Eubert Brown News Today

In a place and at a time when the slave trade was at its strongest, and when most Black people classified as free lived on property owned by others, San Domingo’s founders owned and tended land, set up businesses, built a church and a school, raised families, and generally created a close-knit, thrifty and self-sufficient community that coexisted peacefully with the white towns around them well into the mid-1900s.

Free Black men and women founded an Eastern Shore village to avoid attention. Now their descendants want to share the stories. Jonathan M. Pitts © Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun Newell Quinton on his farm, Gran’Sarah’s Hill, in San Domingo in Wicomico County, Md. It’s a sunny late afternoon on Gran’Sarah’s Hill, Newell Quinton’s 40-acre spread in a wooded corner of northwestern Wicomico County, and the lanky 77-year-old is in his element. His 50 goats scurry and...

San Domingo, established in the early 1800s, is believed to be the oldest settlement of free Black men and women in Maryland.

The free Black men and women who founded an Eastern Shore village strove to avoid attention. Now, their descendants want to share San Domingo’s stories. Baltimore Sun 1 hr ago Jonathan M. Pitts, Baltimore Sun © Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun A map of San Domingo in the rehabbed Rosenwald School building shows the network of roads and properties in the community, which occupies about 7 square miles in rural Wicomico County. It’s a sunny late afternoon on Gran’Sarah’s Hi...