Tubman’s Legacy on the Eastern Shore

THE PROBLEM

This Eastern Shore historic church with connections to Harriet Tubman’s in-laws is located on the Eastern Shore. While it no longer has an active congregation, there is a dedicated group of volunteers looking for a way to find new purpose for the church connected to the Harriet Tubman byway.

HISTORY & SIGNIFICANCE

The landscape of Peter’s Neck, now part of Madison, remains basically unchanged since the days when Harriet Tubman traversed it. The Church is surrounded by woodlands on White Marsh Road. The trees conceal footpaths utilized by members of the black community to travel unmolested between Peter’s Neck and points East, such as the Thompson
Plantation and Saint Paul’s United Methodist Church, a twin building and African American settlement. The Corsey Creek runs through the area to the north and the White Marsh Creek to the south.

Malone’s Church is helps build a better understanding of the black experience in Dorchester County. It is one of the last remaining physical vestiges of a community that persevered in the face of slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, and Jim Crow. The building and site provide a record of the many lives that helped develop the industry, economy and spirituality of Dorchester County in the 19th century. By the 1830’s approximately 40 free families lived in this immediate area, the great majority having intermarried with dozens more enslaved families held in bondage by the local white landowners. By the 1850’s, nearly two-dozen free families owned land here.

Directly behind the church is the cemetery, which features the graves of many of Harriet Tubman’s family members, including her nephew and in-laws, and several civil war veterans. Descendants of this community are still laying their loved ones to rest there today.