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Above: A small chapel near the granite tablet in Monocacy Cemetery was the meeting place for the E.V. White Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy until it folded in 1947. Above the lectern hung a sign: “Lest We Forget.” This photo was taken in August 2006; all Confederate artifacts have since been removed. Right: The memorial tablet remains, but is now covered by plywood painted gray.
Though there hadn’t been an organized slave revolt in the county, one originating in Charles County in 1845 ultimately reached Montgomery. The runaways—armed with pistols, scythe blades, bludgeons, swords, knives and clubs—were bound for the free state of Pennsylvania. They marched six abreast up today’s Route 355. Two miles south of Gaithersburg, they were confronted by a local militia, the Montgomery Volunteers, and a posse of citizens enlisted by Sheriff Daniel Hayes Candler, who lived in Rockville with his wife and five slaves. The insurrectionists fought back. A report in the Rockville Register reprinted in full on the front page of The Baltimore Sun on July 12, 1845,
blared “GREAT EXCITEMENT. Runaway Slaves.” The report said “these daring negroes” numbered 40, though there were rumors of nearly 200. In the confrontation, 10 were severely wounded. A large number escaped and were never recaptured. The rest—31, according to the newspaper—were led away in chains to the Rockville jail before being sold out of state by their owners. “This is the most daring movement which has ever come under our observation,” the Maryland Journal said. “We have heard of gangs of negroes travelling through parts of the country sparsely inhabited, but never before have we heard of their taking to the public road in open day, within 2 miles of a County town.”
PHOTOS BY EUGENE L. MEYER
ing the Piedmont soil inhospitable to tobacco, grew wheat and other grains, but they continued to depend on slaves to sustain their way of life. Poolesville was second in importance only to Rockville, 17 miles distant. It was the center of the Medley Election District, named for a Seneca tavern owner whose establishment was used as a polling place, and it contained some of the county’s largest plantations. In Rockville, then as now the county seat, Charles M. Price was a slave trader who worried about runaway slaves and slave rebellions. Price placed an ad in the pro-slavery Montgomery Sentinel on Dec. 8, 1855, for Anna Maria Weems, “about 15 years of age; a bright mulatto; some small freckles on her face; slender person, thick suit of hair, inclined to be sandy,” offering $500, nearly $20,000 in today’s dollars, for her return. Aided by Boston transplant Jacob Bigelow, a lawyer for the Washington Gas Light Co., she would successfully escape, eventually to Canada. Another Sentinel ad announced: “Public Sales Four Negroes, 1 man 19 years old, 1 boy 12, 1 girl 13, 1 woman 50—all slaves for life. Five head of horses, 2 cows, 15 head of hogs, sow and shoats.” And yet another Sentinel ad offered “very highest cash prices for negroes that are young and likely.” Hoping to incite a slave rebellion, in October 1859 John Brown staged his daring, if unsuccessful raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. In response, Price was among those with officer rank in a militia newly formed “for the protection of their homes and firesides, in these times of excitement.” At a Poolesville meeting, citizens resolved “that in view of the warlike attitude taken by the North against the South, we pledge our allegiance to the South in support of our constitutional rights, and that all we have of force and means shall be devoted, when required, to protect and defend Southern rights against the aggression of the North.”
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