Maryland seeks to return African American remains stored in state lab

The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory was never meant to be a final resting place for the dead.

By JOE HEIM (The Washington Post)

The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory was never meant to be a final resting place for the dead.

The state facility in Calvert County, a part of the Maryland Historical Trust, is tasked with research and curation and serves as a clearinghouse for public and private archaeological collections. Altogether it has more than 10 million artifacts that help tell Maryland’s story.

It also has bodies.

Unidentified remains of individuals found across Maryland from graves that were unearthed by erosion or construction projects between 1960 and 1990 have been carefully stored at the laboratory since they arrived there a quarter-century ago, according to state officials. Some had been unintentionally backhoed from unmarked graves, others found along riverbanks after storms.

Despite knowing where the bodies were found, who those people were is a mystery.

Now the state is launching an effort to identify the skeletons and return them to lineal descendants or to an appropriate culturally affiliated group, beginning with the remains of 15 individuals of African or African American descent. The lab also has the remains of 58 individuals classified as European or White.

Last month Gov. Wes Moore (D) announced that the Maryland Historical Trust and the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture would coordinate efforts on the project, entitled “Engaging with Descendant African American Communities.”

“In order for us to be able to move forward, we must both remember and value our past,” Moore said in a statement. “I encourage anyone that has information about these African American communities to speak up, get involved, and ensure our descendants are treated ethically and responsibly.”

The remains of the 15 people were found in eastern Maryland at sites including ones near Deep Creek in Anne Arundel County, the Gott Cemetery in Calvert County, Chapel Point in Charles County, Bennetts Point in Queen Anne’s County and Twin Oaks in Wicomico County, according to a press release. The agencies collaborating on the project will use genealogical records, research on land and titles, and potentially DNA testing to help in their effort.

“This project is incredibly timely and meaningful,” Chanel Compton, executive director of the Banneker-Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, said in a statement. “Because of technology and collaboration, we have the opportunity to share the untold stories of Black lives in our state that will build a deeper understanding of Maryland’s history.”

In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on government agencies, universities, museums and other cultural institutions to return or repatriate human remains that had been held in collections for purposes of research or historical study.

For instance, a federal law mandates the Smithsonian offer to return the Native American remains in its possession. Of nearly 35,000 sets of body parts collected largely in the first half of the 20th century, only 6,300 have been returned or made available to descendants or cultural heirs, as reported by The Washington Post in August. The American Museum of Natural History in New York announced in October that it was reexamining its policies governing the approximately 12,000 human remains in its collection, and it has removed all remains from public view.

Impetus for the new Maryland project, Elizabeth Hughes, director of Maryland Historical Trust, said in an interview, came from an earlier collaboration with the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs on the remains of 131 Native Americans that were in the state’s custody.

“We worked with tribal groups in Maryland to find a way to return them to the Earth in a respectful manner,” she said. The remains, dating back 500 to 2500 years, were buried in 2012 and 2013 in consultation with the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs.

Obtaining conclusive DNA evidence may be difficult given the condition of some of the remains, Hughes said, so it could prove impossible to make a definitive identification. The agencies, she said, were hopeful but not overly optimistic that they would be able to find lineal descendants because some of the remains are so old, with most dating to the 19th and possibly 18th century. “I think a lot of our focus is on finding a culturally affiliated community that would be the primary sort of partner in looking for a way to return these remains to the ground,” she said.

To that end they have created strategies for reaching out to people in the areas from which these remains were removed and have launched a process by which individuals can contact them to submit information and histories that could provide clues to their identities. They will also hold virtual and in-person meetings beginning in early 2024 in the communities where the remains were found.

For Hughes, the project brings both excitement and uncertainty. “There aren’t a lot of models for this that we’re aware of … so we’re going to learn a lot from it going through this process,” she said.

What officials hope for, Hughes said, is that the project could become a model for other states or institutions that have non-Native human remains in their collections and want a way to return them to descendants or culturally affiliated communities.

Hughes and Patricia Samford, the director of Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, also give credit for this new effort to Janice Hayes-Williams, a chronicler of the history of Black life in Annapolis whose family ties to the city date back seven generations.

On a visit to the lab about a decade ago, Hayes-Williams asked whether any human remains were being held there. She was particularly interested in the remains of Smith Price, who had once been enslaved in Annapolis but was freed in 1790 when the man who had owned him died.

As a freedman, Price went on to become a successful business owner and provided the land for the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Black church in Anne Arundel County, according to the Baltimore Sun. The church, built in 1804, is now the Asbury United Methodist Church. Price died in 1807 and was buried near the church in a family cemetery.

Hayes-Williams, a member of Asbury United, knew about Price and had heard his remains may have been dug up from the family plot in the late 1970s 0r early 1980s during a construction project. Still, when she asked whether the lab had his remains she wasn’t prepared for their immediate answer.

Officials at the lab checked their computer records and told Hayes-Williams that, yes, they had a container labeled “Smith Price” that held the remains of an adult and a child. When she heard the words, Hayes-Williams said, she began to cry. “I thought, wow, this is a day to remember.”

That discovery led to a long process working with the lab to explore the history of the remains, how they came to be in the state’s possession and what needed to be done to return them to the church for a proper reburial in Annapolis. While it was not possible to obtain usable DNA samples from the remains to make a definitive identification, both the state and Hayes-Williams believe that all the other evidence points to the remains as belonging to Price.

The remains were finally returned to the Asbury United Methodist Church in 2019 where Hayes-Williams arranged a ceremonial blessing. On Nov. 1, 2019, Price was reburied next to the grave of his son a short distance away in the St. Anne’s Episcopal Church cemetery.

Following the success in returning Price’s remains in 2019, Hughes and Samford said they felt it was time to streamline the process for returning remains. “We decided that perhaps it would be a really good idea to go ahead and change the state regulation to make it easier to return remains either to lineal descendants or to culturally affiliated group, or to work with local descendants to get remains back in the ground, either on private or public land,” Samford said.

Eventually they would like to return all of the human remains in the state’s possession, including the larger number of those classified as European or White. Beginning with the smaller number of remains of African ancestry made the project more manageable, they said, and it made sense to approach the project in stages.

For Hayes-Williams the process of returning the remains of Price to Annapolis was cathartic, but it also made her want to do more to identify others whose names and stories have been lost.

“One of the things that concerns me all the time is why don’t we take better care of our ancestors?” she said. “This is a problem nationally. You know, we put them there and we forget. And if we don’t teach our children, their children will not even know where we are in the ground.”