In western Maryland, two African American cemeteries are witnesses to history was posted by Anne Raines, Capital Grants and Loans Program Administrator, on the Maryland Historical Trust’s blog
Laboring Sons Memorial Ground
Just up the hill from the main street of Sharpsburg is a modest one-room board and batten structure, neatly painted white and crowned by a small bell tower, standing watch over a small and well-tended cemetery.
About 20 miles away, in the center of the city of Frederick, a quiet acre serves as the final resting place of over 1,500 individuals, commemorated by a prominent granite marker.
The sites, as different as they may seem, serve as significant monuments to the African American experience in western Maryland.
First, the Sharpsburg story. In 1865 a circuit preacher for the black Methodist Episcopal Church, a former Virginia slave named John R. Tolson, founded a mission church in Sharpsburg, a stone’s throw from the site of the Battle of Antietam. A small congregation of African Americans joined hands in 1867 to build a house of worship they called Tolson’s Chapel. The one-room log structure took on added importance a year later when it also became a school. The teacher was provided first by the Freedmen’s Bureau and later by Washington County; around 1900 a dedicated school for African American children was constructed nearby. More
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