“THIRTY DOLLARS REWARD.”, printed broadside for return of Arch, enslaved. John Winter, Frederick-town [Maryland] 1791.

I’m thankful for a career that brings me into visceral contact with our past - the good, the bad, and the ugly of it.

It doesn’t take much looking at all to figure out that Arch had a lot of good reasons to run away. Being enslaved by Ignatious Davis was nothing like the relatively flowery portrayal of Mid-Atlantic slavery commonly peddled. Sadly, his escape attempt of August 22nd, 1791 was not successful. On June 24, 1793, Davis again advertised a reward for his return. This time the price was reduced - he was willing to pay ten dollars. Even in his cruelty, Davis may have realized that Arch was going to win someday…we don’t know, we may never know, but we can hope that he did.

To the credit of History, Davis would probably be just another name in the census if it weren’t for the remarkable story of Lewis Charlton who was born on his farm in 1814. Lewis’s mother worked for Davis’s wife and was forced to leave him alone in the slave quarters from the time he was two weeks old. At fourteen months, on a bitterly cold day, Lewis’s mother returned at night to find that her son had kicked away the blanket protecting him from the cold and he subsequently lost his toes. When Lewis was seven, Davis died and he was sent to auction, where his mother wept and removed his socks to reveal that he was crippled, hoping no one would bid. At twenty-eight, despite an extremely challenging life, Lewis obtained his manumission. Lewis was a brilliant man. He recognized the value of education, even if he had never had the opportunity to have any himself. In 1866 he traveled as far as Boston to raise funds and successfully established a school for black children in Westminster, Maryland that ran for four years, a stunning accomplishment. He would go on to be a speaker and author of the temperance movement in England, dying in Sheffield in 1888.

Leaving the world of museum-labeling and History behind, I like to think that despite all that had been taken from him - his labor, his freedom, his family - Lewis Charlton felt lucky, grateful even. What Lewis Charlton did is the thing etched in my consciousness by Saving Private Ryan as “Earn[ing] it”. He had been through hell, his family had been through hell, his country had been through hell, yet he was. He survived, he existed, and he chose to earn it rather than simply have it.

The past being, well, the past, there’s nothing we can do to repay Arch for his inspirational courage or Lewis Charlton for his determination and philanthropy, but we can choose to earn it in ways big and small. At the least we can honor them by sharing stories of the past and using their lessons to shape a brighter today and tomorrow. Today I’m grateful for these men, their stories, and a job that allows me to learn them and send them onward.