EASTON, MARYLAND — When Easton’s town lots were first auctioned in 1787, James Freeman appears to have bought a half-acre on the outskirts of the new town, a purchase the Hill Community Project says makes him one of, if not the, first free African American landowners in Easton. He and his wife, Henny, built a house and a barn for horses, cows and pigs, and planted a large kitchen garden. They rented a second house on the lot to another free Black man, named Hercules.

University of Maryland archaeologists spent their sixth summer on The Hill in 2017 at the Freeman property. The university calls the Freemans the earliest African American landowners currently identified in Easton, owning the site two generations before Emancipation. Excavations on the western half of the lot, which ran from 2017 to 2019, uncovered parts of the kitchen garden and a barn door hinge from the family’s livestock keeping. Most of what came out of the ground is later: the lot was subdivided, houses went up on it from the 1870s to the 1890s, and working-class Black tenants rented them into the mid-20th century. The project lists the site as 18TA445.

The Academy Art Museum acquired 106, 108 and 110 Talbot Lane for an annex, and The Ottery Group, working on the museum’s behalf, looked there for evidence of the Freemans' years on the property. The museum describes the couple’s home, livestock and gardens as part of the early development of The Hill, which the Hill Community Project dates to 1788.

The Talbot Historical Society’s Hill Community Walking Tour, led by Yvonne Freeman, meets at 25 S. Washington St. at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, and runs to 11 a.m. It is free. The society encourages donations for Asbury United Methodist Church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and the East-End Neighborhood Association, and takes reservations at 410-822-0773.

Two generations before Emancipation, the Freemans owned the ground under their own garden.