treasures of the reserve
a family’ s story rediscovered
At Sugarland, a local archaeologist excavates a farmstead— and sheds new light on rural African American life
By Jeff Sypeck
Tucked into the woods just south of Poolesville, a clearing covered with tarps shows few signs of life as winter gives way to spring. Security cameras catch only the occasional deer, raccoon, or fox as it roams through the twilight and quickly moves on.
Yet in the weeks ahead, as the trees put on new leaves and the weeds reawaken, a human presence may return to this clearing. If funding permits, a team of volunteers hopes to take up trowels, brushes, and clipboards to reopen an archaeological site for its sixth season. Amid swarming insects and oppressive heat, they’ ll painstakingly sift through layers of soil to learn more about a family who took their first steps toward freedom here in the 1870s, a story that waited more than a century to be rediscovered.
“ We know a fair amount about the cabins of enslaved people, but here in Maryland, we have limited information on post-emancipation African American homes,” says archaeologist Tara Tetrault, who leads the ongoing project.“ That’ s what makes this opportunity at Sugarland so important.”
An Adjunct Professor at Montgomery College since 2001, Tetrault brings wide-ranging experience to the Sugarland site. In addition to curatorial projects with the National Park Service, the D. C. Office of Archaeology, and the Maryland Historic Trust, she conducted anthropological fieldwork in the central region of Ghana and has worked on prehistoric and historical archaeological sites throughout the mid-Atlantic region. She was even involved in the excavation of a village site at Cahokia, the massive Native American settlement near St. Louis, Missouri. By early 2020, Tetrault was pondering history closer to home. While creating an inventory of early African American sites from archaeological reports, historical documents, and oral histories, she became curious about rural communities in the western upcounty. She was researching the earliest African American churches when she received an interesting phone call from her boss, who believed that Sugarland might have just what she was looking for.
As it turned out, the late Gwen Hebron Reese, founder and first president of the Sugarland Ethno- History Project, had made an unusual wintertime discovery while poking around in the dense woods near the historic Sugarland church.
“ Every Wednesday with Gwen was a surprise,” says current Sugarland president Suzanne Johnson, whose weekly meetings with her cousin to preserve the history of their ancestors’ Reconstructionera community led to continual revelations. At its height around the year 1900, Sugarland had its church— which still stands today— as well as a school, a store, a community hall, a post office, and a practice hall for the town band. Most of the family homesteads are now redeveloped or overgrown, but Johnson sees evidence of them everywhere.“ On one of our walks, Gwen noticed a piece of metal
Five miles south of Poolesville, the Sugarland church was built in 1893 and is open for tours by appointment. The historic cemetery remains an active burial ground for descendants of the community’ s founders.
40 plenty I spring sowing 2026