Record #26 from Enduring Connections Audio & Video
| Type | Video |
|---|---|
| Title | The Families of San Domingo |
| Post Date | Aug 9, 2023 |
| Description | Rudy Stanley & Newell Quinton provide histories on the Families of San Domingo, MD. This video is part of the Digitizing Delmarva Heritage & Traditions DVD Collection. For more information, see the [Edward H. Nabb Center finding aid](https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-archives/local-history-archives/2008.035). |
| Transcript | [00:00:20] Linda Duyer: Welcome everyone, my name is Linda Duyer for those who don't know me and I'm a volunteer with the Nabb Research Center. And I want to thank you all for coming to this program which is about many of the families of San Domingo and Wicomico County, a free black community that was founded in the early 1800s. I imagine most of you know where San Domingo is, but for those that don't, it's in Rural area between Mardala, sort of between Mardeleine and Sharp Town. And so our guests who will talk on this subject tonight are Newell Quinton, far left, and Rudy Stanley, both of San Domingo. I don't be surprised if they refer to Rudy by another name. Eugene, correct? Correct. You might hear that come from Newell, because he goes by a couple of different names. His middle name, correct. [00:01:13][53.5] [00:01:14] Newell Quinton: Or am I might call him cousin? Cousin? Yeah. [00:01:17][3.0] [00:01:18] Linda Duyer: Okay. Okay. Newell is back here at the Nabb. He participated in a panel discussion that we had here about a year ago on the Rosenwald schools, a series of elementary schools of which one of them is in San Domingo. And upon retirement, Newell returned to San Domingo building a home on family property. He has been active preserving the Rosenwald. Elementary school, you can talk about that some, and as a community center. And speaking on the subject of San Domingo history, if you Google San Domingo, Maryland, most likely you'll find Newell's name come up. So he's very avid in trying to promote the history of San Domingo, and he's active with the church. Rudy Stanley is a teacher at Wicomico High School. Is that correct? Correct. And he's been an avid collector of historical photographs, family photographs, community photographs. I'm not sure if I met you before this, but I know for real, I met at the African-American Family Tree Workshop we had here about a year ago. And he participated in that. And he brought with him two thick notebooks of photographs. And it was those photographs that inspired us to have him here and have Newell back to talk about families of San Domingo. So often the history has been just the earliest general history of San Domingo, but we wanted to feature the families, many of whom are in these photographs. The Nabb Center is planning another family tree workshop in March, I believe, April, April excuse me. And we hope this discussion will help us all think more about our family histories. Both, if I have this correct, and you don't have to correct me if I'm wrong, but both Newell and Rudy shared ancestry traced back to the San Domingo founder, James Brown. And I met Newell's mother. And some of his siblings long before I met Newell because he was living out of the area. If I have this right, she did not go to high school and her name is Mary Louise with her nickname is Tip, Tip Quinton. But she and her husband managed to see to it that all of her children went to college. She was born in a tenant house. I was probably in the 80s when I first met her and I told her she still had the same legs and that's your grandfather correct? And I wasn't sure if Tip would come, so if I thought, I knew she wouldn't, and otherwise I would have quickly deleted one of the next pictures, because she would have been embarrassed. If I have it right, this is the tenant house that she was born in. It's since been torn down, and that's her. That's the one that she would be mad at me if I had it. There's Rudy. I'm assuming these are your parents. Judging from the notebooks you have, you're traced back to James Brown as well. I'm sure I don't know if I have all these correct. I just wanted to show these because everybody has an ancestry chart of some sort or another. I just thought it would be really nice to show it. Tip is one of my favorite people and I wanted to attribute her a little bit. Because, because she was born in a tenant house, she... Understood early on the importance of family-owning property. And she made sure that she would never live on someone else's property again. And so she lived up to that and she's still with us but couldn't make it. And you can actually see a glimpse of her and other family members. I don't know if either of you are in a film produced by PAC 14. You can it online, at least you could last night chat. People making the making of Scrapple. So, were you in that Rudy? Just Newell? I did see Tipper there. So if you might want to take a look at that, that's really fascinating. And like I said, this is at Rudy's chart and with that of his parents and Rudy brought with him numerous old photographs of families related to both he and Newell. And other long-time families of San Domingo. We look forward to learning more about the families and please join me in welcoming Newell and Rudy. [00:06:24][306.1] [00:06:30] Newell Quinton: Good evening. Before we get started, there's a lot of, in my opinion, some dignitaries in the room, people who know much more about San Domingo than I do, but I won't put them on the spot, but just be so that the others in the room will know that I'm not alone. So if you have any questions at all, this is a great time to ask them. [00:06:57][27.5] [00:06:59] Newell Quinton: Because there's a lot of people here who were born and raised in San Domingo and certainly know it. And I must certainly recognize Mr. Hubert Brown, because even before we said, why don't you stand up, Hubert? Because Eugene and I were talking about that, and he says, you know, we don't need to be up here. Hubert should be up there. You know, even since I was fortunate enough to move back home, Huber was working the only genealogy of families in San Domingo. Tracing back to James Brown. And as Linda said, I am the great grandson of John H. Quinton, who married the granddaughter of James Brown, and that's my connection to James Brown. So Eugene and I are related on both sides of the family, as my mothers are Stanley and his uh... Fathers of stanley his grandfather and my grandfather were brothers that's okay. We're not embarrassed by that because there's a lot of people in San Domingo who are related on both sides of the family, but anyway let me give you a timeline because it's in talking about San Domingo there's many different directions that you might want to go and I just need to be comfortable to let you know where I am at. Because I said there's many people in the room who know much more about San Domingo in particular than I do, but for me, my timeline, I'm going to say, let's say between 1950 and 1970 is a good reference point for me just for purpose of discussion to really, and I'm trying to give you a picture or depiction of San Domingo. Oftentimes people talk to me about the school and they will ask me, well, gee, how big is San Domingo? What's the end of mingo? And I said, well. It's kind of hard to define that. Because as Linda said, the bit that I've been able to learn and it's certainly what my parents taught me with the owning of property was very critical to the families of San Domingo. And so during my youth, as you plot the family plots of San domingo, you would get a good geographical layout of the community. And so when I look at... Generation, not the great generation, but the generation before that, generation of oh let's say of my great-grandfather. Those people lived and died to own property and so when I look at the deed of my Great-Grandfather it points out the land that he purchased and I'm assuming that most other families did the same thing because ownership of property was so critical to black people at the time. And if you put all those parcels of land together, then you would get a good feel for how large San Domingo was. And so, for reference purposes, I would say, if you, this afternoon, in thinking about what I would say this afternoon. I told Eugene, I said, you know, I'm gonna, I took a mental trip of what San Domingo looked like when I was, oh, 10 years old. Going through grade school until I finished high school, and it was a robust community. I counted 100 families easily that had significant land, significant numbers of people, property, interdependence that supported themselves, their extended families, and each other. I also counted possibly three stores. My great uncle Norman J. Brown, I stayed with him probably up until I was 12 years old during the daytime because my mother was working in the field, and my siblings who were older than me were also working in that field. When I became 12 years, I joined them in the fields, but up to that point, I remember staying with Uncle Non as I called him, and Uncle Non had a store pretty much close to where San Domingo Road, not far from where San Domingo Road intersects Laurel Road, if you're going north out of towards Sharp Town and from San Domingo. The importance of that is you got to see all the activity and hustle and bustle in San Domingo because as people left San Domingo to go to work either on the farm or in the factories and coming back home, they would stop by Uncle Non's store And they would buy a different staples or whatever they needed for the day and of course there was this barter system present and that's the first time I learned what a book was and Uncle Non kept a book because most people didn't have money to pay and so I got into different terms like he would say we'll settle up at the end of the week and so you learn what settle up meant and so Uncle No one would tell me, and he said, well. Just write it down on the book, and they'll see me on Friday. So anybody wanted a can of this, can of that, I would write it and he said, don't worry about it. They'll settle it up on Friday, and that's the way things went. And so then, interesting thing, he always had these big round cheese, piece of cheese, in this wooden box on the counter. And people would stop by, even during lunchtime, come around the field. Anyway, either And he also had this baloney in cloth. And so they would come out of the field to get their lunch. They would take a slice of cheese or a piece of baloney, put it on bread, and that was lunch. Or on their way home, they would stop by and get a piece cheese. So there was another gentleman in the community who was a very good friend of Uncle Nolte. He was Mr. Fraser Brown, who also happened to be a relative. Because my grandfather's second wife was... Berta J. Quinton, who was also Mr. Fraser Brown's mother. And so, anyway, I got to know Mr. Frasier real well. And so Mr. Frazier and other men would be at Uncle Non's store oftentimes during the afternoon. And so somebody would stop by and says, gee, I need a quarter pound of cheese. And I'd look at Uncle non and he says, give him a quarter of a pound of a cheese. And I said, you know, I'm 10 years old. That's all. Mr. Frasier would look at me and says, let me explain to you what a quarter is. And he would show me how to cut out a pound. And he says, OK, now you brick that in four pieces and it got a quarter. And ever since that day, I remember what a quarter pound of cheese was. But that's just a type of activity that will go on every single day, in and around, going and coming to San Domingo. But in terms of this people and a nature and a property I often believe if you looked at the property and the land that people owned and those families and the houses, it was a community that was pretty much self-sufficient, that great sense of pride, of ownership that supported themselves and supported each other. And I tell people all the time two things held them together Well, it's three probably. The family, the church, and the love for each other. And then they had this drive for education. And Eugene and I talk a lot about that when we look at the school and the church. And that the same families were involved in providing for both of those and maintaining them as well as donating the land for both them. And so we know that early in the stages of San Domingo, those two institutions were present all the way through my lifetime. And when I see students today talking about those things, I say, " Gee, you've got to understand that those two instances were cornerstones for the black community and still are. Because many people ask me, why do you want to spend all that money to restore that old school? I say well, it's more than a building. The school represents a whole life story. In terms of the effort made to even have the school to enable their kids to attend school and what it provided for future hope. I remember talking, my father would talk to me much about the importance of education. And of course, he didn't get the opportunity to go past, I think, fourth grade. And he would often tell me about different things and growing up. And having to go to work. And what happened in his lifetime of many people who left San Domingo for a better lifestyle traveled to Wilmington, Philadelphia, up and down Highway 13, not across the Bay Bridge. The pathways at that time were up and done 13. So his older sister, Elmo, had promised him as being the baby of the family. That when she was married and she lived in Philadelphia, that she would come back for him and take him to Philadelphia so that he would be able to go to school. Now, unfortunately, Alma died before he was able to do that dream for him. But he never forgot it. And I think that, in a sense, established within him the commitment that his children would pursue higher education. And I know that, as Linda said in talking with my mother, those two things were, I don't know if Irving Moody's not here, so there are probably more ministers in the room, but I said those two thing were preached to us every night that own property and pursue education. From both my mother who lived as a tenant on the Ryder Forum and saw her father and her mother and her brothers worked their entire lives in someone else's property. And so when they moved, and she to this day knows the exact time when she and my father built the house in 1939, that she never ever will live in anyone else's property, I think that mindset wasn't just in her mind. I think, that was sort of, I don't know, felt across the community. Not only in our household, but across the community of the struggle to acquire property and hold onto it. And she tells me many times that the people in San Domingo who struggle to hold onto their property just from paying the taxes to do anything, cut wood primarily, or sell foreign products to pay the taxes, to hold on to their property. Now my father, my father was totally committed to pursue in. Education as a means for us to hopefully have, in his words, a life better than he had. And so we would say, Daddy, we really don't know what you mean, and he would start explaining it that at a very young age he had to go to work and on and so forth and so on. And that was his whole main purpose to him in life was to make sure you'd go school. And have a better life than I've had. And he preached that all the way until he died. And I think these are the things, are tenets that drove that generation, that developed San Domingo and held it together. And I know it was things in my family, and I just believe those were the same feelings across these other group of a hundred families that I can count. And that timeline I gave you, that 1950 to 1970. I think one of the other things I'll share with you very quickly, and then I'm gonna sit down and let my cousin Eugene show you some pictures, is in growing up in San Domingo, it's probably like any other African American community. You know, when I was probably 10 years old, I remember the county paving the road in front of our house, small thing. But the reason it was so important is because it's shorter it changed one of the dynamics in the community. And I'll tell you why. From my standpoint, remember that timeline now. We could go to anyone's house just by following a particular road. There wasn't one road. If you wanted to go to church, we went across the hill, at a hill that we called Sarah's Hill, which was the granddaughter of James Brown, and her house was on that hill, so you leave home, you go across Grand Sarah's hill. And that road would take you right past the staling property out to church. If I wanted to go to the Hopkins house... Then I would take a different road. And this network of roads connected most households in San Domingo. So that, to me, was very important as I thought about it today. I said, gee, and of course I walk a lot, I don't know, through the woods and looking at where the old roads were. And I remember when we had our property surveyed, the surveyor mission to me said, you know, you can tell where the original houses were. By looking at certain plants in the woods. And I said, gee, what do you mean? He says, you see these flowers that are still coming up here? He says well, at some point there was a house here. You dig down under the leaves and we call them the pine needles, or at that time we called them the shats, okay? And you'll find some bricks. And sure enough, you can walk through the woods where along some path and you'll see some different types of plants. There aren't pine trees, oak trees, maples. And sure enough, those were flowers or shrubs around someone's house. And if you, as I was, going down these dirt roads at 10 years old, you probably can figure out whose house it was. I know, and I tell my wife all the time, I said, you have to be impressed with the pride of the community because every household and every yard in my youth was immaculate. It was neat, orderly. There was a garden associated with the property. There was animals, chickens, hogs, and in some cases, cows. I remember Mr. Eddie Galsley had, I'll never forget, my father took me there and he had some cows. So I asked my father, I said, I say, where are we? And we're down in Elsie Brown Loop, which is Elsie brown loop now, Mr. Eddy Galsay. And I was real small following my father and he has these cows down there and it was amazing to me. But anyway. So in terms of magnitude and size, geographically, it was a big community, but it was held together by this network of roads. And irregardless of what road you traveled, you were gonna go to someone's house. People didn't live along the streets, per se. This is rural areas, and those homesteads were connected by these roads. And that connected the families together, and Those are the same. You could look at that and see the whole family tree. I know that I asked my father also, I said, where did our great-grandfather live, his house? He said it was up on that hill. And that's where I fortunately able to build my house on the same hill, Grand Saris Hill. And I said well, where does Pop George? And Pop George was right down that hill, and so on different sections of the property, I find the same thing in other families. I know that the McLaughlin property was not far from there. And Mr. Will McLaughin, Herman McLaughn, Earl McLaughan, all of them had homes in reasoNabble proximity. You could do the same thing for any other family that Eugene is gonna mission. You will see those dynamics taking place. And I only said to you that it was extensive. I remember Mr. Hargis Brown's property at the corner of North Twillie Road and now Maiden choice lane. Very maculate, very two story home, large barn in the back. And when you go there, you had to be impressed with the neatness of it, the order of it. And just very impressive. And that was during that period of time from 1950 to 70, that I recall. So I put it on that timeline because when you through San Domingo today, I tell people, I say, well, it's a shell of what it used to be. And I'm gonna stop talking there and we'll pick up with some questions. Because my wife told me, she says, don't go beyond 10 minutes. [00:25:12][1092.9] [00:25:17] Rudy Stanley: I let him do all the talking most of the time anyway. Now when you talk about San Domingo, I do the genealogy thing. And I got caught up in genealgy from Hubert who I mentioned. Probably about the late 1990s, Hubert, who is a cousin, came down and he was looking into the families. And we discovered that James Brown had two sons. He had Bard and he had Leonard. So We kind of made an uncalled for a deal in that, when Hubert went back and looked, he came through Bard's line, and I came through Leonard's line. So therefore, he started looking up Bard, and I said, okay, I'll look up some of Leonard. Well, Hubert's retired, he got a lot more time than I do. So, and so, and looking at that, we found that James Brown had just the two boys, and he had Harriet, Ardella, Eliza, Emeline, and Mary, the rest of them were girls. And now most people like to credit James Brown with San Domingo, but actually there were two ladies. Rose Dutton, no, Betsy Dutten and Rose Anthony. And the three of them together purchased most of the land of San Domingo. I think Betsy was the first lady that bought the land. And then James Brown came in and he, I think as Hubert was looking through, We found out that he. Purchased something like 75 acres. And the amazing thing that we found out from this is that you're talking about James Brown, who was an African-American man, and you're talkin' in the early 1800s, and he payin' $300 and $500 cash for land. So that's highly unusual. And as Brother Quentin said here, what happened was, it was a family thing. So most of, when you look at San Domingo, you look, we call it, upper and lower. Bard maintained most of the upper part of San Domingo and Lennart maintained most of the lower half. In the late 1850s when James Brown died and his will and deed and so forth and Bard being the oldest he dictated what happened and as brother Quentin was saying the same people of the Browns are the ones that instituted the land for the church and also the land from the school that we talked about there. Now, in talking... Families and so forth as indicated there. Then you brother Quentin talks about the education and so forth and he's a little older than I am. And so well I say that because you know in the education in the area there were basically only two schools we went to that was UMES or Morgan. Well most of them well the boy was in the woods. We didn't go to the woods, we were already in the wood. Brother Quentin and Brother Melvin back there came out together. So they went to Morgan. Well, they were four years ahead of me. So I decided I was going to Morgan with them. We'd go across the water. And so they came out the same time I was goin' in. So that's one of the reasons my mother went to eighth grade and my father went to seventh grade. So neither one of them had an education. And one of things they wanted was for me to get an education, and my sister whom I thought was gonna be here, where is she? There's my sister, okay, back there. Well, when you talk in education, my sister graduated in 1948. That's the same year I was born. And what happened is, in Wicomico County in that year, it was 11th grade and I keep telling her that the kids were so bad that they added 12th grade the next year because her class had graduated in 48. So after that, they went to the 12th. But the amazing thing about that is the same that she graduated the year I born. So, you know, she constantly tells me that... I stopped her from going to school when she threatened to drown me a couple times. Fortunately, she didn't do that and I'm still here So we went to the the school that he's talking about It was right down the road from where I was he had a longer trek than I did it was only about a hundred yards where I went to school there and and the thing we understand about the Families in the area and that he says my my parents Moved around a lot and they built the house in 1947 and the reason why I say that because they was living in Delaware And in 1948, I was born. So therefore, I conceived in Delaware and born in Maryland. So, education was that key thing there and dealing with the school and so forth. And as one of the things I tried to do many times was to put together families that lived along the road back in the day when school was there. And I have gone through and I've talked to some of the people in the community. One of the oldest ladies that's still alive is a lady named Mr. Martina Games, who is I think this coming December will be 102. And she lives down in Narcolano and she had... Great history about the community. When I talked to her back in the 90s and I did Fowlin' Hubert, I went over and got the census and the 1850, 1860, 1870, when I got the census I went back and talked her about people she could tell me where they lived and what they did and she was in her 90s then which was which was great and see I started genealogy a little late if I if I listened and started a little earlier my mother died in 88 so I hadn't started then, and she had given me partially... A family tree. And of the Hopkins side of the family, my mother was, my grandmother was a Hopkins, which she showed up there. And my father was a Stanley, which is how we get tied up here in Will Stanley, who was his grandfather, and Horace Stanley was mine, was a year older than his. That's why they were brothers and so forth. And Jeffy and fifties. So I talk a lot about the. The family tree part. As far as families are concerned, I came back to San Domingo and lived there. One of the reasons why I came to San Domingo was the fact that my mother had heart trouble just about when I was about to graduate from college. And so therefore I came home to stay with my parents. If not for that, then probably I would not been back. I probably would have been like Brother Quentin who stayed away. And then after he retired, he came back home and to make a living there. Smellin' also went away and came back. A lot of them went away and did not come back home. And a lot of the young people found it somewhere else. I have a daughter who says, dad, there's nothing, she's 31. She says, there is nothing here. I come back and visit, but only stay a short while and then she leaves. When we were growing up, San Domingo was a wonderful place. I mean... I mean, the things that we did, Brother Quentin and I, we actually ran the playground there for him. He ran the play ground. We had a playground down there and we ran the Playground for years. Reverend Mack, you remember Reverend Mack? He was the playground counselor and he used to come down with us and Mr. Gals is sitting here. He was a retired educator there and he ran the playlist. The Playground was one of those center of activities that drew the community together. I mean sometimes in the evening we played places like Hebron or Quantico like that. You'd have 150 people right there enjoying a softball game in the evening and so forth. It was just such a wonderful living. It's a shame now that young people cannot enjoy themselves like that and we used to come over actually we'd come over when we played Lake Street sometimes and that's before curated and we we played Lake Street softball there. On Lake Street, and that was a great playground there and so forth. But I don't know, things have gone down the way now, and young people now do not find enjoyment in that. And we didn't have the TV in the house, so that's why you had to stay out. And Brother Quentin came back home to work. My theory was that when I came home from school and my dad told me that garden better be straight, I said, when I got old enough I didn't have a garden, I was going to eat from somebody else. So I eat from brother Quentin. As you heard, the hog killing, I go up every once in a while with him. I think, we used to do it on Thanksgiving. Yeah, we'd go up sometimes in the morning. Matter of fact, I went at one time and did a set of pictures of hog killing and so forth, but I'm not. But I just go up there and get scrapple and sausage from him and so forth, But I don't do any of the gardening. There are many stories as to how San Domingo got its name. Probably the one that sticks and thinks the most is that in 1791, down in the Dominican Republic, there was an uprising. Dominican Republic was ruled by, oh, a few Caucasians and many, many other people, and there was uprising and all the Caucasians were slain in that area there. So therefore, Around the early 1800s, the name San Domingo came to be associated with that. And what it said was for, remember now we're talking about slavery still existing. So up and down the county there were slaves. But the uprising in San Domingo cautioned people not to come there to look for slaves. So we never had that problem in San Domingo that we recall. You know, of course, in Dorchester County and so forth, you got the Cannon Heights of the road there where you had had a candidate all that. But we never hear about her coming to San Domingo and so forth. And one of the reasons why we think is because of the name San Domingo, which carried with it what happened. Now, there are other stories about the fact that it's so sandy down there and all sorts of things. We like that one better. James Brown now, now when brother Hubert and I started searching that, they tried to tell us that James Brown sailed from the islands in the 1600s, but we find that could not be so because the grave site that we have of James Brown, and we do have a grave site in San Domingo, which is one of the oldest ones around, of James brown and his birthday to set at 1792. So if he sailed in 1600, then that made him an old man. And then as, I don't know, Hubert has done more extensive work, but we could not find his father, who James Brown's father was. Now we found some information about some other Browns, like George Brown, that could have been related. You see, when you go back there, the whole area, this whole area was only two counties, which was Somerset and Dorchester. So all this was Somerset. So therefore, originally, originally Somerset County was settled by African-Americans from. And they came up and settled in the county and some of them came here. So we're saying that James Brown could have been born right here, which is the most likely case. And he went to Georgetown County to find a wife, which was Elizabeth. And from there, they produced all these children and so forth. [00:36:41][684.2] [00:36:42] Newell Quinton: You see, in our family, we have a contention that John H. Quinton really came from the Caribbean. Now, we're trying to document that by talking to other people, and of course, this is occupation as a mariner. And we truly believe that he was a sailor from the Caribbean area. Oh, my sister? Older sister who was working at Howard at the time, did make acquaintance with some gentleman whose name is Tony Quinton and his family is from St. Croix. He relates the story of a man by the name of James Quinton who is his great grandfather and that John is possibly his brother. And the story that he tells us is that they've been looking for John for some time. Because the family there in Jamaica or St. Croix, well it seems that St. Croix at the time was a big connecting point for these sailors that one member of the family left with all the money and they couldn't find him and his name was John. So Tony, Tony tells us that he believes that we are his distant cousin and sure enough. We're trying to validate that by talking with Tony and his side of the family, who still live in St. Croix, but he says that John actually originated in Jamaica and he's a sailor and sure enough when we surveyed our property, the surveyor did find a ballast stone used there's a marker on the property. And of course, in those days, ballast stones were used to level the ship so that those ships would sell the level up and down the waterways. And so I still have that ballast stone in my garage that was used as a marker for his property. And as Eugene said, he purchased his property, I pulled his deed out here, oh, in 1899. And no, I'm sorry. He purchased it more than he bought it. He gave some of it. 1896 is when he purchased his property, some 43 acres, for $365. So that's probably the money that Tony's looking for. [00:39:25][162.9] [00:39:28] Rudy Stanley: Now, to piggyback on that, the Caribbean connection is the fact that a lot of people in the area were sailors when you look at the census. And one of the things we said is like the Quintin, that one of things they did was that they sailed out of Riverton, which is down the road from Sharpe Down, is where most of them sailed out. And they did that in the wintertime, when it was winter up here, they sailed and took crops and stuff down to the Caribbean, and they stayed down there in the winter months. And they came back up in the summer. And that's one of the things we find as we look at some of the families like the the Watts who Stephen Watts who married Louisa Stanley he was traced back to the Caribbean and a few of those other families in there that were traced back too coming out of the Caribbean but one of things we can say is that in the in the area of San Domingo as I look and went back all of San Domingo at one time was owned by Where I live now, there is a cemetery. And I walk cemeteries all the time. My wife, you know, just in the car sometimes, I see a cemetery right around, I walk out there and see what's happening. But right around right down the road from me where I live on the Cobleman Road is a cemetery. And it's an old one that's in the woods. And when I go in there and look at the graves, they are English's. And I know I see people in here like Bill English. I asked him was it his family or not. And because there's, you know, there's little gates around them. And I look at tombstones and they died like 1848, 1839. So they're right there and in the old days, most families buried their family right on the land and so forth. So what I'm saying is that probably there was so much land that they didn't mind selling land to these people here and the Rose Anthony and Betsy Dutton and James Brown. And we were saying that we don't know because when you look at the census, most of them are not classified as black. They're classified as, what's the word I'm looking for, mulattoes, you know. So they might not have known what's going on and so forth. And then again, understand that most people wanted the land by the river. They didn't mind, if you're gonna walk back in there, you can have that, cuz I don't want that land by that, because at the time, the river was the means of transportation. Now, you're talking about Sharptown just being established around the 1770s, something like that. So that was a nice neighborhood and coming to the river there. So you're going to walk a couple miles up there. In. Want that land that's fine we're not going to use it so I'm I'm believing that that's one of the reasons why they sold the land to them and then to get money to get cash money I mean which is as we look at a lot of the transaction were cash money they understand that that when we say San Domingo was a self-sufficient community and that we had skills right there skills lots of different skilled people that did things like uh blacksmiths you know and you had your horses so you brought him out there to have him. Shoot and so forth, the other skills had a lot of the sewing and all those things like that. I can remember my mom making things like the feed man would bring the sacks and we'd take those sacks, and she'd make different things out of that and so on. So a lot that was skills that they used. [00:42:37][189.0] [00:42:37] Newell Quinton: And that's, we don't want to under state that because there were significant skills in the community and one trade was caulking. Significant number of men worked in the boats caulkin and unfortunately one of the, you know, Eugene and I talk a lot. I said, I should have been paying more attention and held on to some of those tools that I know Mr. Fraser Brown had. Of caulking boats and they would travel from San Domingo to Cambridge to work in a shipyard. Mr. Hopkins would travel that far to work on his shipyards caulkin boats. So they had significant skills that they supported each other with. Now I do not recall in my youth having to go outside of the community for any skill and I say that very because my father knew someone in the community who could do most anything, whether he was an automotive mechanic, a carpenter, as Eugene said, blacksmithing. If you name it, there was some skill there. And I was very impressed with these men as a young person. Of course, I always thought those men were huge, because I was so small. But I remember, probably one of Hubert's relatives, Mr. Neyman Brown. Yes. A very strong man. And my father would go up there, Mr Ney would repair automobiles. And daddy used to tell me, he says, now watch Ney. They didn't call him Ney, but they called him Ne. He said, now, watch Ne. And I said, why do you want to watch Ne? And he said, well, he's going to turn that boat off with his hand. And sure enough, most of those he would just twist off. And then Mr. Harmon, Mr. Charlie Harmon, my father would say, well, he's going to come down and trim the hoofs on the mule this afternoon. And of course, I was probably about, I don't know, 10 or 12 again. And, of course I was always a little leery of the mules. I would use it to cultivate and things like that. But when he told me he was going to trim the hooves, I'd never seen that done. And I said, really? I said isn't he going to get kicked? So I watched Mr. Charlie do this, and of course he just backed up to him and leaned on him and pulled his hind leg up, you know, he just back up to them like this, reached down, pulled his high leg up and of the course the poor mule couldn't do anything because he had to stand on the other foot. Then Mr.Charlie did, you now, clean his hoof and cut it and all and did the same thing to the front. He just leaned up to the fron and reached down and picked up his front hoof and put it over his leg. And so I was in a nerfing out there, you know, and things like that were going to Mr. Frazier. Anyone who needed water would call Mr. Frazier and he would come by with this, uh, blocking tackle. You take a five foot piece of pipe and started down and you stood and he tells pull the rope and you'd be pulling this rope and this block of wood will come down and, and, and he'd drive about six sections of pipe down, get down about 30, 40 feet, and he'd put a pump head on it and pump it off. And so most of the wells in San Domingo are probably 50, 60 feet deep because that's the way they were drilled. And of course if you got at a period of time where you got too much rust in the pipe and it didn't work. Then Mr. Frazier would come by and take the head off with his shotgun and shoot down it. And put the head back on it and pump it off again. And that's what happened. That's the way they lived. And those skills is what would, that's the they supported each other. What they needed, they knew who to call to come get it. Even at hall killing, we talked about hall killing. Well, the reason I continue to do the hall killing because it was important to my mother. There was something that she lived with. And so she still lacks to see it done. And in my youth, That was a tradition that the whole community did in and around Thanksgiving to provide meat for the winter. And that provided meat, lard, made scrap oil, sausage. And most households in that community went through that soap, yes, made lye soap. And it was just a question of what Saturday, or which day you were gonna be at someone's house helping them butcher a hog. And go through this process and their duties for the women to make the sausage and the soap and the lard and the men did the butchering and the kids were not allowed to touch the meat because it was for the winter and we did the pumping of the water and getting the wood. I did that probably until I was about 16 because they didn't trust me to mess up and thank you. But the point being is that you had those skills that they shared, shared their skills and the knowledge and kept that community together. I can't think of, oh, I'm thinking about even as late as, late into the 80s, there were people in that community that helped each other doing most anything that needed to be done. And I say it lightheartedly, particularly, and you gotta know the people to appreciate it. And like Mr. Frazier, Mr. Ott, they were people who worked hard, but there was always a pleasant sense of humor, pleasant disposition with these people who worked and struggled so hard. And it's just a matter of listening to them as a, I wasn't gonna tell this story, but I will. There were three or four barbershops in San Domingo. Mr. Raymond Brown had one. I forget what other, I know there's one by... My uncle's house, Mr. Reed Gauzy, was a barber. And we were in high school. What is it? Gray Harman. And in high-school, you always wanna make sure you look your best and all. So we would say, every other Saturday, you had to get your hair cut. And seeing dust white and these guys from Salisbury. So we got into the barber shop, and of course he said, now, how do you want it? Which really didn't matter. You got it right. That's right. But he was polite and he would ask the question. Well, how do you want it? And everybody looked the same. As you ask the question, the first thing that popped into my mind is that's the second time I saw my father cry. I saw him cry the first time when my baby brother died, and I didn't understand that. He was a baby and I asked him what was wrong. And he explained to me that the baby had died. And then the second time was when the church burned. And he was sitting at a table and he was crying because the church had burned. Well, you wanna... [00:50:16][458.8] [00:50:17] Rudy Stanley: It was the late 70s, 78, 79, around in there, and if anything, it pulled the community back together again, is what it did, because I think Brother Rudy over there was the chairman of that, and we were able to rebuild that church in a short period of time, and pay it back, and so that was a pulling together of the community, was what happened. [00:50:43][25.7] [00:50:46] Newell Quinton: It was a tragedy for sure, but the whole community was devastated. [00:50:57][11.5] [00:51:00] Rudy Stanley: See, San Domingo was truly one of those communities that, as he talked about, the church and the school were two of the driving forces in the community. I mean, we grew up the church of the school, you know? Everything happened in the church, and so forth. Even the youth that we had back then, we'd walk out there, you'd have a great time walking out there and walking home, you got to church, on Sunday morning, you went to church and you were there, and you nice and neat, because everybody knew you, so if you cut up in church. You It was a great experience and like he said back in the day when the lady was calling me I said you know up until about the middle 60s you knew every family in San Domingo. You know you could tell you every family lived in San domingo I went away to college in 66 and when I came back home in 70 there were so many different changes in the community and so forth and ever since then we say it. Created those changes. I have no clue, sir. I was in college. [00:51:59][59.2] [00:52:01] Newell Quinton: I think a lot of the youth ask me that question and talk with them and I think Just as we worked so hard to pursue an education for better jobs and being able to provide for ourselves, the economic conditions and the social changes in the country affected that community like it affects most other communities. And so you had people in my generation were mobile at that time because of integration. They could live in a place that wanted to they could get better jobs They at that time moved off the farm. They finished, fortunately finished high school and there was not the incentive to stay or not incentive but the limitation was you didn't have to stay in that defined area that you could move and do a better way of supporting yourself. So those social changes also meant that the descendants of the families in San Domingo would not stay there. They moved to Salisbury, Baltimore, Washington, wherever, Philadelphia. And so people in my generation were the ones that didn't stay in San Domingo because of the changes from social, socioeconomic conditions were improving for the country and they affected African-American communities in that manner that took advantage of the Civil There was a great benefit from that standpoint. But when you look at it from the standpoint of impact on an African-American community of this nature, then it was a significant negative impact, if you look it from that stand point. So you had pluses and minuses. In our community was the E.I. DuPont in Seaford Delaware that provided significant employment for people. At a reasoNabble wage, because up to that point, all the men in San Domingo were either working on the farm in the lumber, timber, cutting wood, working in a marble package company, or that about, if, yeah, and making whatever way they could. But that was another discussion my father and I used to have. DuPont provided them a way to make a significant amount of money. And Mr. Gauzey, Ruel Gauzy here, he will laugh at me because I was a junior in college, I think. And up to that point, I had always worked on a farm during the summer with Melvin, smiling back here. And we were working on a form 10 hours a day, 75 cents an hour, you know. And at that time, we didn't think anything up. That's what we did. That's we had to do to get to enough money to go to college with our National Defense student loans. So, DuPont provided summer employment for some youth. I've forgotten. Fortunately, I was one of those who could work at DuPoint that summer. And I was making $4 an hour. So I say to my father, I said, hey, Danny, this isn't bad. So he says, I swear to me now, I said I was making 75 cents an hour, working 10 hours a day. And I would come home dirty, tired, what have you. I'm going to DuPont, I'm getting $4 an hour, and I'm coming home, I have a bus of the sweat. So I said, I said look, why don't I just see if I can stay at DuPon? And that's when, as Paul says, when we had the reckoning. And of course I was working at Dupont as a custodian, as a janitor, that I thought was great. Because it was from what I had been accustomed to. The opportunity I got just to work at DuPont this summer. So I said, wait a minute, this could work for me. $4 an hour. And so fortunately, I had a father that says, boy, are you crazy? I said, nah, you're going to finish school and get out of here, because he didn't want me to stay as a janitor, but you know, from where I, all I knew about living at the time, right, is that, wait a minute, I'm off the farm. I'm working eight hours, eight hours a day, four dollars an hour. I was working 10 hours a day 75 cents an hour, tart and dusty and dirty every day. But he did a reality check with me. So thank the Lord for that. It was really a relationship between Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington that provided for the establishment of schools for the education of African-Americans in the southern parts of the United States. And truly, The Rosenwald Fund comes on board during the second half of that building cycle because the first part, Booker T. Washington was going around the country trying to raise money for education. And I forget where his biography says he, I think it was his trip to New York where Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington joined forces and then Julius Rosenwold. Endorsed the idea of education of African-Americans in southern states and provided a fund by which communities could petition the fund for building purposes. He had certain conditions there that the community had to provide a portion of the money, the county or the state had to provided a portion and a portion would come from is fun. So there had to be an involvement of the school system as well as the community before his fund could be used. So it's truly from cooperation with Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald that that was done. And more than 5,000 schools were built across the southern states in the United States. And in Maryland, I think there were 250-some built. And in Wicomico County, there were seven. And the one that we have in San Domingo was one of those. It was built in 1919. And I think $500 was from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which probably was a significant amount of money. I forget how much money was totally spent out of the fund for all the schools. But for the one in San domingo, I think a $500 came from Julius Rosenwall Fund, about $600 from the residents of San Domingo. And about $3,000 from the county to build a school. The people in San Domingo donated lumber and the labor to dig the foundation. And the land, of course, was donated by William Brown. But it was that relationship with Booker T. Washington, Julius Roosevelt. [00:59:31][449.5] [00:59:31] Rudy Stanley: For those of you that are here, one of the things that we found in looking at the whole school is that we don't have very many pictures. To be a community that had a school as long as there are not many pictures or artifacts left from the school. So this was a three and a half by, no, two by three inch photo that I happened to find from my sister-in-law. And as I looked at it, I said, let me take that up. So what I did was I blew it up to this size. And in blowing it up, we found out that this is a picture of a group of students outside of the school. Now, I have had this around with some of the older folks, and we can't identify any of these people on here. So we have no data as to what's going on here, but you can tell a side of the score right there. Now, that's the picture. Now, my sister can identify with that. My dad, he weighed about 320-some pounds. For those of you that some of them know my father, I never seen him that small. So, you know, because I asked him, Dad, how'd you get that big? He said, well, Mom put yeast powder and everything she made. It just blew me up. And so now, my Sister Elaine can identify with Dad being that small, but I can't. That is Stephen Watts. Uh, most people... No, Mr. Stephen Watts. He lived back there by the gauzes and so forth. However, his father was also Stephen Watts, and he's the one that came from the Caribbean that married my great aunt who was Louisa Stanley who was a Jeff. He was the oldest in 1855 and Louisa was born in 1856. And so that's his son there. [01:01:18][106.4] [01:01:18] Newell Quinton: You know, what happened when the county started paving the roads? They did it without rhyme or reason. And it seems that if you happened to be living on that road at a time and was, I guess, influential in convincing the county we needed paving, and someone in the county knew you. That was your name, like I live on Quentin Road. I assure you that the McLaughlin family was far more numerous and had far more property along Quentin road than my grandfather did or my great grandfather did. But at the time that this paving was done, my father was active and I think the people in the county of New Helm. And... That's what happened. You know, I bumped into Mr. Norris Twilley one day, and I was talking to him about that, and he told me how that came about, and basically I'm relating that to you, that they put names on those roads for. The most best known person at the time, but other than that it doesn't have any significance. [01:02:39][80.1] [01:02:42] Rudy Stanley: If you look at the census back in probably about 1910 or 1920 then what Quinton Road is called McLaughlin Road. It was called Mclaughlin Road then. [01:02:50][8.3] [01:02:51] Newell Quinton: Yeah, because when I was going to school, as I said, there were more McGlottons. Mr. Will McGlotten, Murray McGlutton, Andrew McGlouton, Herman McGlutton. Those were huge families, huge, lots of property there. But it's just at a time in the sequence of events that, when that occurred. So we get asked that a lot when I go to, they say, what's your address? And I said 25954 Quinton Road. I said, well, don't worry about it, it's just... Just a coincidence, you know. But it's, and like Elsie Brown Loop, I mean, people knew Mr. Elsie Brown lived in that area. And he was well known, very influential person. And I think that loop got his name, which is good. I mean it helps a lot, particularly, and people like Mr. Elsy, who was a very, very significant person in the history of the community. I mean, it's good from that standpoint. Obviously, in the black community, they certainly didn't believe it was just or right, but it had an impact on their thinking in race relations. But it's like most other things at the time. There's a great limitation on what you could do. And at least that's the way it was related to me by my parents. I'm sure it was. Certainly disgusted. On a good day, if I get my mother talking, she will still tell me about the occurrence of that and how sad it was and what a shame it was by the way that person here was lynched in Salisbury. You know, it was that period of time in our history where Black people had limited influence and limited power to do anything. And so, you know, I mean, I think they did a terrific job of holding on to what they had and developing. And maintaining the lifestyle in a community as big as San Domingo became and holding on to as much property as they did in face of all the hurdles they had to go over. So yeah, they talked about those lynchings and even how to interface with the white community. I mean, that was taught to us significantly, even in our education, even in school system. It was, you must excel just to be accepted. I mean, that wasn't just do your homework. You must excel to be excepted. I mean that was from grade school through high school. I mean it's hard to explain that to our youth. My high school class out of Salisbury, there was 99 students. Class of 1962. I think six or seven of us were able to go to. And I often think of all my other classmates, you know, they ended up working at, in the, some entry level labor skill, either on a farm, chicken plants, camel soups at the time, or what have you. Not that that was bad. I'm saying that was the conditions at the time and fortunately, six of us were fortunate enough to go to school. And pursue higher education. So because we had that opportunity, we do have an obligation to the community and to our forefathers to be successful. So yeah, that was not taught to us, it was preached to us. You must... Yeah, you didn't have a choice. That was no debate about coming home. And those other issues that you talk about, oh yeah, they were always present because of being accepted. You had to overcome those hurdles. It wasn't that you were gonna be able to remove those hurdles, they treated it as if those hurdles were gonna be there and you had to overcome those and not let them be in your way. So it's a different. It's a different mindset. It's not that you can, your success depends on your ability to remove the hurdles. Your success depends on the ability to get over the hurdles or get around it. The only part I was talking about a little bit is that students of today have lots of questions. And one question is when we were tutoring, the kids were, first they wanted to know where San Domingo came from and why we were in the area we were. So we explained that. And of course, that got us into this big void that the students today seem to have, is that they have missed two generations shorter in their history. Their grandparents know this story, But their parents because of in the age of mobility and information have not conveyed the story to their kids about our history. And so because of that, our kids in our tutoring class really didn't know the story of San Domingo and how it came about. And so they asked a question. This one, why can't we have a town like everybody else? And why don't we incorporate. And so I forget the student's name. I said, you know what, I said I can tell you why, as far as I know, and it's just my opinion, is that our forefathers really did a great job of providing for their families. And you have to understand that in those days, moving forward in a political. Or issue would have been very risky. In the society at the time. So that's probably why they didn't do it. So he says, well, why don't we try to do it now? And I said, well fine. It would be a great civics lesson. And so we sat down with him, we wrote a letter to, I think to the county council, I think even to the governor's office, asking about the guidelines for incorporation of a township. And unfortunately, the governor office responded. And his parent got the letter, and she put the Cahils to it before I could work with him to explain the next process. But I was here, I realized, this is a great civics lesson to show him how state and local government works, that you have to ask for certain provisions and then you work the process. And so that's what we were going to do. We were going use it as a teaching tool. But we didn't get to do it. But anyway, I explained to them that... Probably the reason it had never occurred is because our forefathers had enough to do with just providing for their families and holding on to what they had as opposed to looking towards. Incorporating of a township. And of course, we didn't get to talk to the mother to explain to her that really there's no danger, there's a risk, it's a great education tool and it helps your son understand what the political process is of going to, you know, to the state and then to the local government. Well, the answer to your question is no. Eugene's gonna give me a short answer. The answer is no, but. They both. But, see, the the answer doesn't do. The work that the men did justice now now to give it justice yes there were a group of men called the far fighters i forget force it was it was anyway there were there were forsters because and they actually built a two-story brick building that would that would have space for two far engines and upstairs was the meeting place that they allowed the teenagers to have record hops. But they did build a building, and it sits not too far in front of the old school, but they never ever got the money to buy a fire engine. [01:11:49][538.2] [01:11:51] Newell Quinton: But they were in the process of having a fire engine in San Domingo. Yes, and when we were, I don't know, in high school, that was one of our big activities was you could have record hops on the second floor of the fire house. The most significant feature there is still Zion United Memphis Church. As I said, it's really just a shell of what it used to be. But there's a significant number of families there. We do a newsletter from our church. And we send that newsletter out to... [01:12:30][38.9] [01:12:30] Rudy Stanley: About 200 homes. [01:12:31][0.8] [01:12:31] Newell Quinton: 200 homes, but they're spread out. I mean that's that's this issue of being incorporated and knowing the geography of the place. And those 200 households in some way or another are still connected back to these original families. I find some of the grand kids are after they have retard or moving back. A few, not a lot, but there's still, still about 200 houses spreading around that will say they're still a part of San Domingo. But the most important thing is their presence of the church, and people that live in other communities still worship at church because they have ties there from family. The people in San Domingo do the same thing as everybody else did. They sold their inheritance. And so you have a few families that still own the property, but a significant number of them sold their family land. And most of them, what land they own, they own the land that their house sits on. And that's different than owning significant acreage where they would have tilled. So you have that dynamic that occurred Oh, and the 80s are the 90s. Because, again, my generation that didn't want to get dirty, feeding the hogs and feeding the chickens, went off to the cities and sold their inheritance, except for very few that held on to their homesteads. [01:14:16][104.2] [01:14:20] Rudy Stanley: When you looked at a map, they owned quite a bit of land around in San Domingo. And after that, it started deteriorating down, and you have very few families now that own the land down there. They sold it all, partial and so forth, but things like that. [01:14:36][16.0] [01:14:37] Newell Quinton: And you buy a piece of property, build a nice home, and it happens to be in this geographical area that we, at one point, called San Domingo. You see that quite often. I mean, there's several white families in the area that we call San Domingo, but I mean there's no connection. They just happen to have bought some of that property, built a very nice home and that's where they live. [01:14:37][0.0] [4417.3] |
| Duration | 1:19:01 |
| Recording Date | Feb 3, 2011 |
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