This post from Rector Grey Maggiano at the Memorial Episcopal Church website hits close to home.

New deacon Natalie Conway, they recently discovered, was descended from people who had formerly been enslaved by Memorial Episcopal’s founding rector, David Ridgely Howard, whose family owned the Hampton plantation north of where Towson Town Center mall stands today.

This discovery inspired some 50 members of the congregation, including Deacon Conway, to travel together to Hampton plantation last week to learn more about their collective history.

This history intersects with the WLCB because David Ridgely Howard was the half-brother of Margaretta Sophia Howard Ridgely, the mother of Eliza Ridgely, first secretary of the WLCB. Eliza grew up at Hampton and later lived in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood, just around the block from founding member Hester Dorsey.

A number of other Club members also attended Memorial Episcopal–during a time when the church fervently supported segregation. In fact, Clara Love and Katie Kazmierski spent some hours poring through church records early on in our research, when we were trying to find WLCB club members and where they lived.

As we’ve discovered, the history of the WLCB is intertwined with some ugly, long-hidden (and carefully hidden) truths about Baltimore and racial attitudes in the United States as a whole. The present-day parishioners’ visit to Hampton is a step toward reconciling this past with a more hopeful future. Read Grey’s post here.