Slavery & Freedom in Maryland

Special Collections and University Archives in Hornbake Library at University of Maryland house personal papers and manuscript collections documenting all aspects of Maryland history and culture.  Numerous collections relate to slavery and plantation life in Maryland before the civil war. 

Archival collections can be requested online for use in the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library.     

Some notable collections include:

• Bowie Family Papers - The collection contains genealogical information, business papers, and correspondence from one of the state's leading families as well as important information about plantation life and slavery before the American Civil War.

• Claude-Gray-Hughes-Tuck-Whittington Family papers - This collection consists of the papers of five prominent, interrelated families associated with Annapolis, Maryland. Attitudes toward African-Americans and slavery are discussed in correspondence, diaries, and other writings included in the papers.

• Maryland Manuscripts Collection: Slavery-Related Documents,1752-1877 -  Correspondence, slave deeds, legal and financial records, broadsides, manumissions, bounties for military service of slaves, petitions for freedom, travel permits, certificates or affidavits of freedom, slave inventories, and reports relating to individual slaves and slaveholders particularly in the state of Maryland.

• Weems-Reynolds Family papers - The Weems family is one of the oldest families in Maryland and has long been associated with Anne Arundel County and Annapolis. The family's papers consist of correspondence and a wide variety of other documents, including wills, legal papers, poetry, and handwritten manuscripts. Slaves and slavery are discussed in the correspondence and legal papers, and a handwritten manuscript details one of the family member's ideas about race and race relations in the antebellum southern United States.

Below is a list of archival collections that are available, primarily on microfilm, from the Maryland Collection.

Select archival and special collection materials have been digitized and made available online through the Digital Collection @ the University of Maryland, a searchable digital repository of scanned materials from the University of Maryland's libraries. 

Use the search box on the homepage to search collection by keywords.  For example, typing "slavery Maryland" in the search box will retrieve materials realted to slavery in Maryland.