Adam Francis Plummer is the author of a remarkable diary, now in the collections of the Anacostia Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and fully digitized. Born enslaved, he was owned by George H. Calvert, the grandson of the fifth Lord Baltimore, and (after his death in 1838) by his son Charles Benedict Calvert. Plummer was secretly taught to read and write by an itinerant minister and ex-slave, John Bowzer, and kept his diary from the time of his marriage in 1841 until his death in 1905.
Plummer was born at Mount Albion, another Calvert property in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and moved to Riversdale at age 10, in 1829. He worked as a field hand, carpenter and shoemaker, and was allowed to keep a small private vegetable plot and retain the money he earned from selling produce and other side jobs. He married a slave at Three Sisters Plantation in Lanham, Maryland named Emily Saunders and unusually, was allowed a legal wedding at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in DC. They would have nine children together, one of whom died as an infant. Initially, he obtained permission to visit his wife weekly, from Saturday night until early Monday morning, walking eight miles each way. After her plan to escape from slavery in 1845 was revealed by Mrs. Plummer’s aunt, Emily and four of her children were sold; a fifth child was later sold to a slave owner in New Orleans as well.
After the end of the Civil War, Plummer elected to remain at Riversdale and work as a foreman. His family was reunited there, and Plummer was able to purchase ten acres nearby (in present-day Edmonston, Maryland) for $1,000 and build a log house in 1870 (now razed).
The diary, a highly unusual document, was found in 2003. It records important family events, including births and deaths; inventories of possessions and prices paid for purchases; clippings from newspapers; and descriptions of community events. After Plummer’s death, his daughter Nellie Arnold Plummer continued the diary, and her later book, Out of the Depths or The Triumph of the Cross (1927), depended largely on her father’s diary and family correspondence to give a primary account of slave life in Maryland.
The Homes
4811 Riverdale Rd., Riverdale Park, MD (Riversdale)
Riversdale (also known as the Calvert Mansion) is a stucco-covered brick mansion in the Federal style. The plantation house was built beginning in 1801 by Henri Stier, a Flemish aristocrat who fled Antwerp during the French Revolution. It was completed in 1807 by his daughter Rosalie Stier Calvert and her husband George Calvert, grandson of the fifth Lord Baltimore. The Calvert family originally owned 729 acres and a large number of slaves. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. Operated as a museum by the Maryland – National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
, Washington, DC
Adam Francis Plummer
4811 Riverdale Rd.
Located in Maryland