In the spring of 2021, a collection of family papers handed down for many generations was found in the attic of a soon-to be-demolished 200-year-old house near Chestertown, Md. Through the quick action of community members, the generosity of several donors, and the efforts of Washington College's Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the papers were saved from dispersal.

Among the approximately 2,000 pages — which date from the late 1600s to the early 1800s — are about a hundred documents illuminating the lives of African Americans in Kent and Queen Anne’s Counties, both free and enslaved. This portion of the archive has been named the Commodore Collection, in honor of Washington College alumnus Norris Commodore ’73 and his family. The name honors the Commodore family’s role in rescuing the documents, the family’s deep roots in Kent County, and Mr. Commodore’s historic status as the first African American from the local community to graduate from the College. They will belong to Sumner Hall, a cultural nonprofit in Chestertown, while being conserved and archived along with the rest of the collection at Washington College’s Miller Library.

The discoveries presented here represent just a small part of the Commodore Collection. The papers are being digitized in their entirety as part of Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project, an initiative that documents and shares four centuries of Black heritage in the region. They will soon be accessible on this website. Research on them has only just begun, and no doubt further documents of Black history remain to be identified within the larger archive.

Click on the images above to discover the stories that these pages contain. Some are heroic. Some are heart-wrenching. Some are both.

Digital exhibition created at the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, Washington College, June 2021.

Special thanks to the Commodore family, the Hedgelawn Foundation, the Kent Cultural Alliance,
Dixon's Crumpton Auction, Inc., and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous support.