NOTTINGHAM, Md. — James Harvey is caretaker of Dowden Chapel, trustee of the former Methodist church in Nottingham that once sheltered enslaved people seeking freedom, including his own family members.
WATCH: Hidden piece of Maryland's Underground Railroad get renewed attention
Now local officials want to preserve it for future generations.
“We’ve kept this so low key for so long, and just to meet some of the delegates and some of the senators, it’s really special,” James says.
James led a powerful tour of the grounds, starting with the cemetery where generations of his family, as far back as the early 1800s, are laid to rest.
“There are different plots around the church for different families,” he says. “And to my luck, my family’s plot was right here, right in this area. This is my great-grandfather, Henry America Conway. Henry was born in 1812.”
The chapel, built in the 1860s, and its original contents have been preserved.
It’s believed to be a stop on the Underground Railroad, as enslaved people fled up Route 1 to Pennsylvania.
“That was one of the trails for runaway slaves. If you go out here to the end of the lot, you can see Belair Road. The rumor was that right under the pulpit was an area where slaves could hide.”
It was also a schoolhouse during the Jim Crow era. James and his siblings attended school here before helping integrate Perry Hall Elementary School in 1957.
Now in their seventies, the Harveys want to pass the legacy on to the next generation.
And that’s how State Sen. Carl Jackson, whose district this is, got involved.
“To know that it’s been here all these years and a lot of people don’t know about it,” he says. “I figured that this was a great way to help get the word out and to help get some support as well, financial and academic.”
Jackson invited state and county officials, archivists, preservationists, and historians from Morgan State University, hoping to get support for this landmark.
“Learning about how the family came together to protect this site for generations, the deep history of the site and how it’s put together by both free and enslaved generations,” says Nicholas Redding, president and CEO of Preservation Maryland. “There’s just so much rich material here that deserves to be preserved.”
Meanwhile, James and his family are planning their annual service that they hold in Dowden Chapel every October with other families whose roots start here.
