Hollywood, MD – The quiet now at Historic Sotterley, broken only by the sounds of wildlife inhabiting its trails and workers tending its grounds, speaks to the St. Mary’s landmark’s legacy of endurance.
“Survival. It is there,” Nancy Easterling, Sotterley’s executive director, said earlier this month of the 94-acre former plantation property along the Patuxent River, where the visitor center, slave cabin and most of the rest of its 20 structures presently are closed amid a worldwide pandemic.
“You can hear the echoes of the past,” she said. “We’re going to use those echoes of the past to continue connecting visitors to our shared history.”
Sotterley’s 300-year history and a contemporary awareness of its past entwine to spur a focus on racial equity, at a place where enslaved people toiled until the late 19th Century, and a purpose of food equity, using those same fields to ensure that people throughout the county can receive healthy food.
With the current pandemic’s continuing toll on health and wealth, a visit to Sotterley to explore its grounds can encourage a stronger faith in the future.
“There’s a connection to the past,” Easterling said. “We’ll get through this.”
Sotterley’s ongoing recognition of its direct role in slavery in this country, dating back to colonial times, has included a nationally broadcast interview almost a quarter-century ago with John Hanson Briscoe and Agnes Callum, about his family’s former stewardship of the plantation and her ancestors’ life there in involuntary servitude. Most recently, Sotterley was recognized in early 2019 for its research on the subject by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Slave Route Project, particularly Sotterley’s role as a Middle Passage arrival location.
In pursuing a candid assessment of Sotterley’s participation in that period of American history, efforts continue to reach out to more of the descendants of people who were enslaved at the plantation, to include their viewpoint in a continuing conversation.
“This isn’t about finger-pointing,” Easterling said. “It’s about understanding a perspective other than your own.”
Among the members of Sotterley’s “descendant community,” Martin Callum of Baltimore serves on Sotterley’s Board of Trustees, just as his mother, Agnes Callum, did for more than 10 years before her death in 2015. “I promised her I would get on the board,” he said. “Trying to keep history alive is great.”
During the current pandemic, infected people generally receive medical care and a diagnosis. That was not the case when slaves became ill.
“They suffered. They didn’t have these [care responses] at that time,” Callum said. “I can only imagine when they got sick, from any kind of diseases.”
Learning about the realities of shared history is the first critical step needed to better understand the world today, and the next step is bringing people together to have honest conversations. Despite the current pandemic, Sotterley is exploring ways to continue its Common Ground initiative, now in its third year, which is focused on acknowledgment and dialogues that can lead to understanding and healing. The organization is committed to not only continuing this impactful initiative, but to even broadening its reach by finding ways to bring programming into a virtual arena.
At the same time that Sotterley was working to expand its interpretation, programming and exhibits during the past decade, seven years ago Sotterley decided to expand its mission in an unexpected way – to use its land to help address food inequities in the local community. Sotterley’s Growing for Good program has been able to generate 60,000 pounds of produce over the past six years from the property’s fields and the donated use of other lands, for donation to local food pantries and direct aid to families. This year, social distancing prevented Sotterley’s volunteers from helping to plant potatoes, but Joe Goldsmith, Sotterley’s farm and facilities manager, said there will be five acres of potatoes to harvest this year, plus a variety of squash and peppers.
The more than five miles of trails at Sotterley continue to offer visitors the opportunity to experience its beauty, and to walk around its buildings.
“It’s a beautiful time at Sotterley,” Goldsmith said, adding that “there’s plenty of space. There’s plenty of room.”
“There’s a box at the visitors’ center where they can pay the grounds fee,” he said.
Sotterley pursues its mission mostly through donations from members and other supporters, without state or county financial support, and so far this year, without the usual revenue from special events or fundraisers. A one-time payment from the federal government’s paycheck protection program allowed Sotterley’s part-time workers to return to their job, but Easterling said Sotterley is much like the many small businesses that have been upended by the pandemic, and much about the future remains uncertain.
“We are continuing to move forward through all of this. We can’t stop what we’re doing, because it’s too important,” she said. “It’s about serving our community, and building a better one.”
For more information, contact Easterling at execdirector@sotterley.org. Donations to Historic Sotterley can be made online at www.sotterley.org, or mailed to Historic Sotterley Inc., P.O. Box 67, Hollywood, MD 20636.
