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Resolution on Racial Justice
As individuals, we commit to a new level of engagement, to continually seek ways to use our voices, our privilege, our standing in the community to effect change.
As a congregation, we commit to turning a new page. We declare the obvious—that Black lives matter to our beloved community. We affirm the need for powerful words and collective action, both to call out injustice and to call in love.

RRUUC Land and Labor Acknowledgment
We acknowledge that the land on which we worship is the traditional land of the Nacotchtank and Piscataway people and the land through which other Indigenous Peoples traveled. We acknowledge that enslaved African people and their descendants likely labored and lived on this land. We recognize these and other people displaced, enslaved, or harmed by past injustices.

We pledge that we will follow our faith in love and work to make our congregation and our larger community more accessible, inclusive, and equitable. We pledge that we will be good stewards of the land by encouraging healthy ecosystems. We pledge to remember the past while building a more just and welcoming future for all.

Home » Land Acknowledgement » History of our Land – An Overview

History of our Land – An Overview

December 18, 2022 • Joseph Saliunas

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