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Uncovered Black Artifacts Moved To Museum

   Artifacts from a slave’s household are being moved to a museum, as bulldozers prepare to knock down trees off of Route 29 in Silver Spring, Md., to make way for an 18.8 mile toll road.
    The remains belong to Melinda Jackson, a freed slave, who made a life for herself and her five children in an area that is now covered with trees off of U. S. Route 29.
   “This is a truly humbling experience,” said the Rev. Spencer E. Jackson, 61, pastor of the nearby Abyssinia Baptist Church and a great-great-grandson of Jackson. “To be able to endure slavery and survive and bring her children here, it took deep-rooted spirituality to find land to call her own.”

Posted May 7, 2008

    Census records and other documents have filled in the details. Jackson was a slave who was owned by Ann M. Downs. She purchased the home from Downs after the Civil War.
    The property contained a wooden farmhouse that burned down. Near it, researchers have found more than 100,000 artifacts at the site, including bits of tableware, scissors, a thimble, eyeglass frames and an 1860 political badge with Abraham Lincoln on it.
  
   

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