Over the last year, the Land and Labor Acknowledgement Task Force has presented information on the history of slavery on our land and RRUUC land ownership. This blog provides an overview of human history in our area, from the first native peoples, through the Piscataway Confederacy, the Friendship land grant, the Nailor farm, and the founding of RRUUC. We include conjecture on what may have happened in our area. The area we address starts broadly with the Potomac Valley and narrows to our current property as we get closer to the present.
Before 900 CE “Foraging” 1
900 – 1300 “Foraging with Farming” 1
1300 – 1600 “Farming with Foraging” 1
1600 – 1700 “Colonists Displace Indigenous People” 1, 2
1700 – 1800 “Colonial Tobacco Economy”3
1800 – 1880 “Slavery on our Land”3, 4, 5
1880 – 1961 “Suburban Expansion” 6
1961 – Present “RRUUC”7
Primary References:
- Nature and History in the Potomac Country, James D. Rice, published by Johns Hopkins Press, 2009
- www.Piscatawayconoytribe.com/history retrieved October 2022
- https://mchdr.montgomeryhistory.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12366/287/mcs_v057_n2_2014_cooling_mcguckian.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Emancipation in Montgomery County, Maryland, Eileen McGuckian, Montgomery History Association, 1995
- Early land maps from Library of Congress
- http://slavery2.msa.maryland.gov/pages/Search.aspx Maryland State Archives website that provides search capability on people enslaved by named slave owners
- Land records from www.MDLANDREC.net
- https://www.rruuc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RRUC-40th-anniv-history.pdf History of RRUUC. Joan Zenzen, 1999