04-11-2024 Howard Magazine - Flipbook - Page 34
Unearthing
LOST
HISTORY
RY
Two Girl Scouts
rediscovered
an Ellicott City
cemetery where
enslaved people
are buried
“Mary Alice, daughter of Michael & Merry
C. Hanigan, died July 25, 1918, Aged
2 yrs. & 5 mos. ‘In heaven there is one
angel more,’”reads an inscription on a
toppled and weathered headstone at the
abandoned St. Mary’s Cemetery.
34
BY MARY CAROLE MCCAULEY
Howard Magazine
T
wo 13-year-old Girl Scouts who set out
during the early days of the pandemic to
earn a merit badge rediscovered a historic
Ellicott City cemetery where enslaved people are
buried, a cemetery once used by descendants of
Charles Carroll, the final signer of the Declaration
of Independence.
Sarah Hill and Nadia Klemensten, now both 18
and seniors at Marriott’s Ridge High School, didn’t
think of themselves as budding archeologists or
amateur sleuths. They didn’t plan to claim a place
in Maryland history by drawing attention to the
long-neglected St. Mary’s Cemetery, a segregated
burial ground that served as the final resting place
for 160 Americans — 84 Black, and 76 white. They
had no idea they would help a neighbor find the
gravesite of his formerly enslaved great-great-great
grandmother.
Allen Greene, 70, a deacon at St. Paul’s Catholic
Church, said he was “overwhelmed with joy”
when the teens helped him locate the tombstone
memorializing his ancestor Caroline Addison, who
died in 1894 after a lifetime working as a nurse at
nearby Doughoregan Manor, the Carroll family
estate.
“I was saddened that such a sacred place was
in decay,” Greene said. “But, I did feel a deep
connection to a part of my personal history and
the journey of my family from slavery. It was a
pretty moving experience.”
He said that Hill and Klemensten “were two
of the key individuals involved in uncovering a
cemetery that had lain dormant for a number of
years” and added: “They deserve a heck of a lot
| Spring 2024 | howardmagazine.com
of credit.”
Ellicott City’s Cemetery Project comes at
a moment when attention nationwide and in
Maryland is being focused on a movement to
protect Black cemeteries that have fallen into
disrepair or are threatened with demolition.
Last year, Congress passed the African American
Burial Grounds Preservation Act of 2023, which
authorizes the National Park Service to identify,
research and preserve abandoned Black burial
grounds. But the fledgling program has remained
dormant because of a lack of funds.
In January, the Maryland Supreme Court heard
oral arguments in a lawsuit seeking to prevent the
