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."