February 2026 Digital Archives Contributions
February 2026 - Digital Archives Contributionsby Melissa Prunty Kemp
The Chesapeake Heartland continues its digitization push with several new additions to our collections brought to us by our community curators, Starr Center personnel through their significant outreach efforts, and our faithful donors who support us in sustaining our mission to explore the American Experience. With the upcoming 250th commemoration in Maryland and 2026 also marking a century since Dr. Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week, the Heartland is especially honored to continue our invaluable preservation work.
Adam Goodheart, author, Starr Center Hodson Trust-Griswold Director and intrepid researcher, has brought to the collection an outstanding series of more than “250 letters, photos, and documents from Talbot County in the 1910s-1950s belonging to Joseph L. Sutton (1885-1980), a prominent Black resident of Copperville and Unionville. Mr. Sutton was apparently a breeder of Chesapeake Bay retrievers, and the collection includes letters from people all over the country wishing to purchase his Chessies . . . . So the collection seems to touch on themes of Black entrepreneurship, leadership, African American rural communities, and more . . . He was an especially important figure because he was the subject of an entire book of remarkable autobiography/oral history, Praise the Bridge that Carries You Over - The Life of Joseph L. Sutton, based on over 100 hours of interviews with him in the 1970s.”
What has become one of the Chesapeake Heartland’s most celebrated archival subjects is the Perry and Clara Ford Anderson Collection. The Chesapeake Heartland team toured several Kent County locations in Still Pond, Big Woods, Coleman, Betterton, and the Sassafras River. These areas have been historically populated with African American homes, segregated schools, baseball fields, churches and other gathering places whose owners and patrons are widely depicted in the Digital Archives. Pictured here are the headstones of Perry and Clara Anderson in their resting places at the cemetery adjacent to the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Still Pond.
The future Mander House Museum in Big Woods The Rosenwald One-room school in Coleman The headstone of Ruth Blackmon Mims Remains of a segregated school in Big Woods
The tour was especially interesting to Melissa Kemp, Starr Center Digital Archivist & Historian, who is not from Kent County and came to the Eastern Shore for the first time in August 2023. Physically seeing the locations and buildings that have housed those whose artifacts she has been digitizing brought closeness and a new perspective to her work. She recognized a kinship between her own hometown areas of Roanoke County, VA and Still Pond/Bigwoods/Coleman areas with their neat Jim Walter homes spaced respectfully from each other to give place to a generous yard and garden. She particularly appreciated seeing the ruins of the Rosenwald school and another one-room segregated school in the Big Woods area.
Taking this tour and seeing these locations in person was truly inspirational. I wished to win the lottery so that I could purchase and restore every dilapidated property I saw. I loved (and mourned) seeing the expanses of property that used to belong to local African American families (like the Andersons) who held and worked the properties for generations. Probably one of the most stunning views I experienced was cresting the hill in Betterton and seeing the Sassafras River expand before me. It was simply breathtaking. So was the cove at the foot of Leslie Raimond’s house on the hill. What an fanciful place to live. I can see why my father used to take his “frat-bro” vacations in Baltimore so he could take a fishing trip on the Chesapeake. I’m totally jealous and immensely proud to continue preserving the histories of this place and its people.
— Melissa Kemp
In addition to the significant expansion and explanation of the Anderson family collection that has been spearheaded by Somerville, she has also mightily contributed to our ongoing genealogical documentation supported by our obituary collection. In December and January, the Starr Center digitized more than 200 obituaries contributed by Ms. Somerville and another 150 obituaries contributed by community curator Carolyn Brooks of Kent County residents of Worton, Quaker Neck, Chestertown, Still Pond and surrounding areas.
Community Curator Airlee Ringgold Johnson on the Red Carpet. Starr Center Staff, Leslie Raimond and community friends on the Red Carpet.
The origins of the Chesapeake Heartland include many scholars and supporters from the eastern and the western shores of Maryland. Our connection to the Smithsonian Institution and its director Secretary Lonnie Bunch is a part of that origin and a source of the study of African American life in Kent County. A further connection is Smithsonian “Museum On Main Street” multi-media staged performance at the Garfield Center for the Arts entitled “Choppin at the Shop.” This production was a “unique and original multi-media work of music, the art of conversation, and photography as it relates to Black Americans who work or have worked in Kent County. Using the imagery of the barbershop and the beauty salon, acclaimed vocalist Marlon Saunders weaves the notion of economics, politics, race and gender in order to demonstrate the power of hopes and dreams.” Marlon Saunders is a Kent County resident, accomplished performer, composer and former professor of voice at Berklee College of Music and a current professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU and The New School's Jazz and Contemporary Music and Drama. The Starr Center is in receipt of and currently loading a cache of 250 photographs of this event to the digital archives.
Any brief tour of the Chesapeake Heartland Digital Archives will likely encounter an artifact connected to Vita Foods, the major employer and food processing plant in Chestertown at 800 High Street. Pat Nugent, Starr Center Miller Director of Civic Engagement, connected with a donor to secure the an early collection of George Heller, the original owner of Vita Foods. Several photos of the family vacationing in Provincetown are included in the collection.
George Heller, 1935
In addition to more than one thousand pages of documents and photographs, our donors also provided us with two more historical examples of dramatic-musical productions. From the Kent Cultural Alliance work of Leslie Prince Raimond comes a 1998 VHS recording of the Chestertown/Kent County performance entitled “Ragtime to Rap,” that documents major musical historical moments from early to present-day America. Many of Kent County’s most noted singers are present, such as Sylvia Frazier, Karen Somerville, Irene Moore, Lester Barrett, and other local voices. Many of those voices from 1998 would continue to bring their rich, classic voices to many dramatic productions and musical recordings. One example is the renowned Kent County resident Robert Earl Price who produced the play Red Devil Moon.
2026 represents the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Eastern Shore has generated a host of monumental figures who fought for the country and for its growing diverse populations to enjoy the benefits of the US Constitutions, among them the firey orator and abolitionist Henry Highland Garnett. This year is also the 103rd anniversary of Garnet(t) Schools. The Starr Center has received three early diplomas from Garnet students. These are the earliest artifacts from the school that will be located in the archives. These replace the current oldest artifacts - the Time Capsule documents of Garnett from 1950 and the groundbreaking of Garnett School in 1947.
