Remembering Ancestors: The Middle Passage in Oxford, Maryland

Remembering Ancestors: The Middle Passage in Oxford, Maryland. Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project. , Oxford is a documented Middle Passage port on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. As a major maritime tobacco sea port during the colonial period, there were four Transatlantic ships and twenty-five Intra-American voyages that delivered captive Africans to Oxford and local plantations. The Two Sisters were the first Middle Passage ship to arrive in Oxford on August 29, 1763. Talbot County’s Jeremiah Banning captained the ship, leaving a diary with vivid accounts of his journey to Senegal where he met the King and transported his court to the island of Gorée. The last known documented Middle Passage ship docked on August 11, 1772. The last Intra-American ship, The Experiment, whose owners were from the Eastern Shore and among America’s founding families, arrived on July 4, 1772. , Over the centuries, these enslaved Africans and their descendants made possible the agricultural and maritime commercial development of the region, with special emphasis on the oyster and ship-building industries. It remained a shipping and seafood center predominated by black watermen until the 20th century. Ancestors of many of Maryland’s founding black families first touched the North American mainland here. , Born in Oxford, Maryland, in 1910, Morgan State University Professor Water Edward Turpin was a person of color with deep roots on the Eastern Shore. In his final novel, The Rootless (1957), he shares vivid images of Middle Passage disembarkations handed down through oral histories. , The Water’s Edge Museum seeks to empower the young people of today to find their place in history and identify their own positive and unique voice when facing contemporary issues and challenges. Our mission is to celebrate how people of color on the Eastern Shore lived and how their lives mattered.