The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation

Abstract

In the decades leading to the Civil War, Maryland's Southern proclivities and sympathies were strongest in the rural Eastern Shore, where some of the oldest and wealthiest families owned plantations fueled by slavery. In The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation, Lucy Maddox details everyday life, individual biographies, and the interpersonal relationships on Rose Hill, an Upper South plantation on Sassafras Neck, through the 1840s. Maddox's study is unusual because it benefits from a woman's diary. Few such diaries remain from antebellum-era, midsize, mixed-farming plantations in a “middle state” like Maryland. As a result, The People of Rose Hill contributes an important and significant place-based perspective on a turbulent era in the nation's history.Maddox first establishes the poignancy of the antebellum era by casting forward to discuss the Emancipation Proclamation, the border states, and the Civil War. She then turns back in time to establish the history, setting, and characters of Rose Hill. The people enslaved to Thomas Forman, the owner of Rose Hill, lived during a critical historical moment “in which men like Forman acted on their belief that the future prospects of the country required a continuation not only of their energy, their skills, their legitimate desire to improve the lives of Americans, but also of the slave culture they had done so much to shape” (5). The people enslaved at Rose Hill, and those who interacted with them, of course, shouldered the implementation of Forman's ethos. The main characters include Forman (Revolutionary War hero, businessman, cad), Martha Ogle (reluctant bride, disappointed wife, attentive household manager), hired overseers and servants, and enslaved persons. Martha's diary is a treasure: her record of everyday life, in combination with family records and letters and archival records, aids in developing biographical portraits of real people who would otherwise be lost to history. Maddox reads between the lines in order to glean people's attitudes and interpersonal relationships, which is useful for understanding the motivations and strategies for behaviors and events discussed by Martha. In addition, Maddox addresses gaps in historical knowledge about Rose Hill by exploring broader practices through comparative material from other Eastern Shore plantations in Maryland.By recording daily activities and perceptions, Martha inadvertently insured that the people enslaved at Rose Hill would not be forgotten. Maddox draws on Martha's diary to reconstruct as much as she can about each enslaved person, especially their family relationships and where and when they worked at the plantation. Martha notes summoning doctors to attend to difficult births or ailing people, the talent of some individuals for certain tasks, and the ongoing laborious work facing her and the people she supervised. These provide a sense of what a day, a season, or a year was like at Rose Hill. There are also portraits of men, women, and children. For example, Martha described Rachel Allen Antigua in glowing terms, a “perfect” servant whom she moved from the fields into the house. She performed precisely as Martha wished and was adored for it. But the enslaved, however favored, were also their own people. Samuel Gilmore, a favorite of Thomas's who was trained to manage horses and accompanied him to races, executed a “French exit,” and despite Martha's belief that he would return, he never did.Maddox's study complements current literature that aims to restore agency to enslaved people. Closing the introduction, Maddox notes that “in spite of our best efforts . . . no matter how intensely we may examine an enslaved life, when we are done, we can still only wonder how close we have managed to come to the truth” (21). The critical irony, however, is that the source material makes it impossible not to return to Thomas and Martha as reference points. I was thus surprised that Maddox drew from the history, but not the archaeology, of Wye Plantation and related sites, which has added considerable primary source information about the lives of enslaved people. I also wondered about the integrity of the plantation home and its potential to yield information about life at Rose Hill. Maddox notes, however, that the plantation house has been remodeled several times and is now a private home. Since Rose Hill is not a museum, its story would be inaccessible to the public without Maddox's study. As a result, in The People of Rose Hill, Maddox provides not only an academic contribution but a public service in writing an accessible, fascinating study about real people living in challenging times.