Illuminating the underrepresented communities and figures of our colonial history presents challenges, but also opportunities for organizations, leadership, tourists, and citizens to examine our shared trials and tribulations…and heal together
In an airy bedroom overlooking the garden, a group of moms contemplates a cross-stitch sampler and dried medicinal leaves, fragile reminders of the little girl who lived here 257 years ago. They linger to study a pamphlet promising “Remedies for Every Disease.”
As the women turn to leave, their guide, Cathy Schmidt, points out something they missed: a bedroll bundled in a corner, almost out of sight.
At the William Paca House, the Georgian mansion synonymous with Annapolis’ rebirth as a tourist town, this room tells the story of “Little Henny”—an orphaned niece of the revolutionary and his wealthy wife. Henny moved into the house at age 10 only to die shortly after, perhaps of smallpox or a fever. But this year, the Paca House added the bedroll to the room to remember two other lives: Bett and Sall, enslaved girls not much older than Henny, who fed and dressed her, slept on the floor—and were inherited by the Pacas with the rest of Henny’s belongings.
It’s a small part of the effort here and across the country to better convey the realities of colonial life. From Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg and Mount Vernon to our London Town and Gardens, 18th Century attractions have adjusted from the exclusive focus on famous property owners. Today, after soul-searching during the 2020 social justice movement, they’re emphasizing even more of Black, Indigenous, and women’s experiences and perspectives.
“I try to find ways to connect people with the past,” said Schmidt, 75, a volunteer docent and retired history teacher, who can relate a riveting anecdote about almost any name or date.
Historic Annapolis, the nonprofit that runs the Paca House, opened a permanent exhibit last year exploring the city’s diversity. St. John’s College is researching whether any of its campus was built with enslaved labor. Maryland’s last Confederate monument, the “Talbot Boys” in Easton, came down in March. A new museum at Harriet Tubman’s birthplace on the Eastern Shore documents her treacherous trips guiding enslaved people to freedom. And a younger generation of state leaders is rethinking the capitol’s centuries-old art.
Civil right activist and politician Carl Snowden photographed at the years-long renovation of the Maynard-Burgess House in Annapolis. “There’s always a hundred different reasons for why something is taking so long—research, fighting architects…But behind it all, is racism,” he says. Photograph by Stephen Buchanan.
Not everyone agrees. Angry callers protested the 2017 removal of a statue of Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision, from the State House grounds. Some visitors only want to admire the architecture of early homes and plantations along the Chesapeake Bay.
At the same time, some African American leaders, local historians, and other critics question if the racial reckoning has gone far enough.
“We are still battling with some truths,” said Bishop Craig Coates, a PhD in African-American history, who is the city police chaplain. Annapolis, he said, “prefers holding onto a feeling of European colonialism rather than telling the full story of suffering, struggle, and resistance.”
Despite recognizing that Paca and his fellow Declaration of Independence signers were enslavers, tours rarely spell out how they prospered by owning tobacco plantations around the state. No markers acknowledge slavery’s role in building the 251-year-old capitol. Guides in Colonial garb, mostly white retirees, sometimes speak obliquely of “servants.” A full-length portrait in the State House depicts the British noble who charted Maryland with an enslaved boy. And several paintings criticized for romanticizing Annapolis’ founding hang in City Hall.
Also striking is the discrepancy between preserving two landmarks in Annapolis’ historic district: the 1774 mansion of James Brice, a white lawyer and enslaver, and a pre-Civil War home owned by John Maynard, a free Black man.
The state quickly bought the Brice House for $2.4 million in 2014, partnering with Historic Annapolis to restore it for another $20 million. Meanwhile, Maynard’s simpler home stood vacant and deteriorating for three decades. Only now is the city finishing $540,000 in renovations, after $1.5 million to shore up the sagging frame, a tenth of the Brice House cost.
“It comes down to what’s important to people,” said Carl Snowden, a former Annapolis alderman and longtime civil rights activist. He notes it took 20 years to build the Kunta Kinte memorial at City Dock, where the African ancestor of “Roots” author Alex Haley was sold.
“There’s always a hundred different reasons for why something is taking so long—research, fighting architects,” Snowden added. “But behind it all, is racism.”
Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman delivers remarks at Governor Wes Moore’s public inauguration ceremony. “I’m in favor of doing anything we can to connect people whose ancestors were enslaved with their history,” he said. Photograph courtesy Office of Governor Wes Moore
At the State House
On a spring-like January afternoon, new Maryland Governor Wes Moore emerged from the State House to a 19-gun salute. Oprah Winfrey walked onstage. And Steuart Pittman prepared to share something he had never discussed outside his family with the jubilant crowd.
In welcoming Moore to Annapolis, Pittman reflected on the historic nature of Maryland’s first Black governor taking his oath of office up the street from onetime slave docks. Then, the Anne Arundel County executive added a personal note: an ancestor of his, a tobacco planter who “made a fortune on the backs of enslaved men, women, and children,” lived in the 1700s where the governor’s mansion stands.
“The truth needs to be told,” Pittman said later, adding he has also directed the county to install markers at former plantations, like his family’s, which relied on slave labor. “I’m in favor of doing anything we can to connect people whose ancestors were enslaved with their history.”
The new governor arrived at a capitol in midst of a generational transformation. Once dominated by white men, the legislature is now younger, over 40 percent female and a third Black, with growing numbers of Latino and Asian-Americans. A Black woman is the House speaker. Yet they work in a building filled with artwork honoring politicians from over two centuries ago, including the state’s four signers, early governors, and several other slave-owning colonists.
Over the past three years, the State House made a handful of updates. Life-size statues of Tubman and fellow abolitionist Frederick Douglass now stand watch at the old House chamber, where the state ended slavery in 1864. Another exhibit documents Black Marylanders’ fight for freedom. And in 2020, the Senate president hung a painting of Verda Welcome, the first Black female senator, after eighth-graders wrote to ask why none of the portraits looked like them.
Welcome’s portrait is still an exception, however. Annapolis Del. Shaneka Henson remembers touring the marble halls as a freshman delegate. Stopping by a portrait of Cecil Calvert, the British provincial proprietor, and his grandson, she noticed an enslaved boy “lingering in the shadows.” A tour guide remarked on the painting’s “composition and how it was preserved,” she recalled. But all she could think was: “Dear God, that’s a child!”
Another challenge has been researching the indentured, enslaved, and free Black workers believed to have helped build the capitol, beginning in 1772. Despite decades of research, historians have been unable to identify any of the men who laid bricks, plastered, or painted. Ledgers show a “Negro Candy” and “Negro Nathan,” presumably free, were paid to clean the legislative chambers and fireplaces in the 1780s. There must have been many more; as governor in 1783, Paca reported 11 enslaved people in his household (and 58 at his wife’s plantation on Wye Island.) But they may remain forever unnamed.
“We’re trying to acknowledge that Black people did contribute,” said Chris Haley, who directs the study of slavery for the Maryland State Archives and is a nephew of the “Roots” author. “It’s important to remember that many things we lionize and celebrate were created by people who were, quite frankly, denigrated.”
Delegate Shaneka Henson stands in front of the painting of Cecil Calvert, the British provincial proprietor, and his grandson, within the Maryland State House. As a freshman delegate touring the State House, Henson noticed an enslaved boy “lingering in the shadows” of the painting. All she could think was, “Dear God, that’s a child!” Photograph by Stephen Buchanan
A Tale of Two Houses
In the Paca House, the parlor is painted the precise shade of Prussian blue, as in 1765. Mary Paca’s silver candlesticks decorate the dining room. And the terraced, two-acre back yard, now a popular wedding spot, looks the same as when Paca insisted it be part of his official portrait.
Over a half-century ago, Paca’s five-part brick mansion was unrecognizable—subsumed by a derelict hotel and on the verge of demolition. Local preservationists and a fledgling Historic Annapolis came to the rescue, raising $1.75 million to rebuild the 37-room home and recreate Paca’s “wilderness garden,” unearthed beneath tons of rubble.
It was an immediate success. Retirees came to tea, families to story hours. Along the way, an increasingly well-funded Historic Annapolis guided a decades-long revival of the historic district. And Maryland’s sleepy waterfront capital turned into a bustling tourist and boating center, drawing over 2.5 million visitors a year.
Yet it proved much easier to reconstruct the house than the lives of its inhabitants. Beyond Paca’s correspondence as governor, few records survived. No portrait exists of his first wife, Mary, whose tobacco wealth boosted his political career and allowed the young couple to live in luxury on Prince George’s Street. Like Little Henny, two of their three children died.
Even less is known about the seven to 10 enslaved people in their household. By researching wills and tax assessments, two historians with Historic Annapolis discovered the first names of a half-dozen people. Others were only listed as an anonymous “Negro woman” or “child.”
As a result, the house became a “showcase for objects” and 18th Century design, recalled Jean Russo, one of the now-retired historians. Two generations of schoolchildren learned about Flemish brickwork and Nanking china, as they did about the acorn atop the State House dome.
Beginning in the early 2000s, Russo helped develop a “more expansive interpretation—not just about William Paca and his political career but his connections to town, tradespeople, people living in the house. Themes visitors could relate to.”
The William Paca House was rebuilt by a fledgling preservation organization, Historic Annapolis, in the 1960s and for many years exclusively focused on telling the story of Declaration of Independence signer William Paca. Today, Historic Annapolis has incorporated the broader history of its inhabitants, inclusive of servants, slaves, and laborers.
Simultaneously, Historic Annapolis tapped into a new interest in colonial life created by headline-making local discoveries. University of Maryland archaeologists had uncovered a log road from the early 1700s, a rare central-heating system at the 1695 Calvert House, and early examples of enslaved West Africans’ religious rituals, including a voodoo “spirit bundle.”
Professor Mark Leone, the anthropology professor who led the student excavations, decided to “take down the fences and the tarps” and invite the public to watch. Their research led to a deeper understanding of the town’s earliest inhabitants, particularly its Black community. The Banneker-Douglass Museum, Annapolis’ museum of African-American history, displayed a trove of artifacts and urged Leone to find more about the lives of free Blacks.
But Leone met resistance when he proposed excavating State Circle, and he found the town “dominated by a small group of gate-keeping historians.” The program ended in 2010.
Not long after, Annapolis’ reluctance to break with tradition was reflected by a brief debate over three paintings in the council chamber. Commissioned in 1995, the mural-like pieces depict the city’s settlement with scenes of people of all races and classes gathering. In 2013, when the room was repainted, an advisory committee, including Russo, called them “romanticized” and “historically inaccurate.” But several aldermen were unmoved, and the paintings went back up.
All the while, across from City Hall, a house that symbolizes Black freedom remained a dilapidated shell.
The Maynard-Burgess home, named after the two families who owned it since before the Civil War, was turned over to the city in 1993 by a short-lived Historic Annapolis subsidiary. The property dates to 1847, when Maynard bought it for $40. Working as a waiter, he built and improved a two-story home for his family, including his wife Maria and her relatives, whose freedom he bought. The Burgess family owned the house through most of the 20th Century.
With a generous grant from the Maryland Historical Trust’s African American Heritage Preservation Grant Program, the City of Annapolis is renovating the Maynard-Burgess House for adaptive office and exhibit use. Home of two successive African American families from 1847 to 1990, the Maynard-Burgess House is a tribute to the aspirations of the free black population of Annapolis in the 1800s.
Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of artifacts at the property revealing how free Black residents worked, socialized, and even the oysters they ate, inspiring the book “Eating in the Side Room.” But unlike the deep-pocketed Historic Annapolis and Maryland Historical Trust, which have poured tens of millions into white colonists’ homes, the city only dedicated enough money to keep it from collapsing.
Now, after years of delays, the city is wrapping up a top-to-bottom overhaul. Janice Hayes-Williams, an Annapolis historian who is a descendant of the Maynards, is disappointed the renovation is two years behind schedule, calling it “a disgrace.” But she is hopeful the house will be open to offer the public a more nuanced view of Black lives, saying: “We’ve been pushing for years for inclusion of more people beyond the gentry.”
John Tower, the city’s chief of historic preservation, promises that will happen. With its original entrance, wide-planed ceilings, and back porch refurbished, he said, the house will be a testament to both families’ “hard work and perseverance.”
“If a dozen schoolchildren or other people are profoundly influenced,” he added, “the way I was by preservation growing up, then it will have achieved its purpose.”
A New Generation
In the Paca kitchen, Nannetta Hall pauses sweeping the brick floor, straightens her apron, and greets the fourth-graders trooping in with a question: “What does freedom mean to you?”
Hands shoot up. “Hope.” “No slavery.” “Choice.” Nodding along, Hall launches into an explanation of enslaved, indentured, and convict labor. “Servants,” as the Pacas called them, prepared elaborate four-course meals in this kitchen, while subsisting on back-fat and beans, since: “In 1765, freedom looked different to different people.”
Hall, a youthfully ebullient 58-year-old, directs Historic Annapolis’ childhood education programs. She quickly wins the school group over, introducing herself as the cook Sarah, an enslaved woman who was 52 when she arrived at the Paca House with nothing more than a bedroll.
As Sarah, she shows off curiosities that fascinate the children, from a stuffed rabbit (“Is it real?”) to a clock-jack, a weight system used to rotate meat over a fire. Otherwise, Hall informs them, an enslaved child their age would have been forced to spend hours turning the spit.
“The enslaved people here were mothers, they were aunts, they were children,” she said later. “Who better to portray it than someone who looks like them?
By no longer tip-toeing around slavery, the Paca House is grappling more than ever with the paradoxes of Paca himself. A reticent man, he was repeatedly elected to public office. A founder of American freedom, he was an enslaver. He profited off his wife’s inherited plantation, where nearly 100 enslaved people worked, and he helped enshrine slavery into state law. But his views remain unknown, since the Wye Island estate where he retired burned down.
Historic Annapolis decided to delve deeper after reassessing historical perspectives during the 2020 pandemic closures and protests over racial injustice. Likewise, Watermark Tours, whose guides dress as “middling-class” townspeople, “had a lot of frank conversations,” said Jamie Foster, director of land operations. Walking tours added stops to better describe the Black community, both enslaved and free, that has made up a third of Annapolis since its founding.
“So many stories that have never been told are finally being shared and amplified,” said Karen Theimer Brown, president of Historic Annapolis, adding the group is committed to “sharing our full history.”
Yet to this day, Hall is one of only a handful of African Americans telling these stories at historic homes, the State House, and Naval Academy. Annapolis’ tourist industry has been white-oriented for so long that Snowden and Hayes-Williams created their own Black heritage tours. Some walking tours stop at the Banneker-Douglass museum, but others routinely skip it. And several of the county’s waterfront plantations, including Whitehall Manor, promote wedding rentals on websites that make no mention of their history of enslaved labor.
Perhaps the most visible change is Historic Annapolis’ museum on Main Street. Once frequented for its gift shop, the museum now features three floors of exhibits charting the town’s centuries of racial, economic, and cultural diversity. Locals donated family heirlooms, and Hayes-Williams served as a consultant to make sure all aspects of African American life were included.
Similarly, the Brice House will focus on its inhabitants, not period furnishings, when it reopens in 2026. The imposing home, with views of the neighboring Paca garden, is being renovated from its shingled roof down to mortar made with oyster shells. It’s possible because Brice, who was also a tobacco planter and mayor of Annapolis, recorded every detail of the construction (which almost bankrupted him) in leather-bound ledgers that miraculously survived.
Many visitors appreciate the new approach. One morning this spring, 38-year-old Mallorie Parker revisited the Paca House, where she worked as a summer intern 20 years ago. She remembered the furniture but was pleased to learn more about people like Bett and Sall.
“I found it enlightening to think about everyone who lived and worked here,” she said. “It adds a lot more substance and context.”
"The enslaved people here were mothers, they were aunts, they were children…Who better to portray it than someone who looks like them?”—Nannetta Hall. Photograph by Stephen Buchanan
Walking through the streets of Annapolis, Bishop Coates breathes in “the same odor from the clay bricks, the trees around” that he remembers from his boyhood. He had to relearn history after growing up with “the beautiful Founding Fathers’ story” that made no mention of slavery.
Now 57 and a bishop, Coates sees his hometown still struggling with its past. Sometimes, he stops at the Kunta Kinte memorial and wonders if it has become just a place to eat ice cream. “At night,” he said, “I soak up a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. The tourism part can negate this.”
At the Paca House, Hall wants to make sure the next generation understands. It’s almost a spiritual calling. At times, as she greets school groups in the low-ceilinged kitchen, she can sense Sarah’s presence. So, she invokes a once-lost life, reduced to a half-sentence in a will, to make sure she portrays Sarah “with pride and dignity.”
“You have to know where you came from,” she said, “to know where you are now—and where you are going.”
JoAnna Daemmrich is an award-winning journalist who worked for 17 years at the Baltimore Sun and now writes freelance articles for local and national publications. She has lived for 30 years in Annapolis, where she also creates publicity for nonprofits, edits book proposals, and volunteers as a literacy tutor.
