BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Bethesda -- Josiah Henson Special Park

MD -- Bethesda -- Josiah Henson Special Park:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. HENSON_121104_013.JPG: Project in Progress: Josiah Henson Special Park: Plans are underway to convert this site into a park and museum, honoring Josiah Henson who was enslaved on this plantation in the early 19th century. His memoir, published after he escaped to Canada on the Underground Railroad, was a key source for Harriet Beecher Stowe's seminal novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
2. HENSON_121104_190.JPG: Josiah Henson 1789-1883 A slave until 1830, abolitionist, author, preacher, and the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
3. HENSON_121104_198.JPG: Isaac Riley Property, 1863: Map illustrating the subdivision of Isaac Riley's land, as defined by a [sic] 1863 equity suit. Identified are portions of land (272 acres) divided among four of Riley's children following his death. The Riley house is indicated by the letter "A" within the red circle.
4. HENSON_121104_202.JPG: Approximation of Riley Land, c 1863 (272 acres) 2008 Aerial Photography Shown here is an outline of the Riley property in 1863. The Josiah Henson Park is indicated by the red circle.
5. HENSON_121104_226.JPG: Isaac Riley Farm, circa 1919
6. HENSON_121104_245.JPG: "And then we went to my old home. ... Long before we reached the house where my old master used to live, I saw that it was indeed another land from that of my boyhood. "The once great plantation is now but a wilderness; the most desolate, demoralised place one can imagine. ... and.. the house, I saw it standing there all alone, without a single barn or stable or shed to bear it company, and it was such a dilapidated condition..." -- Excerpt taken from An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson ("Uncle Tom") from 1789 to 1881
7. HENSON_121104_288.JPG: They did core samples to determine the age of the cabin and found that it had been built in 1850, well after Josiah Henson left.
8. HENSON_121104_334.JPG: Upstairs in the main house
9. HENSON_121104_374.JPG: Josiah Henson Historic Site: Self-guided Tour: Welcome to the Josiah Henson Historic Site, purchased in 2006 by the Montgomery County Department of Parks. The site is also known as the Issac Riley Farm, or as it was formerly called "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The Josiah Henson Site honors the man whose life story is our focal point. The former Isaac Riley house contains both an 1800-1815 framed structure and a log structure that dates to 1850-1851. The framed structure was associated with a 260+ acre plantation where tobacco, potatoes, barley, and corn were grown by over 20 enslaved African Americans. This framed structure, renovated in the 1930s, would have been called the "big house," or the master's house of a plantation during Henson's life. The Josiah Henson Site has international significance because of its association with Rev. Josiah Henson who, while enslaved, lived and worked here for most of the years between 1795 and 1830. Henson escaped to freedom in Canada in 1830 and wrote his autobiography in 1849. His autobiography became the basis for the heroic qualities of the fictional character, "Uncle Tom," in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852. Her novel catapulted the abolitionist cause onto center stage, furthering the divide over slavery that propelled the nation to civil war. Abraham Lincoln recognized the significance of the book; when he met Stowe after the Civil War had begun, he supposedly said: "So you are the little lady that wrote the book that started this great war." Stowe identified Henson as a critical source for her novel in the book, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1853. Without Henson's life story, Harriet Beecher Stowe could not have imagined the lives she wrote about. [Enter the study] While we do not know the function of this room during Henson's day, we know that during the early 1900s it was the study of Samuel Veirs Mace, the husband of a Riley descendant. The window opposite the living room doorway used to be a door that led to a small covered porch. From that door and prch, one would exit the house and walk outside to the log structure, which was a kitchen in the early 1900s. That kitchen has been recalled quite clearly in an oral history interview with a 96-year old Riley family descendant. The image shows the log structure on the right. We see that this was a very simple house, typical of early small plantations.
10. HENSON_121104_644.JPG: Picture of the cabin interior that appears on the street sign. This is before they ripped up the floor for archeological work.
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Wikipedia Description: Josiah Henson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josiah Henson (June 15, 1789 – May 5, 1883) was an author, abolitionist, and minister. Born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Ontario, Canada, in 1830, and founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden in Kent County. At the time of his arrival, Ontario was known as the Province of Upper Canada (U.C.), becoming the Province of Canada in 1841, then Ontario in 1867, all within Henson's lifetime there. Henson's autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), is widely believed to have inspired the character of the fugitive slave, George Harris, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), who returned to Kentucky for his wife and escaped across the Ohio River, eventually to Canada. Following the success of Stowe's novel, Henson issued an expanded version of his memoir in 1858, Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (published Boston: John P. Jewett & Company, 1858). Interest in his life continued, and nearly two decades later, his life story was updated and published as Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (1876).

Early life and career:
Provincial plaque placed by the Government of Ontario memorializing Henson's Dawn Settlement near Dresden, Ontario. Henson's settlement offered former slaves escaped from the U.S. the chance to start a new life free from slavery and the badges and incidents of slavery in Upper Canada.

Josiah Henson was born on a farm near Port Tobacco in Charles County, Maryland. When he was a boy, his father was punished for standing up to a slave owner, receiving one hundred lashes and having his right ear nailed to the whipping-post, and then cut off. His father was later sold to someone in Alabama. Following his family's master's death, young Josiah was separated from his mother, ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (MD -- Bethesda -- Josiah Henson Special Park) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2021_MD_Henson: MD -- Bethesda -- Josiah Henson Special Park (367 photos from 2021)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [History 1800s (excl wars)] [Park (Local)]
2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA), a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean, another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else.. Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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