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.
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, brothers and sisters, when he was sold as property in an estate sale. After his mother pleaded with her new owner Isaac Riley, Riley agreed to buy back Henson so she could at least have her youngest child with her; on condition he would work in the fields. Riley would not regret his decision for Henson rose in his owners' esteem, and was eventually entrusted as the supervisor of his master's farm, located in Montgomery County, Maryland (in what is now North Bethesda). He tried to buy his freedom by giving his master $450 which he had saved up over the years, only to find that it had been deceitfully increased to $1350.

Cheated of his money, he escaped to Kent County, U.C., in 1830, after learning he might be sold again. There he founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, Canada West. Henson crossed into Upper Canada via the Niagara River, with his wife Nancy and their four children. Ontario had become a refuge for slaves from the United States after 1793, when Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed "An Act to prevent further introduction of Slaves, and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province". The legislation did not immediately end slavery in the colony, but it did prevent the importation of slaves, meaning that any U.S. slave who set foot in what would eventually become Ontario, was free. By the time Henson arrived, others had already made Ontario home, including Black Loyalists from the American Revolution, and refugees from the War of 1812.

Henson first worked farms near Fort Erie, then Waterloo, moving with friends to Colchester by 1834 to set up a Black settlement on rented land. Through contacts and financial assistance there, he was able to purchase 200 acres (0.81 km2) in Dawn Township, in next-door Kent County, to realize his vision of a self-sufficient community. The Dawn Settlement eventually prospered, reaching a population of 500 at its height, and exporting black walnut lumber to the United States and Britain. Henson purchased an additional 200 acres (0.81 km2) next to the Settlement, where his family lived. Henson also became an active Methodist preacher, and spoke as an abolitionist on routes between Tennessee and Ontario. He also served in the Canadian army as a military officer, having led a Black militia unit in the Rebellion of 1837. Though many residents of the Dawn Settlement returned to the United States after slavery was abolished there, Henson and his wife continued to live in Dawn for the rest of their lives. Henson died at the age of 93 in Dresden, on May 5. 1883.

Works

The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849)
Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (1858)
Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (1876)

Miscellaneous:

Josiah Henson is the first black man to be featured on a Canadian stamp. He was also recognized by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada in 1999 as a National Historic Person. A federal plaque to him is located in the Henson family cemetery, next to Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site.

Sites

The 'Josiah Henson' cabin in Maryland

The actual cabin in which Josiah Henson and other slaves were housed no longer exists. The Riley family house, however, remains and is currently in a residential development in Montgomery County, Maryland. After having remained in the hands of private owners for nearly two centuries, on January 6, 2006, the Montgomery Planning Board agreed to purchase the property and the acre of land on which it stands for $1,000,000. The house was opened to the public for one weekend in 2006. As of March 2009, the site has received an additional $50,000 from the Maryland state Board of Public Works for the planning and design phase of a multiyear restoration project. An additional $100,000 may come from the Federal government that would go towards restoration and planning. The site is planned to be opened permanently to the public in 2012, until then there are guided tours four times a year.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site

Located near Dresden, Ontario, in Canada, Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site includes the cabin that was home to Josiah Henson during much of his time in the area, from 1841 until his death in 1883. The five-acre complex includes Henson's cabin, an interpretive center about Henson and the Dawn settlement, an exhibit gallery about the Underground Railroad, outbuildings, a 19th-century historic house, a cemetery and a gift shop.
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