Riversdale House Museum Works to Honor Enslaved People's Hidden Histories

Adam Francis Plummer kept a secret diary at Riversdale for 64 years, from 1841 to 1905, recording what life looked like from inside the Riverdale Park plantation after being secretly taught to read and write by a minister. For most of the museum's recorded history, he was the only one of approximately 55 enslaved workers at the estate that staff could identify by name.

That is beginning to change. The diary, long believed lost, resurfaced in 2001 when Lucille Betty Tompkins-Davis, a descendant of Plummer's brother-in-law, located it and deeded it to the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. Paired with a 1927 memoir by Plummer's daughter Nellie Arnold Plummer, "Out of the Depths or Triumph of the Cross," the documents gave researchers at the Prince George's County Historical Society Library and the Maryland State Archives their first real foundation for reconstructing enslaved life at Riversdale.

Still, one family was never enough. At the time owners George and Rosalie Stier Calvert were married, 77 individuals were enslaved across their properties. Most left no record the historical archive chose to preserve.

Closing that gap has become the defining mission at Riversdale under Executive Director Maya Davis, who joined the museum in March 2021. Davis has launched overlapping efforts: genealogical research tracing enslaved individuals to current Prince George's County residents, revised exhibits and tour content, and a partnership with Reparations 4 Slavery to connect descendants to their history.

A key source of new material arrived in 2012, when Calvert family descendants loaned thousands of documents to the museum. Account books, letters, and receipts from Charles Benedict Calvert's ownership period, spanning 1839 to 1864, have added concrete detail about the plantation's labor force. Charles Benedict, the second son of George and Rosalie, was also instrumental in founding what is now the University of Maryland College Park and in establishing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, institutions shaped in part by the labor of the people his family enslaved.

Genealogist Nathania Branch Miles, a University of Maryland alumna, has joined the research at Riversdale, building individual profiles from scattered documentary fragments. "One of the most important things I learned as a genealogist is being able to put meat on the bones," Branch Miles said, "making this person real." Few paper records of enslaved people survived, she has noted, making each recovered name a genuine historical recovery rather than a routine archival search.

The museum has carried this work into public ceremony. At the annual Echoes of the Enslaved commemoration, Rev. Dr. Tamara E. Wilson, chair of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, read aloud the names of more than 50 people identified as having been enslaved at Riversdale. For many in attendance, it was the first time those names had been spoken in any public gathering.

On the grounds, an Enslaved Laborers Garden now features plants traditionally grown by African Americans enslaved in Maryland. Tours have been redesigned to move visitors through the steep, narrow service staircases where enslaved workers passed unseen between the mansion's formal halls and its working spaces, presenting those corridors as evidence of a system built on concealment.

Anyone with family connections to Prince George's County's plantation history can contact Riversdale House Museum in Riverdale Park directly to contribute genealogical records, oral histories, or family documents. The museum also offers public tours and holds the annual Echoes of the Enslaved commemoration each September. It is both a National Historic Landmark and part of the National Park Service Network to Freedom.