PAGE 4 March 16, 2016 Times-Record David Fike Dustin Holt Editor Joy Ferrio Abby Andrews Advertising Executive Staff Writer David Insley Sports Editor Our History The Denton Journal May 1845 to May 1965 Caroline Sun March 15, 1902 to Feb. 28, 1959 Federalsburg Times July 26, 1929 to July 27, 1983 County Record: May 22, 1952 to July 27, 1983 Times-Record Aug. 3, 1983 to present ABOUT THE TIMES-RECORD LETTERS POLICY USING YOUR TIMES-RECORD Newspaper phone: 410-479-1800 For news tips or to place display advertisem*nts. E-mail: Fax: 410-479-3174 Classified and legal ads: 410-479-1800 Circulation: 410-479-1800 To subscribe and renew The Times-Record To report a missing paper. Times-Record readers may submit news releases about community events of interest to Caroline County residents.
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The mailing address is 212 Market Street, Denton, MD. 21629 The sites tell the story of escaping slavery and reaching freedom, said Diane Miller, program manager for the National Park Service, and are all connected by the Network to Freedom. The National Park Service has printed a brochure mapping the sites, available in the Denton town office. have some of the truly significant Underground Railroad said Caroline County Office of Tourism Director Kathy Mackel. Mackel said Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and William Still might be the most famous figures from the area, but there are plenty more lesser known stories that are just as compelling.
Three of those stories were told at the plaque unveilings March 10. The first plaque, on the town office building, marks the site of a large celebration that was held when the Caroline County sheriff brought home a local boy, Richard Potter, who had been kidnapped into slavery. J.O.K. Walsh, president of the Caroline County Historical Society, said Potter is one of the few people from his era about which a lot is known, because he wrote a book, several copies of which still exist today. Walsh said Potter was the 11-year-old son of two former slaves who lived in Denton in 1853.
father was a blacksmith, but his parents did not want Potter to be a blacksmith, too. So they arranged an indentured apprenticeship for him on a farm in Greensboro. While Potter, who was born free, was living and working on the Greensboro farm, he was kidnapped by a gang from Seaford, who intended to sell him to a slave trader who would take him farther south to be sold into slavery. Walsh said a gang member was supposed to meet up with a slave trader on the Chesapeake Bay to hand off Potter, but he got struck by lightning. The other gang members had to hide Potter in Delaware, where it was a crime to kidnap free black people, until they could arrange another meeting.
To conceal Potter in plain sight, they dressed him as a girl and called him Susan, Walsh said. Meanwhile, Walsh said, family and the Caroline County sheriff were searching for him. They stopped by the known house several times, but every time, Potter was either forced to hide in a chest under a pile of blankets or under the covers of a bed, counting on the searchers to be too polite to force the woman to pull back the covers. Walsh said eventually the gang members decided it was becoming too much of a risk trying to hide Potter until he could be sold, and Potter overheard one say he was going to kill Potter and bury him. Potter escaped and ran to a house, who hid him in a shed and contacted the Caroline County sheriff.
Walsh said the sheriff brought Potter home to Denton, bringing him to the brick hotel that stood where the town offices are located now. The whole town came to the site to celebrate safe return. Potter wrote about his kidnapping and escape in a book that was published four times in the years leading up to the Civil War, Walsh said. Walsh said Potter became a blacksmith like his father after all, before moving to Baltimore, where he later became a minister. Denton home still stands on Fourth Street, Walsh said, though it has been added onto many times over the years.
The second plaque, on the center on the courthouse green, acknowledges the trial and imprisonment of two men who helped slaves escape. Their stories were told by Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, who has written a biography on Tubman and is a consultant for the National Park Service. Larson said the first story related to the courthouse green site is that of Isaac Gibson, a free black man who lived in Caroline County. In 1849, Gibson helped a slave named John Stokes try to flee but was caught.
Gibson was tried and convicted at the courthouse that previously stood at the site and served more than three years in jail. The second story was that of Hugh Hazlett, an Irish immigrant, who in July 1858 was caught between Henderson and Templeville, leading a group of seven slaves he had helped escape from Dorchester County, where he also lived. Larson said Hazlett and the seven escaped slaves were held in the jail that once stood on the Denton courthouse green, before they were put on a steamboat back to Cambridge. By the late 1850s, Larson said, Dorchester County slaveholders were angry about how many slaves were fleeing, and a mob had formed at Long Wharf to meet Hazlett. The local sheriff worried the mob would lynch Hazlett, so he ordered it to turn around and drop off Hazlett somewhere else along the Choptank River, perhaps Secretary or East New Market, Larson said.
Hazlett then was jailed in Cambridge. He managed to escape, but he was arrested again in East New Market. Larson said he was tried and convicted in November 1858 and sentenced to nearly 45 years in prison, an unusually long sentence, most likely because it was suspected he had helped many more slaves escape before he was caught. Hazlett stayed in jail until Maryland passed its own Emancipation Act in 1866 and what he had done was no longer considered a crime. Larson said it is unknown what happened to him after he was released.
SITES From Page 1 Photo A ANDREWS From left, Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, Harriet Tubman scholar and National Park Service consultant; Diane Miller, program director for the National Park Underground Railroad Network to Freedom; Kathy Mackel, director of the Caroline County Office of Tourism; and J.O.K. Walsh, president of the Caroline County Historical Society, unveil the second of two plaques designating new sites along the Network to Freedom, Thursday, March 10, in Denton. DENTON Friday Nites in Caroline presents a free performance of the smooth jazz and blues sounds of Charles Woods and the Rahmat Shabazz Band at 7 p.m. Friday, March 18, at the Caroline County Public Library in Denton.
2016 marks the year beginning Charles Rahmat of Birds Tour. Based on his solo instrumental CD release Language of (Rahmat Shabazz 2014), the tour will entail expanded ensemble arrangements inspired by original recordings and exciting renditions of Jazz classics composed by notables such as Thelo- nius Monk, John Coltrane, Don Cherry, Jim Pepper and Grover Washington. The music, grounded in jazz and blues, visits a broad spectrum of genres from swing to Latin to new age, and offers the listener an entertaining artistic journey. Band members include Charles Rahmat Woods on flutes, saxophones, hand percussion, Joseph Wilson in keyboard and piano, Jeron White on acoustic bass and Roger Stewart on drums. For more information, contact the library at 410479-1343 or org.
Friday Nites in Caroline is presented by the Caroline County Council of Arts and the Caroline County Public Library; is sponsored by Tri Gas Oil, Best Western Denton Inn, Eastern Shore Regional Library, Maryland State Arts Council and is free for all attendees. Friday Nites in Caroline March 18 concert by Rahmat Shabazz Band RI ED The Rahmat Shabazz Band includes Charles Rahmat Woods on flutes, saxophones, hand percussion, Joseph Wilson in keyboard and piano, Jeron White on acoustic bass and Roger Stewart on drums..
