Project Run-A-Way & Master Docent Series

Project Run-A-Way to Open the 20th Annual Master Docent Series Workshops


PROJECT RUN-A-WAY Project Run-A-Way Logo

Maryland Gazette, 1798 Oct 11:
Forty Dollars Reward.
Ran away from the subscriber, living near Frederick-town, in Frederick county, a negro woman slave named Candis, supposed to be carried away by a negro man who goes by the name of William Stewart, who has a pass with him certifying that he and his wife, by the name of Elizabeth, are free, but his said wife Elizabeth is left behind in Frederick county; the negro slave Candis is a pretty lusty full faced wench, about five feet five inches high; had on and took with her a coarse muslin gown of a yellowish colour, dyed with arronetta, also a green petticoat of Joan's spinning, a new coarse felt hat, jacket and petticoat of Bath coating, and other cloaths unknown to me, and it is supposed she will pass with said fellow as his wife, by the name of Elizabeth, as free under the said pass; the said fellow William is about six feet high, a likely well made fellow, talks fast when spoken to; his cloathing was a half worn blue broad cloth coat, osnabrig shirt and trousers, half worn wool hat, with tinsel band and buckle on said hat, his other cloaths unknown; they stole and carried off with them a roan mare, about twelve years old, (said fellow says he is a carpenter). Whoever takes up and secures said wench, so that I get her again, shall receive if ten miles from home ten dollars, if twenty miles twenty dollars, if thirty miles thirty dollars, and if out of the state the above reward, including what the law allows, paid by

James Crow Cheney.

N.B  I will give a generous reward for apprehending and securing said fellow, so that he be brought to justice.

J. C. C.

Frederick county, October 6, 1798.

Learn more about Candis and others like her when Project Run-A-Way premiers on February 18, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Jack B. Kussmaul Theater at Frederick Community College. The program, the culmination of an expansive research project undertaken by Historic Annapolis Foundation, is the keynote program for the annual Master Docent Series workshops, presented annually by the Frederick Historic Sites Consortium.  The event is free to the public and all ages are invited. Reservations are not necessary, but early arrival is recommended.

Over the past year, historians have been studying the thousands of runaway advertisements for slaves, indentures and convict servants, such as the above ad for a runaway named Candis from Frederick.  Take advantage of the opportunity to learn about these servants, during a dynamic, interactive, multi-media theatrical production that will bring runaways to "life."  As the characters, dressed just as the advertisements describe, enter the stage you will be swept up in dramatic and compelling stories of real people who ran away from slavery and servitude.  Project Run-A-Way will enlighten and entertain audience members while dispelling myths about "typical runaways" and celebrating the progress and triumph of liberty in America.

Following the theatrical performance, a panel of scholars will be on hand to answer audience questions and offer additional information on the history of resistance to institutionalized bondage in colonial America and the young United States. A reception in the theater lobby will be offered immediately afterwards.

Project Run-A-Way will be presented three more times, at different locations across Maryland.  The additional venues are February 19 in Easton, February 25 in Cheverly and February 27 in Annapolis.  For details on these performances, visit www.annapolis.org or call 410-267-7619.

Project Run-A-Way opens the twentieth annual Master Docent Series workshops, which continue at the Frederick Community College Conference Center on February 19 with a variety of history and museum-related topics.  While Project Run-A-Way is free of charge, registration and a participation fee of $35 (including Saturday lunch) are required for those who would like to attend the entire series.

Workshop brochures with registration forms are available at the Visitor Center, 19 East Church Street, Frederick, Maryland.  They may also be downloaded from the Frederick Historic Sites Consortium website, www.fredericktourism.org. Early registration is requested, but registrations at the door will be accepted on a space available basis. Questions about the Master Docent Series may be directed to Elizabeth Scott Shatto, Consortium Coordinator, at (301) 600-4042.

Project Run-A-Way is made possible through the support of Historic Annapolis Foundation, Maryland Humanities Council, Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, Maryland Historical Trust, Arts Council of Anne Arundel County, and the Harley W. Howell Charitable Foundation.  The Master Docent Series is presented by the Frederick Historic Sites Consortium and co-sponsored by the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies. Support is provided by the Tourism Council of Frederick County, Inc.  Frederick County is located in Maryland's Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area and the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area.

Historic Annapolis Foundation’s Project Run-A-Way living history production:

  • will engage the public in exploring the history of enslaved, indentured, and convict servant laborers in the Chesapeake region from a new, very personal perspective.
  • will bring to life on stage the compelling stories of real people who ran away from slavery or servitude from the 1720s to the 1860s.
  • will dramatize the changing nature of slavery and servitude over time.
  • will relate the history of resistance to institutionalized bondage in colonial America and the young United States.
  • will entertain and enlighten audience members while dispelling myths about “typical runaways” and celebrating the progress and triumph of liberty in America.

Project Run-A-Way living history characters in development include thefollowing people:

  • The earliest known runaway advertisement in the Maryland Gazette described a cooper named Stephen, who ran away from Charles Carroll of Annapolis in December 1728.  Stephen was suspected of stealing a horse from another city resident and of receiving aid from the slaves on a Prince George’s County plantation.
  • A woman named Bridget Castilo appealed to those she encountered in 1745 with a hard-luck tale of her old life in England and her overwork as an indentured servant in Virginia.  But something about her sympathetic story just didn’t ring true — was she really the person she claimed to be, or perhaps someone else entirely?
  • In 1750s Maryland, where most convict servants from Great Britain were white and most blacks were enslaved for life, Joseph Marriott was an anomaly:  he was a black convict servant from London who could expect to earn his freedom after working a set number of years.  But life as a convict servant could be just as hard as that of a slave, and Marriott ran away from servitude soon after he arrived in the colony.
  • Jack was about 30 years old when he and three other slaves escaped from a farm along the Potomac River in 1761.  Jack was from Africa, but unlike two younger men who ran with him, he had lived in Virginia long enough to know the lay of the land and to speak English well—qualities that could help the group succeed in their bid for freedom.
  • Irish indentured servant Oliver Stephens paid for his passage to America by selling his labor for a term of years.  In 1771 he worked at Mary Howard’s Coffee-House in Annapolis as a musician and waiter.  Despite Mrs. Howard’s “mild and even genteel Treatment” of him, Stephens ran away twice within his first nine months in Maryland.
  • In 1798, Candis ran away from her master in Frederick County with the aid of a free black man named William Stewart and a stolen horse.  Did Stewart help Candis with the knowledge of his wife Elizabeth, or was he leaving her behind for another woman?
  • As a young man, Nace Butler had run away from slavery even while his petition for freedom was pending in a Maryland court.  Although his legal status as a free man was eventually confirmed, there was always the danger that he could be detained under suspicion of being a runaway slave.  In 1804, the older, more temperate Butler took steps to ensure that his wife and children could live as free people along with him.
  • Three months after the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812, twenty or thirty slaves from Annapolis and the surrounding area slipped away to the HMS Menelaus anchored nearby, and teenager William “Rolla” Ross was among them.  But he still wasn’t safe—his master’s son boarded the British warship under a flag of truce granted by Maryland’s governor to seek the return of Ross.
  • In 1844, James Watkins escaped from slavery in Baltimore County and made his way north through Philadelphia and New York, eventually reaching Hartford, Connecticut, where he married a free woman and finally felt safe.  Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act shattered that sense of security and spurred him to leave America for England, where he published his personal story and spoke out against the evils of slavery.
  • Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves across the Confederacy, but slavery was still legal in Maryland and other border states when soldiers of the United States Colored Troops passed through Annapolis in 1864.  More than one hundred African-American men and boys from the area eagerly joined up and marched off to fight for the Union cause.  

20th Annual Master Docent Series Workshops
February 18 & 19

The Frederick Historic Sites Consortium presents the twentieth annual Master Docent Series workshops on February 18 and 19 on the campus of Frederick Community College.  This year's program opens on Friday night with Project Run-A-Way, a unique examination of the history of resistance to institutional bondage in America, and continues on Saturday with a variety of topics including an introduction to new area visitor centers and sessions related to the Civil War, local industrial history, and WWII-era spy training in Frederick County.  While designed to meet the interests of local museum docents, the general public is invited to participate.

The keynote presentation, Project Run-A-Way, will be offered to the public free of charge at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 18, 2011 in the Jack B. Kussmaul Theater at Frederick Community College, 7932 Opossumtown Pike, Frederick, Maryland.  This dynamic, multi-media, living history "informance" will engage the audience in exploring the history of enslaved, indentured, and convict servant labor in the Maryland.  Actors will bring to life the stories of ten real people who ran away from slavery or servitude, including the story of Candis, a slave who attempted to escape her Frederick County owner in 1798.  The program, presented by the Historic Annapolis Foundation,  is based on extensive research of Maryland newspapers of the 18th and 19th centuries.  It is free of charge and the public is invited.  Project Run-A-Way is made possible through the support of Historic Annapolis Foundation, Maryland Humanities Council, Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, Maryland Historical Trust, Arts Council of Anne Arundel County, and the Harley Howell Charitable Foundation. 

The Master Docent Series workshops continue at the Frederick Community College Conference Center on February 19 with a variety of sessions by history scholars,  museum educators, and visitor services specialists.  At 9:15 a.m. participants will be given an introduction to The Area's Newest Visitor and Welcome Centers.  Staff from the Frederick Visitor Center (new facility opening on April 2), the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area Exhibit and Visitor Center, and Maryland's South Mountain Welcome Centers will describe their facilities and explain how they can assist docents as a handy resource.  Panelists include Robyn Hildebrand and Lori Paddy, Managers of the Frederick Visitor Center; Charissa Beeler Stanton of the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area and the Hagerstown-Washington County CVB; and Jennifer Jones, Manager of the Maryland Welcome Center program. The panel moderator is John Fieseler, Executive Director of the Tourism Council of Frederick County.

At 10:30 a.m., two concurrent sessions are offered.  Dean Herrin, a National Park Service Historian and  the NPS Coordinator of the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies will present Crossroads of War: Civil War and Homefront in the Mid-Atlantic Border Region.  The session will be an orientation to a new website dedicated to telling the story of the Civil War in the Mid-Maryland border region. This new resource includes  historical essays, animated battle maps, an interactive map of historic sites, videos, searchable databases of contemporary regional newspapers, and Civil War soldiers, and a trove of digital images. It is a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the era's complex interweaving of race, politics, sectional division and conflict.

Concurrently, Esther Turner, Director of Regional and Strategic Partnerships, for the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area and National Scenic Byway, will discuss Docents as Tourism Ambassadors.  Recognizing that docents, and other frontline volunteers and staff, play a critical role in assisting heritage travelers, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground offers a Certified Tourism Ambassador (CTA) program. This session presents a sampling of that curriculum and participants will learn how CTAs are trained to enhance their customer service from good to excellent.

At 11:30 a.m. another pair of concurrent sessions is offered. In recognition of the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, and the critical role of Frederick County in determining Maryland's role in that conflict, Michael Bunitsky, Secondary Social Studies Curriculum Specialist for Frederick County Public Schools, will lead a session on The Kemp Hall Legislative Session in 1861. Built in 1860 by the German Reformed Church (now Evangelical Reformed United Church of Christ) as a commercial property at the corner of North Market and East Church Streets in the heart of downtown Frederick, Kemp Hall was just a year old when it entered the annals of history as the unexpected chosen site of the special legislative session of the Maryland General Assembly in April 1861, the purpose of which was to debate the question of secession.  Concurrently, John Foertschbeck Sr., will deliver an illustrated presentation on Canneries in Local History. The area's industrial history is as colorful as the labels that wrapped cans produced at such places as the Monocacy Valley Canning Company (the warehouse is the location of the new Frederick Visitor Center) and the Jenkins Cannery (now the shop location for the NPS Historic Preservation Training Center).  Firsthand accounts and a look at how such things as crop reports, child labor laws and fires are among aspects of the canning industry to be explored.  Foertschbeck,  with Harry Conover. r co-authored book, Carroll and Frederick County Canneries.

After lunch, Joy Beasley, the Cultural Resources Program Manager for Monocacy National Battlefield will discuss Slave Village Discoveries at the Best Farm.  Monocacy National Battlefield archeologists are currently excavating the site of the largest known slave habitation site in the Mid-Atlantic region. The Best Farm site is associated with L'Hermitage, a plantation established in 1794 by the Vincendières, a family of French planters who came to Maryland from Saint-Domingue (known today as Haiti). Home to 90 enslaved laborers, this was the second largest slave population in Frederick County at the time and among the largest in the state of Maryland. This session will explain ho how excavations here are shedding light on an unusual aspect of slavery in mid-Maryland.  Another post-lunch session will be offered by Rod Cofield who is the Director of Interpretation and Museum Programs for Historic London Town and Gardens.  He will discuss Free Range Interpretation, a challenge some docents face when visitors can enter an interpretive area at any point during the day.  Using a variety of techniques, Cofield will provide tools for successfully bringing new visitors into a conversation  when docents are already in the midst of interpreting to another group.  This session touches on one of the many balls docents must learn how to juggle while meeting a variety of visitor needs.

The final session of the day, at 2:30 p.m., entitled The Office of Strategic Services: Training in the Forest.  Catoctin Mountain Park was the first operative training camp for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency). It was the site for basic paramilitary training for the OSS' Special Operations recruits and some Secret Intelligence personnel. Later, it would also serve for advanced training for OSS Operational Groups.  Mel Poole, Superintendent of Catoctin Mountain Park, will share some of the fascinating stories associated with this facility and reveal some  famous figures that started public service as an OSS trainee in Frederick County.

To attend the Saturday sessions, participants must register in advance or at the door.  The all-day fee for Frederick County residents is $35, including lunch.  Early registration  is encouraged.  However, registration will be accepted at the door as space allows. 

To get a copy of the Master Docent Series Workshops brochure, including a registration form, stop by the Frederick Visitor Center at 19 E. Church Street in Frederick, Maryland.  A downloadable version is available through the Frederick Historic Sites Consortium website at www.fredericktourism.org..  Questions about the Master Docent Series may be directed to Elizabeth Scott Shatto, Tourism Council of Frederick County, Consortium Coordinator, at (301) 600-4042, or lshatto@fredco-md.net. 

The Master Docent Series is presented by the Frederick Historic Sites Consortium and co-sponsored by the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies. Support is provided by the Tourism Council of Frederick County, Inc.  Frederick County is located in Maryland's Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area and the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area.

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