Chestertown Flashback: Thinking About Henry

As is well known in these parts, Henry Highland Garnet was an abolitionist, minister, educator, and orator whose life began in Kent County, where he was born enslaved, and ended as the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, where he died of malaria in 1882. We feature him here today because this week turned into Henry Highland Garnet week at the Historical Society when not one but two distinguished pairs of researchers visited Kent County, independent of each other, to meet with local historians and scholars and visit local sites related to Garnet.

The first were two professors who are also filmmakers and sisters, and whose third great-grandmother was Garnet’s sister-in-law, Diana Williams. They have recently finished a feature film, Hope of Escape, about Williams’ journey out of slavery in North Carolina and toward freedom, and spent the day in Chestertown to continue their research into their ancestor and her family.

Separately at the Historical Society, this week was a history professor pursuing research for a book about Henry Highland Garnet. He was accompanied by the recent U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission to Liberia, who is exploring ways to share knowledge and information about Garnet’s background in the United States with people in Liberia and, conversely, about his time in Liberia with those of us on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Spy readers are advised to be on the lookout for the film and book mentioned above and, as always, other works to come that are centered on various aspects of the rich history of Kent County by scholars, artists, and others, both near and far. Image courtesy of the Historical Society of Kent County.