Incredible Untold Stories of Everyday Life

The African American Experience in Rural Maryland, Virginia, and eastern West Virginia, 1865-1900

Portrait of Jennie Dean

Manassas Museum System, Manassas, Virginia

In the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, newly freed African Americans faced monumental challenges to establish their own households, farm their own lands, establish community institutions and churches, and to pursue equal justice under the law in a period of racist violence. While the lives of African Americans in urban areas during this time period have been well studied, much less time has been focused on the experience of rural African Americans.
In a new NPS report, "They Have Erected a Neat Little Church," The Rural African American Experience, 1865–1900, in the National Capital Area historian Edith Wallace presents the story of the extraordinary accomplishments of rural African Americans to build seemingly ordinary lives so soon after the Civil War and emancipation. This Special History Study includes case studies of the experiences of African Americans on and near lands that became Manassas National Battlefield Park (VA), Antietam National Battlefield (MD), and Prince William Forest Park (VA).

Community Case Studies:

• Batestown and Hickory Ridge, Virginia, near and within today’s Prince William Forest Park
• Liberty Street, Manassas, Virginia, near Manassas National Battlefield Park
• Sharpsburg, Maryland, near Antietam National Battlefield
• Red Hill, Maryland, near Antietam National Battlefield

View the Report

“They Have Erected a Neat Little Church:" A Special History Study of the Rural African American Experience, 1865–1900, in the National Capital Area

View Report

An important function of the “Odd Fellowship” was to help families with the cost of burials. Here, two unknown Sharpsburg, Maryland men are dressed in Odd Fellows attire.

Sharpsburg Museum of History

These case studies provide a treasure trove of primary source information about who lived in these communities and the institutions they built. The report also includes related tables of household-level census records (Appendix D) describing the names and ages of families and other residents, and their occupations, literacy levels, and property ownership. Historic maps and photographs, lists of communities and Odd Fellows halls, and many photographs of buildings that survive today are also included.

These sources and their historical context can be a valuable starting point for deeper dives into individual biographies, family histories, and even potential genealogies for descendant communities. The next step for researchers and interpreters is to bring individual stories to life out of these broader community histories.The NPS report describes how, faced with the disillusionment of the Reconstruction years, the segregation and hostilities of the Jim Crow era, and the hardships of the Depression, rural African Americans turned to family, church, and community to survive. Many found employment as laborers on neighboring farms, some turned to sharecropping, and a very few owned land.

To make ends meet, farmsteaders in Batestown and Hickory Ridge combined the work of raising gardens and animals or cutting trees with “out work.” Between 1889 until it closed in 1920, this included mining at the Cabin Branch Pyrite Mine. Here, a group of black laborers at the mine's company store.

NPS, Prince William Forest Park

Others worked in major industries of the region, held jobs in the towns, and as servants in white homes. Individual people profiled include:

• Hillary Watson of Sharpsburg, MD who remained a farm laborer his entire life,
• James Robinson of Manassas, VA who owned land and had a relatively prosperous farm
• Jennie Dean, who attended a Freedmen’s Bureau school in Manassas, VA and founded thriving churches and later established the Manassas Industrial School.

About the Report:

“They Have Erected a Neat Little Church:" Special History Study of Rural African American Experience, 1865-1900, in the National Capital Area by Edith B. Wallace. Produced by National Park Service and the Organization of American Historians.

Jennie Dean, Education Advocate in Manassas, Virginia

If you devoted all your efforts to meeting one of your community’s needs, which would you choose?
For Jennie Dean, the answer was education, and her impact grew over the decades from her family to the larger African American community of Manassas. Just a year after the Civil War, at fourteen years old, Dean left her newly emancipated parents’ home in Virginia to work as a servant in Washington, DC. She saved enough money to buy her family’s farm and help at least one of her sisters complete her education. This generosity and care for others extended to her community when she moved back home to Prince William County, Virginia, in the 1880s. A persistent activist, she taught Sunday school and vocational classes, helped establish churches, and eventually became determined to found the county’s first secondary school for African American students near today’s Manassas National Battlefield Park. Her multi-year fundraising campaign led to the establishment of the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth, which opened in 1893. Dean remained involved in school leadership until her death 20 years later.

A bird’s eye view of the Manassas Industrial School from a 1904 pamphlet. Founded in 1893, it was the county’s first secondary school for African American students and sat near today’s Manassas National Battlefield Park.

Hathi Trust Digital Library