From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family

11. Aquilla and Polly in Pleasant Valley

11 Aquilla and Polly in Pleasant Valley Aquilla and Polly would have found Pleasant Valley to be all that the name implies. Ten miles long and two miles wide, the fertile valley is largely devoted to agriculture even today. It runs north and south between South Mountain to the east and Elk Ridge to the west. Israel Creek—named for the pioneer Israel Friend, who had purchased the land with the ‘‘Indian Deed’’ mentioned earlier—drains the runoff from the valley into the Potomac River in the south. From Pleasant Valley to the Beallmount estate in Montgomery County is about twenty-seven miles as the crow flies. Georgetown is forty-five miles away. On the southwest corner of the valley, Elk Ridge rises to a peak called Maryland Heights that overlooks the town of Harpers Ferry across the Potomac River. In the nineteenth century, the entire ridge was covered with hardwood trees, oak, hickory, and chestnut, and it remains forest today. In 1859, abolitionist John Brown rented a farm on the other side of Elk Ridge from which he staged his raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry and called for slaves and free blacks to join him in an uprising. This renewed the old fears of slave rebellions and ultimately led to the Civil War. Northwest of Pleasant Valley, where Antietam Creek empties into the Potomac, was Samuel Beall’s Frederick Forge. The Civil War Battle of Antietam was fought on the north side of the creek. Beall’s former home Kelly’s Purchase, where Yarrow had lived, was on the edge of the battlefield and served as a field hospital during the clash. Aquilla died in 1832, only seven years after buying his place and well before those events, but Polly stayed in the house for more than aquilla and polly in pleasant valley | 141 fifty years after that. She became midwife to the community, called Yarrowsburg because of her. The Question of Race in Pleasant Valley Today’s residents of Pleasant Valley point proudly to a tradition of racial tolerance, a tolerance born of necessity.1 Early white settlers were a mix of English and Scottish planters, most of them Episcopalian , and German farmers.2 They did not grow tobacco, because the falls on the Potomac River above Georgetown prevented them from getting a tobacco crop to port, but the planters owned slaves all the same, whereas the Germans were Church of the Brethren, a sect that was related to the Methodist and that was opposed slavery. Given their differences, the two groups needed tolerance if they were to live together peacefully, and they seemed to translate that tolerance to African Americans as well. George Ross, a slave in nearby Hagerstown, gave grudging support to this assessment. Looking back on his life in Western Maryland, he said: I was never down South. I was a little ways in Virginia, but not far. Slavery is harder down there than in Maryland. They have larger plantations & more servants, and they seem to be more severe. Down in Prince George’s County, Md., they are a little harder than they are in the upper part of the State. If I had my choice, I would rather live in Maryland than in Virginia.3 Another former slave, George Jones, who lived in adjacent Frederick County, Maryland, had different memories. His own experience led him to conclude, ‘‘the white people of Frederick County as a whole were kind towards the colored people.’’ However, he continued, ‘‘My father used to tell me how he would hide in the hay stacks at night, because he was whipped and treated badly by his master who was rough and hard-boiled on his slaves.’’4 142 | aquilla and polly in pleasant valley Race relations in Pleasant Valley were not perfect, but they were better than in other parts of Maryland, and much better than in the Deep South. Aquilla in Pleasant Valley Alexander Grim had sold Aquilla Yarrow a house and an acre and a quarter of land called Kusitrion in 1825 with Elie Crampton signing the deed as witness. That is where Yarrowsburg is today, just south of the junction of present-day Reed, Kaetzel, and Yarrowsburg Roads. In Aquilla and Polly’s day, the road continued past their house and up Elk Ridge to Solomon’s Gap. From there, it ran down the other side of mountain to meet Chestnut Grove...