FREDERICK COUNTY, Md. — When the colonists needed firepower to take on the British, one place they turned to was the Catoctin Furnace at the base of Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
“We not only made cannon balls and shells that were used in the siege of Yorktown, we know realize and know from historical records that we made cannon so our part in the revolution is huge,” said Elizabeth Comer, president of the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society.
WATCH: Built on the backs of slaves
Overlooked for centuries was the work of skilled slaves who performed the labor, buried in a wayward cemetery.
It appeared time had erased any memory of the cemetery until the late 1970s when the state was preparing to do some highway work and brought archaeologists in to make sure they didn’t cover up anything of significance.
The first two places where they broke ground, they discovered human remains and ultimately, they found evidence of 35 graves.
27 more have since been detected and DNA testing led to one direct descendant, Agnes Summers Jackson, living in Antietam.
“My tie is with a four year old little girl that was buried in the cemetery,” Summers Jackson told us.
A nameless child who was a half-sister or first cousin to Agnes’ great, great, great grandfather who labored as a highly-skilled iron worker.
The Catoctin Furnace Historical Society has secured the grant money to buy the two-acre site bordering Cunningham Falls State Park, which it plans to ultimately deed to the state, guaranteeing the future of the hallowed grounds long forgotten.
“Slavery—-people back then, they never thought too much highly of us,” said Sharon Green, one of Summers Jackson’s daughters, “and now, to think that now we play a significant part, that is really amazing how we’re tied in, and now that we’re going to get this land that we can finally put them in the proper resting place is really great.”
