on Sept. 11, 1862.  Simon Turner's father-in-law had purchased that family's freedom from a neighboring farmer in 1860 and in Oct. 1861 purchased a 77-acre piece of land near Polly.  The 1860 census counted 30 free black families in Pleasant Valley, including a third black family named Jones in the Yarrowsburg area.

Blacks couldn't move freely then.  If they traveled beyond where they were known, they would be stopped by whites and asked what they were doing and whether they were runaways.  Allen Sparrow, a white resident of Middletown, MD at this time talked about seeing 20 to 40 Negroes "hand cuft together one on each side of a long chain, the Georgemen as they cald them then with his whip driving them....They took them to Georgia and sold them to work on Cotton Farms.  At that time there was a very few people but what thought it was all right and I thought if a negro runaway I was duty bound to catch him as if a horse or anything else ran away."  Turner's father-in-law had registered his family's freedom papers, called manumissions, with the county recorder of deeds, and so if they were challenged, they had the papers to prove their status as free.  Of course, the Georgia-men were not above kidnapping even free blacks and taking them to Georgia if it made a buck.  Neither Turner nor Polly Yarrow had papers, so they couldn't travel very far.  Thus, when McLaws came, the family was pinned between the Confederates attacking from the valley and the Union defenders on Elk Ridge behind their farms.  In researching the book, a woman on a neighboring farm showed me several display boxes of musket balls, minnie balls, and even a U.S. belt buckle that treasure hunters dug up on her land, evidence of battle and this was less than half a mile from Yarrow's house.  As I say in the book, it isn't clear these came from the fighting in 1862 since the Confederates tried the same maneuver in 1864.  Still, McLaws's report on the action describes the road by Yarrow's house and says his men attacked up Solomon's Gap and met Union resistance.  I've hiked it.  It's a steep but short climb.  The houses where these families lived would have been in range of rifle fire from the defenders.

Kathleen Ernst wrote a book about what the civilians around Sharpsburg did as the big opposing armies gathered there.  Its title was taken from a quote by a young white girl who said she was, Too Afraid to Cry.  Everyone with any sense fled. The roads out of Sharpsburg were clogged with families trying to get out before the fighting started.  A few stayed and hid in basements.  An older woman who insisted on staying, despite being urged by soldiers to leave, was killed when shells hit her house.  Therefore, given the situation that Yarrow and the family found themselves in and given their houses didn't have basements, logic says they fled although both this article and the book note they may not have.  Crampton's farm was really the only safe place for them.  He still owned Simon Turner; other Turners lived there as slaves; and Crampton had provided protection to blacks in the valley in the past.  The Jones family, which was the third black family near Yarrowsburg, does not show up in the 1870 census.  So they may have died (perhaps in the fighting), fled never to return, or moved away for some other reason.

With respect to the surrender of Union forces at Harpers Ferry, the size of the garrison was put in round figures at 10,000.  It was in fact somewhat larger than that and larger than the U.S. Army surrender on Corregidor.  Several surrenders by Confederate forces were larger, but those were not surrenders by the United States Army.

With respect to Polly Yarrow being questioned by authorities, Maryland’s purpose in having her register as a free black after the Nat Turner Rebellion was to create in effect a “subversives list.”  Thus, when John Brown tried the same thing, Polly’s name was on the list of those who should be questioned.  In addition, the raid had been staged from a farm in Maryland just over Solomon's Gap from her house.  Several of the raiders had remained there rather than go to Harpers Ferry.  Others escaped Harpers Ferry and passed by.  They all fled along Elk Ridge with some even going into Pleasant Valley.  After J.E.B. Stuart helped capture Brown at the fire house in Harpers Ferry, he immediately led his men to the Maryland farm, searched it, and found weapons and papers.  Authorities in Maryland and Pennsylvania later conducted their own investigations and arrests. Some of the raiders who fled reported that there were search parties out in Maryland for days.  The Mason Commission, which was a congressional investigation, said that residents of Pleasant Valley had been questioned.
And here is an 1877 map of Pleasant Valley with Yarrowsburg marked in red.  Just above that, the mapmaker had marked the house of "Mrs. Yarrow."

Scenes in Pleasant Valley

This is St. Luke's Episcopal Church, which was headquarters for General McLaws during the battle at Solomon's Gap, and it was also used as a Confederate field hospital.  A visitor in recent times came because he had a letter passed down from an ancestor who was a Confederate soldier.  The letter said that the soldier saw amputated limbs stacked as high as the window sill. 

This is the interior of the church.  This, with the pews removed, served as a hospital for the Confederates.  After Union troops drove the Confederates out of Pleasant Valley, they burned the church in reprisal.  When the church was rebuilt, a scorched beam over a window was removed.  It's kept in the adjacent community center.  Not long ago, the church was repainted.  The painters said that it looked like there had been a fire.  Yes, but it was 150 years ago, they were told.

The photograph to the left is the house on Elie Crampton's farm as it looks today.  In the foreground is the spring house and a chimney where the bake house used to be.

Pleasant Valley and Mt. Moriah images

Since I will be at Mt. Moriah Church to sign books on Saturday, September 22 for its Community and Friends Day at 11 a.m., it seemed appropriate to write a post about both the church and its location in Pleasant Valley.  First, here is Pleasant Valley in the summer, looking at Elk Ridge from Crampton's Gap.  That's Maryland Heights on the left end of the ridge.  Mt. Moriah is in the valley maybe a bit to the left of center.  Elie Crampton's farm is to the right of the photograph.

The photograph of Mt. Moriah Church, to the right,  was taken at a different time of year.  It was built by stonemason Robert Anderson.  He not only was one of the church's founders, he also started the first black school in Pleasant Valley after the Civil War when he bought the land for that purpose in 1867.  That original school was at a different location.  Classes were later moved to this church.  Later, the state built a proper school, which is the white structure next to the church.  It was still segregated.  After the Supreme Court ordered integration, the school was closed.  The building was turned over to the church, which uses it for events.

The church keeps a large photograph of Robert Anderson in the basement.  You can see not only that as a stonemason Anderson was a powerfully built man but also that he was the kind of man who would have the determination and drive to start a school for the black community as soon as the Civil War was over.

The final photograph in this collection is of Elk Ridge as it appears from the church.  "The mountain" as it is called locally isn't very high, but it is steep and therefore seems to loom over the valley.  Maryland Heights is at the far left end.  That is where the Potomac River cuts through the ridge line, and the town of Harpers Ferry is just past the Heights.

Yarrowsburg

Solomon's Gap

Yarrowsburg is named after Yarrow Mamout's daughter-in-law, Polly Yarrow.  It is located in Washington County, Maryland, and sits below Solomon's Gap in Elk Ridge.  In 1859, John Brown rented a farm from the estate of a doctor named Robert Kennedy.  The photograph at the right is Solomon's Gap.  Polly Yarrow's house used to be at the bottom left in the picture.  The Kennedy farm, pictured below, was on the other side of the gap. It was about a mile and a half away. 

Kennedy Farm

Reviews, interviews, and talks on the Web

Video of July 25, 2012 PowerPoint presentation at the National Archives in Washington DC.
 
Review by Michael Williams entitled "An Unwilling Immigrant" for the Erickson Tribune.

Washington Independent Review of Books, Question and Answer Part 1.

Washington Independent Review of Books, Question and Answer Part 2.
 
WYPR radio in Baltimore interview by Tom Hall on May 1, 2012.

"An American Family's Multigenerational Rise from Slavery to Harvard University" at Blackpast.org.

"Gist of Freedom" blogtalkradio interview May 22, 2012.

Sugarland

    The first tobacco planters in the Washington DC area lived in what is now Prince George's County, Maryland. They later moved west, but since they needed to be close to a river if they were to send the tobacco to England and since the last port for that with access to the sea was Georgetown, they never got much farther west than the Sugarland area of Montgomery County.  It supposedly got its name from the sugar maple trees, and, lying between the Seneca and Monocacy Rivers, it had a rich soil.  Yet the tobacco wore out the soil, and so slavery, which was largely the product of a tobacco economy, began to wane.  The result was a series of small black communities that were dropped along the Potomac River. They trace the westward movement, and failure, of tobacco.  Today was Heritage Day in Montgomery County, and I went to the historic church at Sugarland that was built by one such black community.  Gwendora Reese took a leading role in preserving the community's history.  In this picture, Gwen is holding my book, and I didn't even pay her.  The church was built by freed slaves and is no longer used as a church.  Instead, it serves as a kind of historical marker of what Montgomery County once was and a wonderful venue for events. Gwen and others have done a great job in cataloging the founding black families in Sugarland, including the Johnsons and Hebrons.  Those families aren't mentioned in my book but two of the old families are: the Dorseys and the Weedons. 

Fulani in Georgetown, Then and Now

   I first encountered an image of Yarrow Mamout at the public library in Georgetown, which has James Alexander Simpson's painting of him.  Yarrow was Fulani, a distinct ethnic group that had migrated from what is now the country of Mali into Senegal and Guinea.  The Fulani settled in the highlands known as Futa Jallon.  In Africa, Yarrow's name would have been spelled Yero Mamadou.  Both were given names, but he treated Yarrow as his last name even though it is written first.  Yarrow was living in Georgetown when Charles Willson Peale painted the different, more striking portrait of Yarrow that appears below in 1819.  The portrait on the left now belongs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
    I ran into Mamadou Mbengue in Georgetown as well, but in 2012 and in the flesh.  He too is Fulani from Matam in northern Senegal.  I was struck by the fact that he had Yarrow Mamout bear a vague resemblance to each.  Mbengue agreed to pose for the picture on the right. 

The Library Company of Philadelphia

Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Library Company of Philadelphia

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo by William Hoare

On the afternoon of my lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I was the guest of the Library Company of Philadelphia.  Benjamin Franklin helped found the company in 1731 as a cooperative, lending library for the enlightened citizens of the city.  Later, it was transformed into what it is today, a leading research library with an extensive African American history collection.  While I knew this, I was still surprised when I arrived to see that Phil Lapansky, curator of the collection, had laid out an 1734 edition of the book on Ayuba Suleiman Diallo that was written by Maryland lawyer Thomas Bluett.  I used the book to write about Diallo's life in the first chapter of From Slave Ship to Harvard.  I had never seen the physical book; I had relied on a digital copy.  I didn't know it had this fold-out in front.  Like Yarrow Mamout, Diallo was a Fulani Muslim and was brought to Annapolis, Maryland on a slave ship.  He arrived twenty-two years before Yarrow and soon came to the attention of important men.  After a few unhappy years as a slave in Maryland, Diallo was sent to England where he became somewhat of a celebrity and was freed.  He was painted by William Hoare, a student of Thomas Gainsborough.  Hoare's portrait is the frontispiece to Bluett's book.  It and Peale's portrait of Yarrow appear to be the only two portraits by major artists of men who experienced the horrors of being "cargo" on a slave ship.  Diallo's portrait is owned by the Qatar Museums Authority and is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Rachel Weeping

Not far from the portraits of Yarrow Mamout and Charles Willson Peale at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Peale's dramatic painting "Rachel Weeping."  It shows the artist's wife, Rachel Brewer, crying over the body of their daughter Margaret.  Rachel was Peale's first wife.  He married twice more after she died.  Yet it is fitting that Rachel's painting be displayed close to Yarrow's, for it was her nephew, Joseph Brewer, who first told Peale about Yarrow.  Peale was in Washington D.C. in 1818 and had gone to Georgetown to see Brewer and Brewer's sister (Rachel's niece).  They lived next door to each other.  The sister was married to the wealthy William Marbury.  Several years later, Marbury's son John served as trustee on the deed of trust that was used to secure a loan of Yarrow's.  In other words, it was through Brewer and Marbury that Peale was introduced to Yarrow, and they stayed in contact with him.  Also see the image at the museum's Web site.

Oxford University Press blog

The book is being featured this week on the Oxford University Press blog.  It matches the historical cartoon series that Patrick Reynolds drew this year on Yarrow in his Flashbacks comic strip with excerpts from the book.  http://blog.oup.com/2012/05/charles-willson-yarrow-mamout/

Philadelphia Museum of Art

     Charles Willson Peale's portrait of Yarrow now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  On Friday, May 11, I gave a lecture there as the museum's guest.  This was the first time that I saw the portrait rather than just photographs of it.  Someone asked me how I felt seeing the portrait after researching Yarrow for nine years.  I had no remarkable emotion, but what I did notice was that I felt I was looking at Yarrow in the flesh.  Peale was that good of a portrait painter.  There is a depth and three-dimensional aspect in an oil portrait that is not found in photographs.  The painting seems literally to come alive.  So here we are, me, Yarrow, and Peale, together again for the first time.  The paintings are so lifelike that I should point out that I'm the one who is not framed.

Latest on Yarrow's lot

     Yarrow's property was sold for taxes.  The tax sale occurred in the summer of 2011 and was finalized in May 2012.  This isn't the first time the property had been lost in a tax sale.  Yarrow's heirs lost it in 1837 for delinquent taxes.  Yarrow's niece was still around then.  Maybe she didn't try to save the house because she didn't have the money to pay the delinquent taxes, or maybe she didn't know her rights.  But, a few years later, she sued to collect on an old loan of his and won.
     Now that it is in the hands of a new owner the house appears being readied for demolition even though no application has been filed with the DC government for permission to do so.  Below are three images.  The first is how the house looked in April; the second is how it looked on May 10; and the third is a close up taken on the same day of the siding that has been removed and stacked to the side.

April 2012

May 2012

May 2012

Reginald Lewis Museum event

   On Saturday, May 5, I spoke and signed books at the Reginald Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History in Baltimore.  The descendants of the Turner family attended. 
    From left to right:  Emily Ford Willis, Denise Ford Dungee, me, Cynthia Ford Richardson, Alice Ford Truiett, her husband Melvin Truiett, and their son Phillip Truiett.  Alice's father, Robert Turner Ford, entered Harvard University in 1923 and graduated in 1927.  Emily, Denise, and Cynthia are her cousins, daughters of Robert Turner Ford's brother George.

More on Yarrow's house

The previous post shows a picture of Yarrow's house as it now looks.  Neighbors heard a rumor the house would be torn down because of damage from a storm last fall.  However, although the possibility was broached with the government, there has been no formal proposal as yet.  Two older photographs show the house as it used to look.  The one on the left was taken in 2010 before the tree fell on it.  The faded one on the right was taken circa 1984 and shows a porch that has since been removed.

State of Yarrow's lot in Georgetown

     The old house on Yarrow Mamout's lot in Georgetown may be torn down after being crushed by a tree in a storm last fall.  Here is how it looked in April 2012.  It probably isn't the house that Yarrow lived in. The former owner heard the house was moved there from a site on the Mall in Washington a century or more ago.  However, no one can be sure at the moment.  It has never been inspected by experts, who might be able to date it based on its construction.  The former owner said that the nails used in it are square rather than round. 
     There probably are even more important relics on the land.  According to his obituary, Yarrow himself was in 1823 interred in the corner of the lot where he went to pray, presumably the southeast corner, which would be on the left side of the backyard in this picture.  Moreover, the house sits on a brick cellar, and the bricks in that cellar appear older than the house itself. (photo below)  They have been dated to before 1850.  Yarrow was a brick-maker, among his other skills, so these bricks may be ones he made with his own hands. 

     Any work on the site raises concerns about whether all or part of the house dates from Yarrow's time and also what will happen to Yarrow's remains and the brick cellar.
     The property stayed in the name of "Yarrow's heirs" for a number of years after his death.  Eventually, it was sold to a speculator at a tax sale.  He then sold it to Francis Dodge of Georgetown, who probably rented it out.  Dodge was a prominent figure in Georgetown in the nineteenth century.  In the famous attempt by Washington slaves to escape to freedom on the Pearl, the pursuing posse used Dodge's steamship to go after the Pearl, capture her, and return her passengers to slavery.

Maryland State Archives

     Researching the book, I was surprised by how many records have been kept from the colonial period in Maryland.  Many of these were collected and are now stored at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis.  Since my two previous posts deal with the Beall family of Rockville and the courthouses there, this photograph of the Montgomery County Court's Minute Book from 1779 shows what kinds of records are in the archives.  Inside is the neat penmanship of the court's first clerk, Brooke Beall, who owned Yarrow Mamout.

The Montgomery County Courthouses

     My first book talk is scheduled, appropriately enough, for Law Day, May 1, at the Montgomery County Courthouse.  I say appropriately because two of Yarrow's owners were chief clerks of the court.  Indeed, Brooke Beall was the first clerk and was succeeded by his son Upton.  Initially, the court met at Hungerford's Tavern.  The plaque at right, which is on the side of a bank, marks the spot where the tavern once stood.

     But the court outgrew the tavern, and a new courthouse was built.  It too was outgrown and torn down.  The third courthouse on the spot was the so-called "Red Brick"  courthouse, shown in this picture.  It still stands, obviously, but later a fourth courthouse was built.  It's where the court meets today, but the modern building isn't as picturesque as the red brick one.

    

     Although in modern times Montgomery County has gained a reputation for being somewhat of a liberal bastion, this wasn't always the case.  As detailed in From Slave Ship to Harvard, when the county was created in 1776, its residents were tobacco planters, and their slaves worked the fields.  But tobacco wore out the land, and more traditional crops had to be planted. Yet the old planter mentality held sway for generations.  Because of this, during the Civil War, young men from Montgomery County went South to enlist in the Confederate Army.  As a result, on the left side of the Red Brick Courthouse is a statue of a Confederate soldier, looking South.  Erected by surviving Southern sympathizers, the statue stands on a base with an inscription that shows the old planter mentality was still alive in the county as late as 1913.

Upton Beall and Manumission

The house at right was built in Rockville, Maryland by Upton Beall, the man who manumitted Yarrow Mamout.  It is common to say that "manumission" was what freed a slave, but that's not quite accurate.  A slave could gain freedom by running away or moving off on his or her own, by the owner simply saying "you're free," or by the grant of freedom in a last will and testament.  Manumission was the legally recognized grant of freedom that could be proved in several ways.  Neighbors or acquaintances could testify someone was free, or the person himself could swear he was free.  Still, it was common to give a freed slave a piece of paper, a manumission, to prove he or she was free, and ex-slaves were well advised to record this paper with the county recorder of deeds as permanent proof should the need arise.  Brooke Beall, Yarrow's owner, promised freedom to Yarrow in the future, but Brooke died without following through.  It was Brooke's widow, Margaret, who told Yarrow he was free.  She didn't sign the manumission though.  Her son Upton did.  He never legally owned Yarrow.  He was, however, clerk of the Montgomery County Court in Rockville, which was two blocks away from this house (now known as the Beall-Dawson house), and no one would question a manumission signed by such an important government official.