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CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL Tamar Brown and her dedication to the
community and describes the cultural
CUMBERLAND AND OLDTOWN, MD significance the community held for its African
Listed as a national Network to Freedom site, American residents.
the C&O Canal stretches 184.5 miles from
Georgetown to Cumberland, MD, and served THE JANE GATES HOUSE
as an escape route for freedom seekers who CUMBERLAND, MD
followed the towpath before crossing into the
free state of Pennsylvania. The canal was a The Jane Gates House honors Jane Gates, who
popular place for freed slaves to work, making purchased an eight-room house shortly after the
it easy for escaping slaves to pose as workers as Civil War as a freed slave working as a nurse and
they made their way along the path. Today, you laundress. Jane Gates is remembered in the
can cycle and hike along the towpath, adjacent to Cumberland community as the first Black woman
the C&O Canal as well as tour the Canal Museum in Allegany County to have a bank account.
members lived, just down the hill in Cumberland to learn more about the canal, its Today, the property is owned and managed by
from Emmanuel Episcopal Church.
workers, and the communities built around it. the Gates family with the mission to rehabilitate
The sexton of the church would ring the house and develop programming that will
the church bells to signal it was safe educate the community and visitors on the
for the escaping slaves to travel to the BROWNSVILLE MONUMENT
history and spirit of Jane Gates.
church’s tunnels, where they would rest FROSTBURG, MD
and receive aid from the reverend and
Travel to the Upper Quad of Frostburg State
other abolitionists. When it was safe,
they would travel the underground University’s campus to visit the commemorative
monument for the community of Brownsville, a
tunnel system to an unpopulated part
self-sustained community for freed Black people,
of town to meet up with transportation
that would take them the four miles filled with rich history and culture, that was
ultimately displaced by the expansion of the
up to the Mason-Dixon Line, a
boundary line that was drawn to university. Tamar Brown founded the town of
Brownsville in 1866 when she purchased the first
solve a border dispute but politically
lot of land for $150 and grew the community to
represented the division between the
North and the South during the Civil 40 families and their descendants. In the 1920s,
the teachers college, called the Frostburg Normal
War. Today, you can schedule tours to
learn about Emmanuel Episcopal School (now Frostburg State University), began to
expand its footprint and ultimately displaced the
Church’s history as well as tour the
40 families and Brownsville’s memory by the
tunnels beneath the church.
1950s. The monument’s plaque commemorates
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