She's 70 now, but Pauline Watkins' crystalline blue eyes still light up when she thinks of her move to Galesville at the age of 7.
She and her family - 23 children strong - followed their father out from Annapolis when he took a job shucking oysters and cutting fish for Woodfield Fish & Oyster Co. Many of her siblings followed in their father's footsteps, working grueling, labor-intensive shifts, then returning to their small home to rest.
On a peninsula rich in history, if poor in other ways, the Watkins were part of a thriving black community. Descendants of slaves and sharecroppers pooled their resources and supported a traveling baseball team, filled their own two-room schoolhouse, boasted sock hops and fish fries for hundreds of neighbors and crowded into the pews of Ebenezer AME Church as often as three times a day.
Today, memories still run deep, but the physical vestiges of Galesville's black community are slowly vanishing. Local historians are working with the community to preserve personal histories as well as abandoned community landmarks.
"When we were smaller, the community got along so well," said Watkins, thumbing through a pocket-size photo album on Saturday during Galesville's African-American Community History Day. "Now our community [does not] have as much activity as it used to."
About 35 people - many whose family names appear on census records from 1900 - brought their stories, family Bibles and dog-eared photographs to share with each other and professionals trained in archives management. Sponsored by the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, the event at the 128-year-old AME church allowed experts to scan documents and record interviews with those some consider Galesville's greatest generation.
"These community history days are a conscious effort to catch [those] who have memories and facts and figures," said Greg Stiverson, the foundation's interim president. "Otherwise, they're going to be lost for all time, and people won't have any way of re-creating this history."
Rever Sellman, matriarch of the Turner family, came armed with typewritten family trees and narratives recorded by previous generations. Sellman and her siblings trace their roots to Henry Wilson, a former slave and the first black property owner in Galesville. In an interview with Stiverson, she said Wilson was freed in 1865; previously published reports indicate he was freed in 1828 and bought his first two acres of land in 1865. What is clear regardless of is that Sellman's great-great-grandfather established a long line of descendants who put down roots in Galesville.
Sellman, 71, still lives on West Benning Road. Her parents were also Woodfield oyster shuckers, often rising at 4 a.m., heading off to work and leaving their children to fend for themselves.
"We were just one big, happy family with nothing to survive on," Sellman recalled, speaking into a microphone from the first pew of the church.
A family home was destroyed by fire in 1946, and as Wilson's original land grew to 27 acres and was willed to various relatives, they couldn't agree what to do with it. Today, his 1860s farmhouse is in disrepair.
Sellman and her 13 siblings attended the two-room Galesville Elementary School, one of 23 Rosenwald schools built for black students in Anne Arundel County. Chester and William Turner, Sellman's siblings, said they enjoyed escaping to school. There, the older siblings could avoid the younger ones for a few hours, because classes were divided by age.
"But we still had to go home and sleep [in the same room] with them," Chester said.
The Turner brothers, like many of those who attended the community history day, equate growing up in Galesville with watching and playing baseball. The village was home to the Galesville Hot Sox, an all-black team that played regularly against Negro League greats like the Homestead Braves, the Indianapolis Clowns and the Washington Black Sox. Founded in 1915, the team began playing on the Wilson property in the 1920s and last fielded a squad in the late 1990s.
Some players, including Chester Turner, earned tryouts with major league teams. Others were stars in their own community, which showed up in force to watch the players take to the grass infield. Today, county rec teams play on the field and use the old wooden bleachers and weathered dugouts.
"Baseball was the community," Chester Turner said, poring over old, sepia-toned team photos and casual snapshots from the 1970s. "Along with the games, we had the fish fries and picnics. ... It's a historic site. It should be restored."
In 2007, a coalition of black heritage groups began soliciting support for the property's preservation. Groups including the Blacks of the Chesapeake, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Galesville Community Association are hoping to convince the county or state to pony up the money needed to restore the field and create a museum celebrating Galesville's black heritage.
Judith Cabral, director of programs for the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, said the project is in a "holding pattern," with no public meetings held for at least six months. But County Executive John R. Leopold said Monday that the project is a "major priority" for him, and he has included it in his parks and recreation budget for fiscal year 2009.
Meanwhile, efforts to restore the Rosenwald school are advancing. State Sen. John Astle, an Annapolis Democrat, has sponsored a bill authorizing a $200,000 grant allowing the Galesville Community Center Organization to renovate the abandoned building on West Benning Road.
Gertrude Markell, who attended classes at the segregated school before the county opened nearby Carrie Weedon Elementary, is one of the building's biggest boosters.
"We are moving along slowly, but we're moving along," she said.
Persistence paid off once before. After the school was shuttered originally, Galesville residents used an annual parade to raise funds and turned it into a community center that was home to Friday night dances and hosted bands such as the Van Dykes and the Pipe Dreamers.
The Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation plans to use the momentum from last weekend's event to inspire younger Galesville residents to get involved in collecting their community's history. Beginning next month, the foundation will host monthly sessions bringing together Galesville elders and children ages 11 to 14 to collect information for a booklet on local black history. Students will be invited to attend a weeklong camp in June.
Sharing the past with others, Watkins said, "stops you from losing your memory of the place."