Oaklands or Contee was a slave plantation owned by the Snowden family, and remains as a historic home surrounded by residential development.
Description and history
The house is a three-story
Federal architecture
Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815, which was heavily based on the works of Andrea Palladio with several inn ...
manor of brick construction, and was built by Major Thomas Snowden and his wife Eliza Warfield from
Bushy Park,
Howard County. The estate extended westward into modern Howard County. Richard Snowden inherited it from his father. His oldest daughter Anne Lousia Snowden inherited the estate and married Capt. John Contee, for whom "Contee" station of the B&O railroad was named.
In 1911, the estate was purchased by Charles R. Hoff and his wife who was a descendant of the Snowden family.
Slavery
Overseers of this plantation in the mid-1800s were described as particularly cruel to their slaves. Dennis Simms, born in 1841, recalled such in 1937 as part of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
Slave Narrative project
''Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States'' (often referred to as the WPA Slave Narrative Collection) is a collection of histories by formerly enslaved people undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progre ...
. "We had to toe the mark or be flogged with a rawhide whip, and almost every day there was from two to ten thrashings given on the plantations to disobedient Negro slaves...We all hated what they called the 'nine ninety-nine', usually a flogging until fell over unconscious or begged for mercy. We stuck pretty close to the cabins after dark, for it we were caught roaming about we would be unmercifully whipped. If a slave was caught beyond the limits of the plantation where he was employed, without the company of a white person or without written permit of his master, any person who apprehended him was permitted to give him 20 lashes across the bare back...We were never allowed to congregate after work, never went to church, and could not read or write for we were kept in ignorance. We were very unhappy...(captured runaways) besides being flogged, would be branded with a hot iron on the cheek with the letter 'R'." Simms said he knew two slaves so branded.
Present
The Oakland manor is surrounded by residential development. Access to the property is off of 13700 Oaklands Manor Drive.
See also
*
Richard Snowden
*
Montpelier Mansion (Laurel, Maryland)
Located south of Laurel in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, Montpelier Mansion is a five-part, Georgian style plantation house most likely constructed between 1781 and 1785. It has also been known as the Snowden-Long House, New ...
References
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External links
Oaklands Colonial Mansions of Maryland and Delaware: Prince George's County, Maryland (John Martin Hammond, 1914)
Photos from Survey HABS MD-109 Oaklands, Contee Road, Contee, Prince George's County, MD (Library of Congress, 1936/1940)
Houses completed in 1798
Buildings and structures in Laurel, Maryland
Houses in Prince George's County, Maryland
Georgian architecture in Maryland
Contee family