Northwood News ♦ October 2010

Montgomery County Department of Parks Rebrands Park, Rewrites History

By David S. Rotenstein

The Montgomery County Planning Board is holding a hearing on 28 October to take testimony on the Parks Department’s proposed Master Plan for the Josiah Henson Special Park.  For much of the 20th Century, oral tradition in Montgomery County suggested that a small log building on the Old Georgetown Road property was used by Josiah Henson (pictured at right), the former slave whose autobiography inspired Harriett Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  In 1979, the property was designated a local historic site and, in 2006, the County bought it for $1 million to develop a park.  Subsequent specialist studies (e.g., tree ring dating) revealed that the log building was built long after Henson departed the property and the proposed park’s name was changed from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to “Josiah Henson Special Park.”

Back in 1979, when the property was designated on the Montgomery County Master Plan for Historic Preservation against its owner’s wishes, the owner’s claims that Henson never set foot in the building fell flat under the weight of local historical experts who claimed otherwise.  The County’s chief historian at the time told The Washington Post that that Henson “slept there often.”  As a historian, I think it is wonderful that a portion of the Riley farm has survived and that there is tremendous opportunity there to use its vernacular architecture, landscapes, and archaeological resources as teaching tools.  But, as a Montgomery County resident, I have trouble with one question:  Would the County have paid what is now approaching two million dollars to buy the property and develop the museum had it not been so publicly identified as the Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

The County wants to spend at least another half a million to a million dollars on development, staffing, etc., on this park while it allows existing park properties to remain shuttered and neglected.  All of this while the County begs for money to keep porta potties in the parks.  The hearing may give all County residents an opportunity to give the Planning Board some guidance on how we would like to have the County exercise some fiscal responsibility.

More about the issue at:  historian4hire.

On 16 September, Parks Department’s staff briefed the Planning Board on the proposed Josiah Henson Special Park Master Plan.  The staff report, with tables showing how much the County has spent to date on the property, is available at the Planning Board Website:  www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/ 2010/documents/20100916_Josiah_Henson_Special_Park_000.pdf.

The Josiah Henson Special Park Website — its HTML code still identifies the property as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” — is at:  www.josiahhensonsite.org.  [Note:  This is no longer the case; the language has been removed from the coding.]   ■