Stitched together

CENTREVILLE — On July 6, the Queen Anne’s County Historical Society will host an “Old-Fashioned Independence Day Picnic” at Wright’s Chance, 119 S. Commerce Street in Centreville. The event will feature s’mores by the fire pit, music by the Chesapeake Bay Community Band, and an opportunity to learn and celebrate the success of Bryan’s United Methodist Church to preserve a significant piece of Queen Anne’s County history.

Chris Pupke, former Queen Anne’s Historical Society President, and Kay Brown, Grasonville resident and member of Bryan’s United Methodist Church will share church history and good news about the grant awarded to the church by the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture and the Maryland Historical Trust’s African American Heritage Preservation Program.

For Pupke and Brown, this work grew from their desire to share the story of local United States Colored Troops and African American history in Queen Anne’s County. Pupke pored through records of the National Archives, particularly for USCT muster roles and military records. He contacted Drew University’s National Methodist Archives and History Center, the Maryland State Archives, and Delaware’s Barrett’s Chapel. His research led to more than one dated cornerstone, to 200-year-old hand-hewn beams, and “a tantalizing clue” from a document that Pupke has yet to find. The historical hint dates the church back to 1800; the land was given to the congregation by the Bryan family, large landowners with holdings that stretched from the location of Bryan’s Church over to the Wye River.

From its beginning, Bryan’s United Methodist Church has been a focal point of service and community activism. The community hall made the church a place of worship and community gathering. The church was home to a chapter of the Order of The Galilean Fisherman, a mutual aid society based in Baltimore that provided health benefits and funeral costs when insurance was unavailable to African Americans. In 1866, the congregation established a school later replaced by a Rosenwald School.

For Brown, the mission began after meeting Pupke. “After I heard the history of my church and learned of the USCT soldiers, I took a walk in what is practically my backyard. And there they were. I wanted to get the word out to the larger community,” she recalled. With no experience, she undertook the challenge with Pupke’s assistance. “I was just turning 50 and it was the first time I’d ever written a grant,” Brown said, recalling the questions that needed answers and the forms to be filled out. “It was a labor of love and I’m honored to have done it. I still get goosebumps when I think about it. I stand on the shoulders of very strong women — my mother, Barbara Brown who attended the March on Washington; my grandmother Geneva Brown, who was NAACP secretary, and the late Bertha Emory, my godmother and principal of Grasonville Elementary School.”

But Pupke and Brown want more historical recognition for the African American citizens of Queen Anne’s County. “There is no official recognition of our history,” Brown insists. To her point, Pupke notes that out of the County’s 29 state historical markers, only one mentions African Americans in any capacity. “It’s a marker that praises the action of an enslaver who manumitted a number of the enslaved. He deserves some praise for his actions to be sure, but that should not be the only reference to African-American history in Queen Anne’s County.”

Brown and Pupke’s work is part of an ongoing effort to bring to the fore a history that should no longer be hidden or ignored. “History can weave us together when it’s done at its best,” he believes. “I hope we can put a stitch in the history of Queen Anne’s County that will weave us together.