Archeology dig may uncover nation's eariest free African-American settlement

[Rowdyboy]

http://www.montereyherald.com/lifestyle/ci_23780001/archaeology-dig-may-uncover-nations-earliest-free-african

In Easton, Md., an untold story of free African-Americans is being discovered through bits of glass, shards of pottery and oyster shells.

Piece by piece, archaeologists and historians from two universities and the community are uncovering the history of The Hill, which they believe is the earliest settlement of free African-Americans in the United States, dating to 1790.

Former slaves founded such settlements, where they enjoyed early emancipation and the chance at property ownership and commerce. Slaves who had bought their freedom and others freed by Methodists and Quakers on the Eastern Shore likely formed The Hill, which historians say could have been the largest community of free blacks in the Chesapeake region.

During the first census in 1790, some 410 free African-Americans were recorded living on The Hill — more than Baltimore's 250 free African-Americans and even more than the 346 slaves who lived at nearby Wye House Plantation, where abolitionist Frederick Douglass was enslaved as a child.