Maryland plantation turned state park aims to stop the ‘erosion’ of Black history

For years, Emmett Dashiell felt he didn’t know his history. The 73-year-old, who grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said his ancestry was shrouded in mystery.

That was until earlier this year when the Maryland Park Service invited him to revisit the farmland he grew up near, and he discovered he’s likely a descendant of people who were enslaved on a sprawling plantation along Wetipquin Creek.

Now, the plantation house and more than 400 acres around it will soon become Wetipquin Creek State Park, the first public state park in Wicomico County after the Maryland Department of Natural Resources bought it for $3.3 million earlier this year. Its addition means that every county in the state has at least one state park.

The state purchased the historic Long Hill house property so a significant piece of Maryland’s Black history wouldn’t be lost or erased amid a federal campaign to remove references to slavery, civil rights and Indigenous rights from museums and public spaces. Last year, the National Park Service removed an image and reference to Harriet Tubman from its Underground Railroad webpage. After a national outcry, the service restored it. The same happened after the service removed a slavery exhibit from Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Angela Crenshaw, director of the Maryland Park Service, said she has zero interest in erasing Black history. Instead, she wants the state to do the opposite.

“They need to know that tough people came before us and blazed these trails for us to walk so we better walk with our heads held high,” she said.

Piecing together a plantation’s past

Much of what is already known about Long Hill was conserved by Donald Graham, a previous owner and descendant of the Dashiells who lived in the home during its Colonial period and used the property as a private family retreat.

The Grahams spent millions preserving and documenting its past, including creating a conservation easement with the Department of Natural Resources for it in 2016. He continues to contribute $1 million toward its maintenance annually.

Crenshaw began digging into the history of Long Hill and the people enslaved on the property after she became acting director of the park service in 2023. She and her team have been piecing together the property’s past from interviews with descendants, and with archives and artifacts.

An archaeologist with the department is working to excavate parts of the property, but shell middens discovered around the creek show that Native Americans inhabited the land from 1600 B.C. to 1250 B.C. Several tribes, including the Pocomoke Indian Nation and Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians, maintain a relationship with the land as descendants of two Nanticoke villages that encountered English explorer John Smith in the 1600s.

Other shreds of evidence suggest connections to the American Revolution, but most illuminate what life on the plantation was like circa 1810, when it was owned by the Stuarts and Dashiells, who enslaved about 21 Black families on the land.

Fragments of those disparate lives remain, all indicative of a life in which white owners used slaves to farm, cook meals, prepare beds and care for children.

Markings of what were once slave quarters were found behind the home. A parlor room window has the name “Elizabeth Stuart” carved into it, likely etched with a diamond ring. A framed list of the property’s owners over the years hangs in the kitchen.

For Emmett Dashiell, every tidbit unlocks another piece of his ancestry.

“My history is what just got preserved. What little bit of it there is, I still don’t know anything about it,” Dashiell said. “The fact that they put it in a conservatorship ... it also stops the further erosion of my history.”

The quest to know more

Growing up around Wetipquin in the ’50s and ’60s, Dashiell knew there were places he couldn’t go. The waterfront at Sandy Hill. The town carnival. Segregation prohibited it, and the signs were clear: No Blacks allowed, whites only.

Those same restrictions barred Dashiell from visiting the Long Hill house owned by a white family at the end of a tree-lined road neighboring his family’s farm on Wetipquin Creek.

Don’t walk near it. Don’t even think about stepping inside, Dashiell recalled knowing as a boy.

But as curious children do, he tested his luck. Sneaking around the woods around the house, he discovered a makeshift cemetery by the creek. There, engraved on concrete headstones, he saw his last name attached to those of strangers.

That was the first glimpse Dashiell had of his family’s potential connection to slavery, which he hopes to learn more about after being invited to share his insight on the property’s transformation into a state park.

At an event in July, he finally stepped into the Long Hill house. He met a whole other line of relatives and shared his hopes for preservation with the state parks service.

“It should be known that it was a slave plantation,” Dashiell said. “And the life of the slaves should be as much in the forefront as is the history of the Grahams and their descendants.”

A brighter future for Wetipquin Creek

While Crenshaw is adamant about ensuring that this history is told in full, she also envisions a brighter future for the land in its iteration as a state park.

The area boasts vast natural beauty: soaring eagles, wild turkeys and a variety of bird species that can all be observed from wooded trails and a winding creek. Crenshaw hopes to make that and the plantation accessible to the public in 2027.

Crenshaw said they will make room for parking, activities on the creek and restrooms, but otherwise look to keep the land as it is. Development on the property will be limited, and harvestable farmland adjacent to the plantation house has been returned to the community, including a wad of acres that is leased to Dashiell.

The parks service plans on seeking public input and hopes for the park to be mostly passive use, with some fishing, birding, painting, camping and kayaking along the creek. Crenshaw also hopes to offer educational programs and tours exploring the region’s history.

“Telling the history of America and how that came about on the Delmarva Peninsula in Wicomico County is what we’re hoping to share with folks,” Crenshaw said. “I just want people to be able to experience these places and see these things.”