The Man in the Knit Cap

Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African Studies at Howard University, also looked at an e-mailed copy. He called the signature "distorted Arabic," also speculating that the recorder had attempted to copy the foreign signature. Nyang concluded that Yarrow was probably literate in Arabic and of Fulani heritage, among whom the name Yaro may be found today.

The house on Dent Place wasn't Yarrow's only real estate undertaking, nor was Aquilla his only heir. Court records at the National Archives show that in 1843 a woman named Nancy Hillman of Frederick filed a lawsuit in the District to collect on an unpaid loan that Yarrow had made in 1821 to help a merchant buy a "two story brick dwelling and store house with extensive back buildings, situated on the west side" of what is now Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown.

Hillman said in the suit that she was the daughter of Yarrow's sister and his only surviving heir. In 1850, the court awarded her $451 in unpaid principal and interest on the loan. Hillman died a year later. She apparently had no heirs. The copy of her will, which was filed with the Frederick County probate court, left her entire estate to two lawyers in Frederick. The reason for this is unknown. Nor is anything more known about Yarrow's sister. She presumably came from Africa as a slave and stayed in touch with her brother.

During the proceedings, Hillman told the court that Yarrow's son Aquilla died in Harpers Ferry in 1832. The 1830 census showed Aquilla Yarrow as a freedman living in rural Washington County, Md. Records at the county register of wills confirm that Aquilla died in 1832. His estate was valued at $170, but his debts exceeded his assets. There is no mention of heirs.

I shared the probate records with Diane Broadhurst, the Montgomery County researcher. She noticed the word "Polly" next to an entry for fabric in the inventory of Aquilla's estate. Broadhurst pointed out that the 1850 census for Washington County listed a 45-year-old black woman named Mary Yarrow. Broadhurst suggested that this Mary and Aquilla's Polly were the same person, noting that Polly was often a nickname for Mary. Polly, who was about 15 years younger than Aquilla, undoubtedly was his wife.

Looking at a contemporary map of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., I made an accidental discovery. Among the roads across the Potomac four miles away in Washington County, Md., was one named "Yarrowsburg Road."

Yarrowsburg isn't a town; it's just a collection of old, and older, houses at the intersection of Yarrowsburg, Reed and Kaetzel roads. It lies in Pleasant Valley, nestled against the hulk of Elk Ridge. The surrounding countryside is birthplace and battlefield of the Civil War and of significance in African American history. Before seizing the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859, abolitionist John Brown and his men lived for several months on a farm they rented only a mile over Elk Ridge from Yarrowsburg. In the summers of 1862, 1863 and 1864, Union and Confederate armies clashed repeatedly throughout Pleasant Valley. The Battle of Antietam took place six miles as the crow flies from Yarrowsburg. It was after this battle that Lincoln brought forth the Emancipation Proclamation.

In Yarrowsburg one day last fall, I ran into William Mullenix, whose family has lived there for generations.

I casually asked Mullenix: "How did Yarrowsburg get its name?" He answered immediately. "It was named after a woman named Polly Yarrow, who lived here a long time ago. My grandfather told me."

Minutes later, Mullenix volunteered the clincher: "She was black, you know. My grandfather said the place was named after her because she was the midwife for the area. Delivered all the babies, black and white. She was old, but I don't know when she died."

Local historian John Frye, a lifelong resident of Pleasant Valley and director of the Western Maryland Room at the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, furnished me with a copy of an 1877 atlas of Maryland. It marks the location of "Mrs. Yarrow's house." The house is gone now, but it had once stood across the road from where I met Mullenix. He remembered being told that it was a tiny two-room house that had burned to the ground.

In an archival copy of the Hagerstown Herald and Torch Light dated November 26, 1885, this obituary appeared: "An old colored woman, named Polly Yarrow, whose exact age is not known, but was over 100 years, died on last Saturday, at a little village, called Yarrowsburg, near Crampton's Gap, in Pleasant Valley, in this county." Mullenix said that Polly Yarrow was buried in a field down the road. He recalled there had once been a marker for her grave, but he hasn't been able to find it lately.

The Rev. Sherman Lambert is pastor of Mount Moriah Baptist Church in nearby Garretts Mill, Md. Its congregation draws from a small African American community a mile from Yarrowsburg. Lambert invited me to Sunday services to talk with church members. I hoped to get more oral histories about Polly Yarrow, but no one had heard of her. Everyone at the church was surprised to learn that Yarrowsburg was named for a black woman and to hear the story of Charles Willson Peale and Yarrow Mamout, because Yarrowsburg itself has never been considered an African American community.

After services, church trustee Jim Brown and I strolled through Mount Moriah Cemetery with Lambert. It was a crystal-clear fall afternoon. Pleasant Valley was earning its name. We talked about the many graves dating back more than 100 years and the need to find out who was buried in the unmarked ones.

At the end of our walk, I asked Brown: "There weren't many at church today. Judging by the graveyard, the black community here used to be larger. What happened to all the people?" Brown answered: "Brown v. Topeka Board of Education is what happened. Once the schools were integrated, the kids here went to the big high school in Hagerstown. A diploma from that school meant something. It allowed the young people to get jobs in the city or go to college. Black people finally had opportunity."

America was hardly the land of opportunity for Africans when Yarrow first set foot here more than 250 years ago. Nonetheless, he worked hard and overcame not only slavery but also financial setbacks to win the respect of those who knew him. He left behind two remarkable paintings and this, his story. And then there is Yarrowsburg, that rarest of American villages bearing the African name of a man who was brought here in bondage.

James H. Johnston is a lawyer and writer in Washington.