Witnesses of Wallville: Project Overview

NOTICE: For more in-depth information about the Wallville community - please visit the main  StoryMap Collection page . Included within the StoryMap Collection page is the interactive and detailed "Places of Wallville" site with additional pages coming soon. The following is a project overview and general synopsis.

"Witnesses of Wallville" is a project undertaken by Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum is a unit of the Maryland Historical Trust, which is a division within the Maryland Department of Planning. Working with members of the Wallville community, this project combines outreach, oral histories, historical records, and archaeology to document the late 19th- and early 20th-century history of the community from a once predominantly Black rural landscape to the exurban landscape it has become into the present day.

This type of project defines my Leave No One Behind vision. By sharing your knowledge of the small town of Wallville...this rural Black community can better understand its history and connections to our shared past. - Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland

The "Witnesses of Wallville" project is supported in part by an African American Civil Rights grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service, Department of Interior. The National Park Service's African American Civil Rights Grant Program funding helps preserve sites and history related to the African American struggle for equality.

Keep an eye on this page as new content is added and be sure to also check for project updates and announcements.

Wallville is a community located near St. Leonard, Calvert County, Maryland. The exact historical boundaries are difficult to define, but in a general sense the area collectively known as Wallville covered an area of roughly 7 square miles. Sometimes referred to as Chitron, Chittering, Chickering, Chittling, or Chili Neck, the community is situated on a neck of land surrounded by water on three sides. To the west, Island Creek, the south, the Patuxent River, and to the east, St. Leonard's Creek.

While the origin of the name of the neck of land is unknown, the name Wallville, like many rural communities, is derived from the name of the post office/postmaster. In the heart of Wallville stood the homestead of James T. Wall and Mary/Margaret Wall. The Wall family operated a post office and general store from their property, which operated from at least 1879 until 1908. Another local post office operated at the southern end of the peninsula at the steamboat landing of Mackall's Wharf beginning around the same time, but the community as a whole was referred to as Wallville.

Wallville did not have a developed center as you might expect when you picture a village or town. Rather, Wallville was spread out and consisted of farms (both large and small) occupied by wealthy landowners as well as single families with farming plots, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers.

Mackall Road served as the main artery of the community, linking farms with stores, schools, Sunday schools, churches, social organizations, leisure spaces, and even baseball fields! Perhaps equally as important were the waterways surrounding the neck as well. Many Wallville residents earned a living not just by farming but through work on the water. Many Black residents of Wallville worked as watermen, boat captains, and shuckers/packers at local oyster packing facilities in addition to farming small plots of land.

Among the most important crops grown in southern Maryland since colonial times was tobacco. Large plantations dotted the landscape which grew tobacco as a cash crop. Being a labor intensive crop, plantations made use of enslaved labor in its cultivation. By 1860, just prior to the American Civil War, the population of Calvert County was predominantly Black (61.7%). Of the total population of 10,447 people, 4,609 were enslaved people of color and 1,841 were free people of color. Following emancipation at the conclusion of the war, many families remained on the plantations where they were once enslaved, earning meager wages.

One Wallville resident named James Boom was formerly enslaved at the plantation of John Mackall. Boom was enlisted as part of the US Colored Troops at the outbreak of the Civil War. At the end of the war, Boom returned to the Mackall plantation to work for his former owner. By 1870 Boom was making a living for himself away from the tobacco fields and out on the water as an oysterman like many other Wallville residents after the war. By 1874 he earned enough money to buy his own small plot of land about a mile north of the old Mackall plantation. Later, Boom relocated to Baltimore to seek better opportunities.

I was raised and owned by John Mackall, of Calvert County, Maryland, who also owned James Boom...he went into the Army. After the war he came back to the same farm and worked for the same old master... - Deposition of Charles Janie, Wallville Resident (Civil War Pension Records, 1909)

James Boom is just one of many similar stories in Wallville. Census and land records help to tell the stories of Wallville's residents by revealing their names, relationships, and the locations they lived. Some of the surnames of Black families that appear in these records include Boom as well as Bannister, Brown, Cassimore, Chase, Coates, Dare, Dawkins, Gross, Jefferson, King, Rawlings, Straiten, and Washington. Now free to forge their own lives and bonds, a vibrant and active community of Black residents began to take shape in Wallville.

By 1883 a Sunday school and social hall was founded by Black residents at the north end of Wallville. This morphed into the Chitron Neck Mission church by 1885, which later becomes known as Alexander Church. The congregation relocated in 1909 to what would become known as St. Luke's Church, located further south near present-day Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. This church was abandoned by 1971 and has slowly deteriorated to a ruin since that time. Almost nothing is visible on the surface today.

Directly adjacent was a lodge for a local chapter of fraternal organization that was founded by some of the same trustees as St. Luke's Church in 1910. Fraternal and beneficial organizations were a prominent feature of American life from the 19th century to the mid-20th century. Following Emancipation, African Americans saw these organizations as a way to fully integrate themselves into American society and provide for their communities. African Americans who attempted to join white fraternal organizations were met with pushback, forcing them to create parallel organizations. One such fraternal organization is the Knights of Pythias, established in 1864. The white Knights of Pythias barred Black men from joining. After years of petitions were unsuccessful, Black men who could “pass” for white joined the Knights of Pythias, absorbed the rules and rituals of the brotherhood, and created their own, parallel organization called the Knights of Pythias of North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. This Black parallel organization formed in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1880. The Knights of Pythias of Chitron Neck disbanded in 1936, along with many other fraternal organizations whose members chose to focus on survival during the Great Depression. 

The Great Depression disproportionately affected people of color, especially those that were sharecroppers, which further exacerbated economic hardships in rural communities. A phenomenon known as the Great Migration, which had begun in the decades preceding the Great Depression, saw millions of Black Americans move from rural areas to urban centers such as Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Land in rural areas became quite affordable for those less impacted by the economic downturn, such as those working in government. Wealthy White families, particularly those connect to centers of power in Washington, purchased large estates throughout southern Maryland, including the land that is now Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum.

Jefferson Patterson purchased what would come to be called Point Farm in 1932. He and his wife, Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, transformed the farm that was once owned by the local Peterson family since 19th century into an idealized country retreat and working farm. The Pattersons grew many types of crops aside from the usual tobacco and also raised livestock such as cattle. They hired local Wallville residents who had also worked on the Peterson farm. The Patterson's vision of Point Farm transformed the landscape with the help of renowned architect Gertrude Sawyer and landscape architect Rose Greely. Electricity was first brought to southern Calvert County by the Pattersons as part of this transformation.

Though many Black Wallville residents began leaving the area during the Great Depression, the connections to the community remained. Opposite a small cove from the Patterson property was the property of Everett and Eliza Gross. Everett and Eliza purchased a waterfront parcel of land in 1890, which their family continued to own into the 1970s. Everett and Eliza's son Lawrence developed the property beginning in 1950 into a beachside retreat for Black families to come to from the city - many of whom had family from or living in Wallville.

Today Wallville exists as a historical geographical name but it no longer a designated location with a zip code or post office. Throughout the 20th century and into the present, the landscape has changed considerably. Once very rural, the area is now becoming increasingly developed as land becomes subdivided for small lot single family homes.

Many of these changes are from the very recent past. As the profitability of tobacco declined in the 1990s, Maryland initiated a tobacco buyout program in the year 2000 in order to help preserve agricultural land and support local farmers. The buyout program and the rise of agricultural tourism in general has led many of the larger farms within Wallville to adapt in innovative ways. These include at least two vineyards and several large horse farms/rescues.

The change in the landscape can be viewed below when comparing how a portion of Wallville looked in 1938 versus 2020. Swipe the bar left and right to see a before and after of the land that is now a residential subdivision.

Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum's 560 acres of land, which was donated to the state by Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson in 1983, is still leased for farming while also serving as the Maryland State Museum of Archaeology. Several Wallville family homesteads sites are located in what are now wooded areas of the park and will be tested archaeologically in the spring of 2023.

You can directly contribute to this project by sharing your memories, photographs, and/or geographical knowledge with the project staff by filling out our  Wallville Community Information Survey form  using the Survey123 web app via your computer browser or mobile device. We are particularly interested in any photographs of St. Luke's Church, the Gross family beachside retreat, stores, houses or other places within Wallville. With permission, we'd like to include them on this page!

Additionally, you can contact Patricia Samford at  patricia.samford@maryland.gov .

As the project continues to move forward this section is subject to change, so please check back here for important announcements!

May 21, 2024: Join us at JPPM for Community Day, hosted by the Calvert County Branch of the NAACP, on Saturday June 15, 2024 from 11 AM to 5 PM. Look for the JPPM tent to learn more about the Wallville Project and to pick up our newly printed booklet or  download it today !

October 2, 2023: We are happy to unveil a new page called "Places of Wallville," which details important places within the community such as churches, schools, stores, post offices, fraternal organizations, wharves, and recreational areas. To view this new page,  click here .

April 3, 2023: On Monday May 15, 2023 Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum will be hosting a second community meeting at the park's pavilion. We call on Wallville residents and descendants to attend the event to learn about the project and share their insights and stories, beginning at 11:00 AM. Arrive as early as 10:00 AM. See park map below for location.

March 15, 2023: Calling all Maryland artists! Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum is seeking design proposals for a large indoor mural to be displayed in the Park’s exhibit barn. The mural will complement our upcoming updated agricultural exhibit, which will focus on the people who worked with tobacco, as well as planned/future Wallville exhibits stemming from this project. Submissions will be accepted until June 7, 2023 (Previously May 7).  Click here  to email Debra Rantanen with any questions. For proposal details  click here . This art project is funded in part by the  Maryland State Arts Council .

February 14, 2023: A community meeting was held at the Prince Frederick Library on January 30, 2023. Two additional meetings for this project are to take place in 2023 (dates, times, and locations to be determined).

For other updates and posts about the project, follow us on social media through our  Facebook  and  Instagram  accounts.