L'Hermitage

In the late 1700s, a large slave village was constructed at L'Hermitage in Frederick County. By 1800, as many as 90 enslaved laborers lived there, an unusually large number for the area. The enslaved people were owned by the Vincendière family, French planters who fled the 1793 slave revolt in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, and acquired land and enslaved laborers to establish L'Hermitage plantation, apparently seeking to recreate the Caribbean slave system there. Local authorities did not favor their methods, and court records indicate that members of the household were accused of mistreating enslaved people and withholding food and clothing. In 1798, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz gave an eyewitness account describing a row of wooden houses, one stone house, and instruments of torture including stocks, wooden horses, and whips. L'Hermitage was sold in 1827, and the farm never again had a sizable enslaved population. In 2003, archeologists confirmed the location of the slave village, and foundations and artifacts uncovered there helped illuminate the lives of the people who labored there.

Ballenger Creek, Maryland · United States