Gain National Park Designation

NEW PHILADELPHIA, ILLINOIS is now a national park, thanks in part to Charlotte King, ANTH B.A. ’03, M.A.A. ’08. She successfully lobbied Congress for this recognition of the first town legally founded and registered by an African American in the United States.

The town’s founder, Frank McWorter, a formerly enslaved man from Kentucky, bought freedom for himself and 15 family members. In 1836, he began to sell New Philadelphia lots to free-born and formerly enslaved African and European Americans.

New Philadelphia, King said, later survived “one of the most racially turbulent eras of our country’s history,” but in 1996, nearby highway development threatened what was left of it. That prompted the creation of the New Philadelphia Association, a nonprofit of which King is a part. The organization is dedicated to protecting the historical site and McWorter’s legacy.

Shedding Light on Harriet Tubman’s Early Life

A CLEARER PICTURE of Harriet Tubman’s early life has emerged with the discovery of a home believed to have been occupied by an enslaved overseer on the former Cambridge, Md., farm where she was born. The effort is led by Adjunct Assistant Professor Julie

Schablitsky

Schablitsky is chief of cultural resources at the Maryland Department of Transportation. Her team excavated a foundation from a house on private property and unearthed hundreds of artifacts.

These findings followed the team’s 2021 discovery of what is thought to be the home site of Tubman’s father on what is now the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Both locations were part of the Thompson Farm, where up to 40 enslaved people once lived and where the future Underground Railroad conductor and Union Army nurse and spy was born in 1822.

King’s involvement began as part of her undergraduate thesis work with Professor Paul Shackel, who was already doing research there. The effort to establish New Philadelphia as a national park has taken years of effort by numerous researchers and volunteers, and has been supported by several grants. •

Story by Sofia Appolonio, JOUR ’26

BSOS Online

Read more at go.umd.edu/newphiladelphia

The team anticipates returning to the site this summer to focus on the interior of the home, and to determine whether smaller living quarters surrounded it. •

BSOS Online

Read more at go.umd.edu/tubmandiscovery