National Park Service Validates Undergraduate Research

TThe previously hidden Underground Railroad history of a 200-year-old house in Chestertown, Maryland, has been revealed by students and staff at the Washington College Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. This spring, the National Park Service validated the research by adding the structure—known as the Isaac Mason Escape Site—to its National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. 

On the night after Christmas in 1846, a young man named William Thompson fled after years of abuse by the Mansfield family, which had enslaved him since the age of 15. Assisted by a network of Black “conductors” on the Underground Railroad, he escaped first to Pennsylvania, then to Massachusetts, where he changed his name to Isaac Mason to avoid recapture. Under that name, he published his 1893 memoir, Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave, vividly recounting his ordeal. It is among the most detailed firsthand accounts of slavery in 19th-century Maryland. The College acquired a first edition of the book and is currently restoring it.

Mason’s story was already known to historians, but the exact location of his enslavement and escape had been lost. Delving into early land deeds, wills, and newspapers — as well as unearthing telltale clues in Mason’s own memoir — Washington College’s research team pinpointed 101 Spring Avenue in Chestertown as the Mansfield home from which Mason fled. Their work was complicated by the fact that the house had been moved down the street from its original location in the 1890s to the current property.

Many old houses in Maryland and elsewhere have oral traditions of Underground Railroad connections, but relatively few can be definitively documented. The Under-ground Railroad Network to Freedom was established in 1998 to find verifiable histories among the many rumors and legends. Park Service historians carefully reviewed an evidence dossier assembled by Washington College students and staff before granting their seal of approval. 

“Students at the Starr Center have been investigating this mystery for a long time,” said Adam Goodheart, the Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director, who compiled the students’ research into the Park Service submission. “Nearly 20 years ago, one of our undergraduates identified the site as a possible location of Mason’s escape. Later, another student found important papers in the State Archives documenting his enslavement. But now, our team’s hard work and ingenuity have resulted in a major new historical landmark on Chestertown’s map.”   

—Christine Sinatra