Begun by Ex-Slaves, a Prince George's Community Values Its Past
By Tony Glaros
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, July 15, 2006; G01
Squeezed by the thickening sweep of suburbia, Muirkirk remains a slower spot. Residents of the northeastern Prince George's County community still find time to spin stories, keep the nearby graveyard tidy and set the table at church suppers.
Old Muirkirk Road remains the neighborhood's focal point, a slice of relative calm between Beltsville and Laurel. The 15 houses on the shady, winding street vary in age and style, from 100 years old to a contemporary rancher.
Those houses actually are a small residential pocket within Muirkirk, a larger area dominated by industrial parks and other commercial uses. Muirkirk itself has a Beltsville ZIP code.
Growing up, Marsha Brown referred to the neighborhood as Rossville, a name that dates back to when it was settled by freed slaves. She still does. But Rossville, she explained, was always considered a subdivision of Muirkirk. "It was never something that was official. I guess you could say Old Muirkirk Road has become the central area of the community. The church is there. The schools used to be there."
The American Legion hall is around the corner on Muirkirk Road, she pointed out. At one time, she said, Muirkirk even had its own post office down by the railroad tracks.
The signs of the older community are still there in the form of the historic graveyard and the church across the street, Queen's Chapel United Methodist. The congregation traces its roots to 1870, when the first structure went up where the cemetery is today, said Brown, who wrote a book about the history of the church.
"There was already a cemetery for blacks there before the church," she explained as she walked through the sloping graveyard that overlooks Muirkirk Road. "The oldest grave was there well before the Civil War." In 1953, the congregation laid a cornerstone for its second structure, directly across the street. Plans are now in the works to expand the current building.
To accommodate the overflow, Sunday worship services are held at nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School on Ammendale Road.
Set back from the road, nearly camouflaged by a cushion of leafy trees, is Abraham Hall. Built around 1888, it is one of the two oldest buildings in the neighborhood and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The white-frame, two-story building with its neatly painted green shutters "was built by a secret order after the Civil War," Brown said. "After the Civil War, you found small fraternal orders that helped blacks out. Blacks didn't have a lot of money for emergencies, so people pooled their resources." The order, known as Rebecca Lodge No. 6, was part of the Benevolent Sons and Daughters of Abraham.
Around the corner from Abraham Hall is the other oldest house in Muirkirk that, according to Brown, "has retained its historical integrity." Built in 1889, it is where Elizabeth Day and her 13 siblings were born and raised. Day, who is Brown's aunt, has lived in the yellow house for all of her 82 years.
Still robust, she's frequently behind the wheel of her blue Ford Taurus, making the short drive to the grocery store or to church to cook and clean. Like many of her friends and neighbors, Day gets pleasure from slipping into nostalgia.
"I live better now," she said, "but in some ways I miss the old days." Day, who is retired from the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, remembered spending lazy afternoons picking blackberries. "It was country. We had a farm. We raised cabbage, potatoes, beans."
Day's daughter, Brenda Pickett, agreed that life was taken at a slower pace. "We had fun growing up," recalled Pickett, 57. "I still feel like we're in the country, even though they're building up all around us."
One endearing aspect of Muirkirk, Pickett said, is that many natives who have since moved to places such as Fort Meade and Glen Burnie continue to make Queens Chapel their spiritual home. Sundays are a homecoming of sorts during the long day of worship services.
Said Rena Marshall, 49, now of Greenbelt: "It's beautiful country. Everybody knew everybody. I'm not going to say everyone is kin, but you would think they are. I wish my grandbabies had the great outdoors, because the new neighborhoods aren't like this. And the seniors that carry on the legacy at the church -- oh, my goodness!"
The residential part of Muirkirk, tucked away on the east side of the railroad tracks, was settled after the Civil War, largely by freed slaves. Since the 1700s, Muirkirk, named for an area of Scotland, had been a center for iron ore production, according to "Prince George's County: A Pictorial History," by Alan Virta.
Charles E. Coffin, a Bostonian, moved to the county during the Civil War to manage an ironworks at Muirkirk that had started in 1847. In time, Coffin bought the thriving business, which had evolved into a leading producer of charcoal pig-iron. Pig-iron was used by the U.S. Army to make cannons, shot, wagon wheels and other equipment for the Revolutionary and Civil wars.
The Muirkirk area was also the site of Van Horn tavern, located off Old Baltimore Pike. Popular during the Colonial period, the watering hole drew notables, including George Washington. Count de Rochambeau's troops camped there while marching home from victory at Yorktown.
"My family here goes all the way to just after the Civil War," said Brown, who works with special needs students at Kenilworth Elementary School in Bowie. "There were different branches of the family. I am the descendant of Nathan Brown and Matilda Brown," both former slaves.
Old Muirkirk Road "is a well-kept neighborhood with a lot of older homes and a lot of original owners," said Bob Mamula, an agent with Long & Foster in Laurel. "That tells you that people are happy and complacent."
A typical property in Muirkirk, he said, would bring a minimum of $200,000. There are no homes for sale along Old Muirkirk Road.
Many Muirkirk residents work at nearby government agencies, including NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Food and Drug Administration and the headquarters of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission.
There have been plenty of changes in Muirkirk over the years. There was the closing of a landmark brick plant, which moved to Baltimore last year; the arrival of a MARC station in the 1990s, where trains run between Washington and Baltimore; an ever-widening swath of research and development parks west of the Route 1 overpass; and the arrival of an expansive development of brick Colonials and townhouses just north of the community.
That development, called Longwood, rose on what used to be woodland where legions of Muirkirk youngsters accumulated memories.
"I think it's a good thing," former Muirkirk resident Carolyn David said as she looked across the graveyard to where the new development begins. "The property was just sitting there. But I think what's there is enough. You've got to have some open space."
For Elizabeth Day, the key to a simple life is helping people. She is content spending her time in the home where she was born holding tight to her family, her friends, her faith.
"Somebody tried to buy my land today," she sniffed. "I didn't even ask him for a price. I just said no way."
View all comments that have been posted about this article.