Sooner or later Prince George's
County will run out of land and will be forced in to enter the 21st century.
Until then the time honored and traditional business model is to
"develop" land by making promises pocketing the money and leaving the
county and its residents to find ways on their own to build and maintain neighborhood
infrastructure such as roads, water, and schools. African-Americans have dealt
with development challenges and created many notable communities within Prince George's
County, Maryland.
For example, the area known as Ardwick
was farmland and what is now euphemistically called open-space.. Farming was
the business of the day. From the coming of the Europeans to the beginning to
the 20th century. agriculture was the primary business enterprise of the county.
Ardwick was first platted in 1889 by Thomas Mitchell, a Washington, D.C., real
estate broker. [1]
The
community was one of the growing number of railroad suburb that were platted
between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War II. . In a research
paper by Susan Pearl Susan Pearl the "original plat was abandoned soon
after platting, and the area remained rural, despite the location near the
Ardwick railroad station."[2]
However along Ardwick-Ardmore
Road, between Routes 450 and 410 an African-American community began to
coalesce when William Stanton Wormley, educator and artist, bought a house
in 1902/1903 built a few years earlier,
1897, by Hugh Browne.[3]
Wormley was the "grandson of businessman James Wormley. And, James Wormley
was the far-sighted, cutting-edge, black nineteenth-century businessman and
owner of the Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The Wormley Hotel was the first integrated hotel in the national capital.[4]
The historically African-American
portion of the larger Ardwick community developed around William Wormley's five
acre country retreat. The house and
grounds became a residence and a retreat for the Wormley family. The grounds
once included a tennis court and Trap Shooting Club. The shooting club on the
slopping ground south of the dwelling now covered in mature trees was known as
Wortay Carbro,[5]
The legacy and memory of the hard work
in both the private and public sectors of the Wormley family surely rates our attention today. When Carter G.
Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing
a theme to focus the attention of the public.
The intention has never been to dictate or limit the exploration of the
Black experience, but to bring to the public's attention important developments that merit emphasis. Today, Black
History Month continues the focus on the contributions and lives of African-Americans
who gave so much towards the creation of this county and this county.
[1] Prince
George’s County Land Records, Circuit Court, Plat Book BB 5: 96; “For Sale or
Exchange,” The Washington Post, 13 June 1884.
[2] Susan
G. Pearl, Prince George’s County African-American Heritage Survey, 1996 (Upper
Marlboro, MD: Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning
Commission, 1996), 40.- 41
[3] Maryland
Historical Trust Maryland Inventory of Inventory No. PG: 69-023-17
Historic Properties Form http://www.mncppcapps.org/planning/HistoricCommunitiesSurvey/Documentations/PG%2069-023-17%20William%20Stanton%20Wormley%20House/PG%2069-023-17%20Wormley%20House%20MIHP.pdf
"The Wormley House was constructed c. 1898 for Hugh Browne. In
1902, Browne sold the 5-acre property and modest frame dwelling to his
brother-in-law, Furman Shadd, an early graduate and Administrative Offices of the
Howard University Medical School. Shadd
sold the property one year later to his nephew, William Stanton Wormley."
[4] Wormley,
James (1819–1884) - Entrepreneur, Chronology, Opens Elegant Hotel - Washington,
Business, Wormley’s, and Black - JRank Articles
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/4526/Wormley-James-1819-1884.html#ixzz1lQZClbhv
"In 1868, Maryland senator Reverdy Johnson was appointed minister
to England. He had heard of Wormley’s reputation as a caterer and decided to
offer him a position as his personal caterer. Even though he had a wife and
four children, he accepted the offer. It is said that his culinary skills
contributed to Johnson’s diplomatic success and Wormley’s reputation as a
caterer was that much improved. While abroad he visited the cuisine kitchens in
Paris. Excited about the additional culinary skills learned in Paris, in 1871,
he moved to a more spacious location on the corner of Fifteenth and H Streets
near the White House. At this location, with the aid of U.S. Representative
Samuel J. Hooper, the silent partner and nominal owner, Wormley opened an
elegant hotel which became known as the Wormley Hotel. The older property on I
Street was used as an annex to the hotel. The five-story building boasted 150
rooms, including a bar, a barbershop, and a world-renowned dining room noted
for its cuisine (turtle soup and Chesapeake Bay seafood). It was also renowned
for its well-managed rooms and became the first hotel in Washington, D.C. to
have an elevator and a telephone connected to the city’s first switchboard. For
more than two decades the hotel was the meeting place for black and white
elites as well as distinguished foreigners.
Another milestone
for Wormley on July 21, 1871, according to the Agribusiness Council in
Washington, D.C., was a resolution he authored with the aid of Senator Charles
Sumner. He and Sumner, a Massachusetts Republican and an abolitionist,
persuaded Congress to provide legislation for funding the first public schools
in Washington, D.C. for black Americans. As a result of his efforts, in 1885, a
school known as the Wormley Elementary School for the Colored was built in
Georgetown at Thirty-fourth and Prospect Streets. The school, the last physical
monument attesting to Wormley’s life and time, remained an all black school
until 1952. Subsequently, it was used as a vocational training center for
special needs students. The building was condemned in 1994 and was purchased in
1997 by Georgetown University with the intent of housing its graduate policy
program. Unfortunately, the university later decided to sell the property.
The hotel was the site of the Wormley Conference of 1877, where
representatives of the future president Rutherford B. Hayes and opponent Samuel
Tilden resolved the disputed election of 1876. A “secret deal” later known as
the “Compromise of 1877, or the Wormley Agreement,” ended the dispute of the
twenty electoral votes. Nineteen of the votes were from Florida, Louisiana, and
South Carolina, and one from Oregon. The result of the agreement on February
26, 1877, was that Hayes received all twenty votes. There is no evidence that
Wormley participated in this agreement, which signaled the end of the
Reconstruction era and the fate of black Americans left to the southern state
governments."
[5] Susan
G. Pearl, “Wormley House,” (PG: 69-17) Maryland Historical Trust State Historic
Sites Inventory Form (1989), 8:1.
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