Charles Sumner Post
Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty:
Local Nonprofit Teams up With Starr Center to Save Important Civil War Relic
Charles Sumner Hall, 2001
Walk down Chestertown's South Queen Street, and you would probably miss what is the only building of its kind left standing in the United States. Once barely visible behind a tangle of vines and trees, but now exposed and in the process of being restored, stands the Charles Sumner Post, an abandoned structure that once served as a meeting hall for African American Civil War veterans. The Starr Center is working with a local nonprofit group to save this nationally significant historic structure.
Threatened years ago with demolition and more recently by the possibility of collapse, this extremely rare artifact was purchased by a local non profit group, Preservation Incorporated. "Our immediate concern is to stabilize the building to prevent further deterioration," says Tom Mack, the president of Preservation Incorporated.
Roy Kirby & Sons, a Baltimore based general contracting firm, painstakingly disassembled the interior trim, shored up the building, poured new foundations and footings, and is in the process of rebuilding the structural framing. The bulk of the funding has been provided by the Maryland Historical Trust the National Trust's Bartus Trew Providence Preservation Fund, Preservation Maryland, the Kent County Heritage Trust, Historical Society of Kent County, and Kent County Arts Council.
Soldiers guarding Washington, D.C.
Courtesy Library of Congress
The current appearance of the Charles Sumner Post provides little indication of its significance to Civil War history. Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, over four hundred and fifty slaves and free blacks from Kent County fought to gain their freedom and preserve the Union. Most of the men enlisted in regiments of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.), which consisted of segregated black units commanded by white officers. Maryland's 7th, 19th and 30th Regiments of the U.S.C.T. had large numbers of Kent County soldiers in their ranks. Many paid the ultimate price in their quest for freedom. Mortality rates were appallingly high, with many soldiers dying of disease on forced marches or in the unsanitary field hospitals of the day. Others were killed in some of the bloody engagements of the war, such as the infamous Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, Virginia.
Shortly after the Civil War ended, a small group of African American veterans from Kent County formed a local branch of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the largest and most powerful Union veterans' organization in the United States, and the only racially integrated beneficial organization of the nineteenth century. Black, white, and even a few mixed race G.A.R. posts were formed throughout the North and South. State and local chapters that refused to allow the formation of black or mixed race posts were threatened with expulsion by the national leadership. "Having suffered together through brutal forced marches and on the bloody battlefields of the war, a unique bond of comradeship was formed that transcended racial considerations," explains Barb Gannon, who wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the history of African Americans in the G.A.R.
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Formed primarily as a beneficial organization for their fellow soldiers, the Charles Sumner Post's mission was guided by the national G.A.R.'s motto, "Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty." Fraternity was expressed at the weekly gatherings of members, which, after 1908, took place at their specially constructed meeting hall on South Queen Street. Named in honor of the leading anti slavery senator from Massachusetts, the Charles Sumner Post served as a place where soldiers could share and celebrate their stories of hardship and heroism. In addition to the local meetings, there were once yearly gatherings called "encampments," which attracted thousands of G.A.R. men from all over the country.
Charity work of the Charles Sumner Post was carried out primarily by the Woman's Relief Corps, the first such group founded in Maryland. While the Charles Sumner Post was the twenty fifth G.A.R. post formed in Maryland and therefore listed below the other posts that preceded it, Sumner Woman's Relief Corps #1 always headed the state roster, which made no racial distinctions. In the days before Medicare, Medicaid and welfare, the Woman's Relief Corps tended to sick and dying veterans, and provided support to widows and orphaned children. Barb Gannon theorizes that the strength of the Woman's Relief Corps was integral to the longevity of the Chestertown post, and helps to explain why the group was still functioning in 1950.
Expressions of loyalty were the most public aspect of the Sumner Post's mission. In 1868, the G.A.R. established May 30th as Decoration Day, to honor the soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War. Not until many decades later was Decoration Day renamed Memorial Day, to allow the dead from other wars to be similarly memorialized. For nearly five decades following the Civil War, G.A.R. posts in every town and city across the U.S. were charged with initiating and supervising Decoration Day celebrations. In Chestertown, the Charles Sumner Post faithfully carried out this mission for almost fifty years.
G.A.R. veterans at unknown location
Courtesy of Maryland Archives
Each May 30th, veterans donned their G.A.R. uniforms and headed a parade that included the Women's Relief Corps, the Calvert coronet and Oriental bands, several wagons decorated with evergreen, and a large group of children. They marched first to the Chester Cemetery, where the graves of white Union and Confederate soldiers were decorated with flowers, then on to Janes United Methodist Cemetery where their black comrades' graves were similarly honored. From there, the parade went to the public wharf at the foot of High Street, where a musket salute was fired and flowers were strewn in the Chester River. Decoration Day parades were carried out in this way until the last veteran of the Sumner Post died in the late 1920's.
From the time of its construction in 1908, the Grand Army Hall, or Army Hall as it was often called, was rented out for weddings, receptions, graduation parties and musical performances. Many local and regional musical groups performed on the small second floor stage, including jazz legends Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb, who traveled from Baltimore by steamboat to play to a packed house. When the Sumner Post was sold in 1950 to the Centennial Beneficial Association, the building continued to be used in the same way, and it gradually became known as Centennial Hall.
Centennial Beneficial Association, ca. 1940
Courtesy of Calvin Frazier
To Joan Walker Hunter, a board member of Preservation Incorporated, the building symbolizes the rich contributions of African Americans in Kent County. "Our ancestors came home after the war seeking how they could use their experiences to expand their often unknown and unmentioned contributions to their country and community." She hopes that the building can be used in part as a museum for local African American history. "I strongly feel that it is imperative for the citizens of Kent County to come together as a community to preserve and restore this building that can be used to keep the legacy of the African American Civil War veterans alive and empowering."
National, state and local groups continue to give their expertise and money to the restoration of the Charles Sumner Hall. "Saving this unique building ensures that the memory and mission of the Sumner Post's veterans will be preserved for future generations," says Kees de Mooy, Program Manager of the C.V. Starr Center, who also serves on the board of Preservation Incorporated. In addition, numerous private individuals—collectively known as the Friends of Sumner Post—have stepped forward to contribute time and money for the restoration.
For more information on the Sumner Post, call Kees de Mooy at (410) 810 7156.