From the late 1600s to the mid-1800s, large tobacco plantations dominated the economic and social life of Prince George’s County, and Northampton was one of the county’s most prominent plantations. In 1673, Charles Calvert, Esq., the third Lord Baltimore, granted the 1,000-acre Northampton Plantation to Thomas Sprigg, and the plantation was home to the Sprigg family and their slaves and servants for nearly 200 years. In 1865, Dr. John Contee Fairfax, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, purchased Northampton, which continued as a working farm until the 1950s. For almost 300 years, African Americans lived and worked at Northampton Plantation, and archaeological excavations, historic documents, and oral histories provide information about the lives of slaves and tenant farmers there. Numerous descendants of the 18th- and 19th-century slaves and tenants who lived and worked at Northampton still reside in Prince George’s County, and many trace their family history to Elizabeth Hawkins, who lived at Northampton during the 19th century. Two descendants, James and Raymond Smith, lived in the brick duplex with their grandmother, Susie Smith, in the 1920s, and although they moved away in the mid-1920s, they often visited her during the summer months into the 1930s. Descendants of Elizabeth Hawkins said that five living generations of Hawkins descendants, numbering more than 400 people, remained tied to the place, with more than three-fourths living within a 20-mile radius of the slave cabins in Lake Arbor. Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of artifacts from the slave quarters at Northampton, many from subfloor storage pits called root cellars that held vegetables, canned food, and personal belongings. Artifacts such as pottery fragments, animal bones, buttons, glass bottles, tobacco pipes, and toys have helped determine when the cellars were used and abandoned and have provided valuable information about the daily activities of African Americans living at Northampton.
