A long-forgotten cemetery

Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as Baltimore’s first nondenominational cemetery for African Americans. The location chosen was Belle Air Avenue (now Belair Road), on a hill long used as a burial ground for free and enslaved servants of local landowners. Laurel quickly became a popular place of burial for people across Black Baltimore’s socioeconomic spectrum, including the graves of 230 Black Civil War veterans, members of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.). After its creation, Laurel Cemetery was known as one of the most beautiful and prominent African American cemeteries in the city.

Serving as the commemorative center for the African American community in the late 1800’s, annual parades and Memorial Day gatherings to honor and decorate the graves of the Black Civil War veterans occurred regularly at Laurel Cemetery, which was also the resting place of many prominent members of Baltimore’s African American population. Historical records show that in 1894, Frederick Douglass traveled to Laurel Cemetery to speak on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument honoring Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, who served as the sixth Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopalian (A.M.E.) church, and was a founder and former president of Wilberforce University.

The decline of Laurel Cemetery started in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1911, the remains of the Civil War veterans were removed and reinterred at Loudon Park National Cemetery to accommodate the expansion of Belair Road. In 1920, Elmley Avenue was created and row houses were built along the newly constructed street on the southern boundary of the Cemetery. In 1930, a portion of the grounds were sold for the construction of a gas station, and the offices of the Laurel Cemetery Company were moved offsite. This highly contested sale drove a wedge between the private owners of the cemetery and the deed holding descendants of the interred.

By the 1930s the site had become overgrown and garbage-strewn, and the owners of the cemetery failed to uphold their duties in maintaining the property. In May of 1948, members of the Belair Edison Improvement Association called for the demolition of Laurel Cemetery, which declared bankruptcy in 1952. Legislation passed in 1957 by Maryland Lawmakers provided the legal justification for the sole shareholder of the now defunct Laurel Cemetery Company to sell the land to the McKamer Realty Company for $100 in 1958.

Although the McKamer Realty Company was founded for the express purpose of purchasing the cemetery by two employees of the Baltimore Law Department, an internal review by the Mayor’s office found no evidence for a conflict of interest and the sale went through, netting thousands of dollars in profits for the owners upon selling the rezoned property. A series of lawsuits seeking justice for the disenfranchised descendants failed to prevail in the courts and thus, after being in existence for 106 years, Laurel Cemetery was leveled. Some the remains of those buried at Laurel were sent to cemeteries in Arbutus in Baltimore County and an estimated 350 remains were reburied at the new Laurel Cemetery in Carroll County. Unfortunately, this new site has also not been maintained.

In February of 1962, the former site of Laurel Cemetery became the new location of Two Guys Department Store. Today it is the site of the Belair-Edison Crossing Shopping Center, and home to several businesses. The Shopping Center is a heavily traveled and highly valued local establishment – most recently sold to a Florida based-business in 2014. However, many current patrons and nearby residents have no knowledge of the site’s former purpose and significance.

Belair Road & Elmley Ave, Baltimore, MD 21213

The Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) was established in 1853. Formal education for blind people in the U.S. and western Europe was still a relatively recent invention. In 1765, Henry Dannett established the first school with this mission in Liverpool, England. The first school in the United States to follow this model was the New England Asylum for the Blind, now known as the Perkins School For the Blind, established in March 1829.

In Maryland, the new school was established thanks to the efforts of David E. Loughery, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, and Washington County native Benjamin F. Newcomer, a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. Together, they were able to generate enough interest in creating a school for the blind that the Maryland General Assembly incorporated the school in 1853. David Loughery was appointed the school’s first superintendent.

Frederick Douglas Morrison, a national leader in his profession, began his forty-year tenure as superintendent in 1864. He had a lasting impact on the school for several reasons. He was instrumental in the founding of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind; he moved the campus to North Avenue in 1868; and officially changed the name to The Maryland School for the Blind. He also founded The Maryland School for the Colored Blind and Deaf in 1872 and served as the superintendent of both schools. The practice of segregated education for black blind and deaf students continued up until 1956.

John Frances Bledsoe became superintendent in 1906 and two years later relocated the school in 1908 to the present campus in northeast Baltimore. During his thirty-seven years at the helm of the school, Dr. Bledsoe oversaw its expansion and professionalization. It was during this period when the school began its residential program with the construction of four cottages and Newcomer Hall. The latter was named for Benjamin F. Newcomer who was one of the founders of the school and who served on the board of directors for over forty years.

3501 Taylor Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21236

A Controversial Obelisk on Harford Road

The Columbus Monument is a forty-four foot tall brick and cement obelisk standing in a small park at Harford Road and Walther Boulevard. The monument to Christopher Columbus was erected by French consul, Charles Francis Adrian le Paulmier Chevalier d'Anmour, in 1792, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival to the Americas.

After discovering that the newly created United States had no monuments dedicated to Columbus, the Chevalier decided to erect a monument to commemorate the Italian explorer and colonizer. The base of the monument was incised with the words “Sacred to the memory of Chris. Columbus, Octob. XII, MDCCVIIIC.” The work was unveiled on August 3, 1792, to honor the date the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria set sail from Palos, Spain then more formally dedicated two months later on October 12th. It remained the only monument dedicated to Columbus in America for another sixty years.

225 years later, in the middle of the night in late August 2017, a small group of unnamed protestors smashed a sledgehammer into the base of the obelisk breaking the incised stone panels. The event was recorded and shared on YouTube on August 21, 2017. Coming less than a week after protestors poured paint over the Key Monument on Eutaw Place, the video explained that “tearing down monuments” is linked to “tearing down systems” that maintain white supremacy.

Historians, activists, and indigenous people in North and South America have long rejected efforts to honor Columbus as a national hero. As early as 1977, participants in a UN-sponsored conference on discrimination against indigenous peoples in the Americas discussed replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. A statue of Christopher Columbus statue outside Union Station in Washington, DC splashed with red paint in an act of protest back in 1991.

In Baltimore, the controversy was perhaps more unexpected. Perhaps because the monument was located on private property—Villa Belmont, located at the present-day intersection of Harford Road and North Avenue—it was half-forgotten more than once. In the 1880s, a local historian felt compelled to debunk a popular rumor that the obelisk memorialized a horse named “Columbus” instead of the man. When the monument was relocated to Harford Road in 1963 it was replaced by an expanded Sears Roebuck Company parking lot.

Soon after the monument moved to northeast Baltimore, the city’s Columbus Day Parade (an annual tradition since the erection of the 1892 Columbus Monument in Druid Hill Park) followed. But the parade moved again in 1977 first to East Baltimore and then to the Inner Harbor after a third monument to Christopher Columbus was erected on Eastern Avenue near Little Italy in 1984. Even if the parade has moved on, however, the complicated legacy of the monument and the commemoration of Christopher Columbus remains.

Parkside Drive and Harford Road, Baltimore, MD

A Long-Forgotten Burial Ground in Clifton Park

St. Vincent Cemetery opened in 1853 on a 5-acre parcel located on the country estate of philanthropist Johns Hopkins, which was then located just outside of Baltimore City in today's Clifton Park. Parishioners at St. Vincent De Paul Church had previously used the St. James Cemetery on Harford Road which closed and sold to the city that same year. The church moved all of the bodies interred at St. James to the new St. Vincent Cemetery. In 1940, St. Vincent de Paul Church stopped selling burial plots on the grounds but continued to bury anyone who already held a deed. In the 1950s and 1960s, the cemetery suffered from neglect and repeated vandalism. In 1982, the cemetery closed and many of the grave markers were destroyed or removed in an intentional effort to discourage any attempt to disturb the bodies interred. Left in disarray for thirty years, the graves nearly disappeared under thick weeds and five tons of trash and illegally dumped debris. Fortunately, since 2010, the volunteer-led Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery have been slowly restoring this historic site. Genealogist and volunteer archivist Joyce Erway began compiling research on the cemetery as she investigated her own family tree in the 1990s. Over two decades, she helped to expand the list of known burials at St. Vincent from just 450 to over 4,000 people. Among these known burials is Peter Storm, a local coppersmith who was born on January 22, 1762 and died on November 4, 1842. Storm participated in the battle of Yorktown in 1781 and in the defense of the city against the British attack in 1814. Peter Storm's funeral was held at St. Vincent de Paul Church, and he was initially buried in St. James Cemetery and reinterred at the northeast Baltimore location in 1853.

Watch on this cemetery!

2301 N. Rose Street, Baltimore MD 21213

Access to the cemetery is provided by the driveway for the Clifton Park Maintenance Building (the "Old Pony Barn" at 2401 N. Rose Street).

Immanuel Lutheran Church purchased a six-acre farm on Grindon Lane near Harford Road in 1874 for the purpose of a cemetery. This area, known as Lauraville, was a sparsely populated community of farming families. The church, which served a mostly German congregation, was located at the time on Caroline Street and is now at Loch Raven Boulevard and Belvedere Avenue.

The purchase of the cemetery was financed by selling $5 shares to the members of the congregation. These shares were redeemable, either in cash or in burial lots. The majority of the members took advantage of the latter offer.

A chapel was built in 1882 and a home for the caretaker was added in 1890. The chapel is still used for funerals, Easter Services, and other events. The caretaker’s home is now a private residence.

The cemetery became the final resting place for a few notable Baltimoreans, such as Johnny Neun, a local Major League baseball player, and John J. Thompson, a Civil War veteran who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service during that conflict.

2809 Grindon Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21214

The Old Hamilton Branch Library at 3006 Hamilton Avenue is a historic branch library building constructed in 1920 to serve the community of Hamilton in the developing Harford Road corridor of northeast Baltimore. The library remained at this location through 1959 when a new Hamilton Branch Library building opened on Harford Road.

Designed by Baltimore architect Theodore W. Pietsch and built by Baltimore contractor R.B. Mason on a property donated through the organized efforts of the Woman's Club of Hamilton and the Hamilton Improvement Association, the Old Hamilton Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library is a handsome example of the work of an accomplished Beaux Arts architect and an enduring legacy of the enterprising efforts of civic and social organizations in promoting community development and civic life of northeast Baltimore during the early twentieth century. In addition, the Old Hamilton Library is distinguished as one of a collection of libraries in Baltimore and across the nation built from the late 1900s through the 1920s with support from Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

In May 1917, the Woman’s Club of Hamilton and Ms. E.W.H. Scott, a library organizer with the Maryland Public Library Association established a “library organization” with the goal of building a free public library in Hamilton. They combined their efforts with the Hamilton Improvement Association to raise funds and purchase a lot for the library at the northwest corner of Hamilton.

The building remained in use as a library for nearly three decades, providing books to patrons and serving as a social center for the broader community with exhibits from local painters and evening movie screenings. By the late 1940s, however, the growing number of library patrons living in northeast Baltimore made it difficult for the small building to keep up. After more years of efforts by local residents, construction began on a new library building designed by architects Cochran, Stephenson and Wing on April 2, 1957. In 1959, a new Hamilton Branch Library opened on Harford Road at Glenmore. The original building passed into use as commercial office building and remained occupied in this use by a variety of tenants through the early 2000s. 91ĘÓƵ worked with the Hamilton-Lauraville Main Street program to list the building on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

3006 Hamilton Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21214

Baltimore's Oldest Cemetery

Contained on a little less than three acres across from Clifton Park in northeast Baltimore, the Friends Burial Ground tells the stories of generations Baltimore's Quaker families across their 300 years of rich history in our city. Established in 1713 on a tract of land known as Darley Hall when the Friendship Meetinghouse was built on what is today Harford Road, the cemetery has been in continuous use ever since.

While small, and a bit unassuming, the Friends Burial Ground has approximately 1,800 graves with the earliest legible marker dating from 1802 and, without a doubt, many date from the 1700s. The stone wall around the grounds and the Sexton's House both date back to the 1860s and, in 1926, 122 graves were moved from a Friends cemetery at the Aisquith Street Meeting House in Old Town.

The many notable interments include Louisa Swain, who made history in Wyoming on September 6, 1870 as the first woman to vote in a general election in the United States at age 69, and Dr. Thomas Edmondson who lived in a grand estate that eventually became Harlem Park in West Baltimore. Dr. Edmondson recently resurfaced in the public light as his collection of Richard Caton Woodville’s artwork was exhibited at the Walters Art Museum.

2506 Harford Road, Baltimore, MD 21218

Henry Thompson was born in 1774 in Sheffield, England and came to Baltimore in 1794, where he became a member of the Baltimore Light Dragoons. He was elected captain of this company in 1809, six years after completing a house called "Clifton" in what is now Clifton Park in Baltimore City but back then was Baltimore County. By 1813, Captain Thompson had disbanded the Light Dragoons and formed a mounted company called The First Baltimore Horse Artillery. Brigadier General John Stricker soon enlisted Captain Thompson and his horsemen to act as mounted messengers traveling between Washington and Bladensburg to report on the movements of British troops and ships. The unit also became the personal guard to General Samuel Smith, who commanded the defenses during the Battle of Baltimore and Ft. McHenry in 1814. Henry Thompson contributed much to Baltimore in addition to his War of 1812 service. In 1816, he built and was president of the Baltimore and Harford Turnpike Company, now Harford Road. In 1818, he served on the Poppleton Commission that laid out the street grid in Baltimore that we have today. He was also a director of the Port Deposit Railroad, The Bank of Baltimore, the Merchant's exchange, the Board of Trade, the Baltimore Insurance Company, and, to boot, he was the recording secretary of the Maryland Agricultural Society. Later in life he served as a marshal at the dedication ceremonies of the Washington Monument and Battle Monument, and Grand Marshal of a procession commemorating the death of General Lafayette in 1834. As for Clifton Mansion, Thompson owned the property until 1835. During that time, he hosted a number of notables that include Maryland Governor Charles Ridgely of Hampton, Alexander Brown (considered America's first investment banker), Henry Clay (who early in his political career was a chief agitator for declaring war on Britain in 1812), and General Winfield Scott (who commanded forces in 1812 and later masterminded the Union's military strategy in the Civil War). In 1835, Thompson sold Clifton to a gentleman named Daniel Cobb. Thompson died shortly after, in 1837, and Cobb went broke. After failing to make his mortgage payments, Thompson's heirs reclaimed Clifton. The heirs soon sold the house and grounds to a prosperous and up and coming Baltimore merchant looking for a fine summer estate. That, of course, was Johns Hopkins, and a story for another day.

Watch our on Clifton Mansion!

2701 St. Lo Drive, Baltimore, MD 21213