Saint Frances Academy is a Catholic high school in Baltimore City founded in the mid-nineteenth century by Elizabeth Lange and the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first Catholic order made up of women of African American descent. From its…

Benjamin Banneker was born a free African American on November 9th, 1731, in Baltimore County, Maryland. Banneker was a Maryland tobacco farmer and later became a mathematician and astronomer. He was the only son of Robert Bannaky and Mary Bannaky,…

The Spring Grove Cottage for “Colored Women” is believed to be the first mental hospital built specifically to house African American psychiatric patients in the state of Maryland. This two-story historic building was first created in March of…

According to Baltimore County historian, Louis S. Diggs, Baltimore County has 31 historically African American churches, both active and inactive, of which Mount Gilboa African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest. The famous black historic…

Howard Cooper was an African American resident in Towson, Maryland, who was accused of the assault, rape, and attempted murder of Kate Gray, a sixteen-year-old white girl, on April 2nd, 1885. According to the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project,…

Sara Amy Leach, senior historian at the National Cemetery Administration, found that Reddy Gray, who also went by Redmond, Redman, or Reverdy, was born in 1843 to Lydia and John Talbott Gray in Baltimore County. He was enslaved by Thomas Cradock…

Caleb Dorsey, Jr., commonly known as the ironmaster, established the Elkridge Furnace in 1751, on a 16-acre plot of land in the Patapsco River Valley, as well as other related holdings such as Dorsey’s Forge. According to Hilton Heritage by Bayly…

Like many Baltimore County plantations in the mid-19th century, the grounds of the Hilton estate were well acquainted with the sound of beating horse hooves. In 1842, future U.S. Fourth District Court Judge, John Glenn, bought Hilton to raise…

"Hilton," the present-day site of the Community College of Baltimore County, Catonsville, was previously known as “Taylor’s Forest.” The land was identified as “Taylor’s Forest” by a merchant named Thomas Taylor.  The  “Forest” was an…

"It's phenomenal that it's right here...it's too bad it isn't a little more well-known," Mia Woods, a 39-year-old social worker, noted in a 2011 Baltimore Sun article on the Emmart-Pierpont Safe House, a landmark of…