The View from my Window

 

 The View from my Window

After recently learning some additional thought-provoking history about where I currently reside at “Folly Quarter” in Howard County, Maryland, I will never gaze upon this view from my friary window in the same way . . .

This is what I see (see first photo above): 

The land up to the top of the hill and ending just before the visible farm buildings has been owned for more than a hundred years by the Conventual Franciscan Friars, the religious community to which I belong.  

The farm buildings are on the property of the University of Maryland Agricultural Farm.  The farm consists of about seven-hundred acres; the friary land three-hundred.  During the 19th century both tracts of land formed the “Folly Quarter,” a portion of Doughoregan Manor, a vast ten-thousand acre estate owned by Maryland Catholic signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton.  

The “Folly Quarter” property was later gifted by Charles Carroll to his granddaughter Emily Caton McTavish (daughter of Mary Carroll Caton and Richard Caton - the wealthy developer of the Baltimore area today known as “Catonsville”).

In 1928, and after the friars purchased their portion of the “Folly Quarter” estate, they built the monastery-like friary structure where today I reside with several other Franciscan Friars.  

The original and recently restored “Folly Quarter” manor house known as “Carrollton Hall,” one-time home of Emily Caton McTavish and her husband John Lovat McTavish, still stands a short distance away from the friary on the property.  

What I have recently learned is that, up until the time of the U.S. civil war, the location of the farm buildings visible from my window once served as an encampment and home to enslaved Americans.  During the course of many years, hundreds of enslaved people who served the Carroll, Caton and McTavish families lived and labored where those farm buildings now stand.  

I now wonder what the ground would say if it could tell us the stories of the lives of those oppressed people who were forced into slavery, yet lived, loved, raised children, labored, had families and friendships, and who died without freedom on the land I now see nearly two hundred years later as I look out my window each morning.

I will never gaze upon this view in the same way . . .