Map 1. Aquasco Vicinity Map

In 1984, a 680-acre area centered on the village of Woodville in Aquasco was documented for the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties as the Aquasco Survey District (PG:87B-36).1 The 2010 Approved Historic Sites and Districts Plan for Prince George’s County, Maryland identified the area as the Woodville/Aquasco Historic Community (a historic community being an area having historic significance but not currently regulated by the County’s historic preservation ordinance, Subtitle 29 of the County Code). At the start of this project, 27 resources in and around the Aquasco community had documentation on file or pending with the Maryland Historical Trust (see Table 1). Some have been designated as County historic sites or historic resources, and some have only been inventoried. The resources largely consist of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century dwellings, places of worship, and farm-related buildings and structures that represent an eclectic mix of Victorian and vernacular styles, and cemeteries. The wide spacing between houses reflects the primacy of farming in the village’s economic development—and despite some late-twentieth-century suburban development, the spacing largely remains.

In spring 2019, the Cedar Haven on the Patuxent Civic Association applied to the Prince George’s County Planning Department to fund a project that would, in part, augment Aquasco’s existing historic and cultural resource inventory to support heritage tourism and, in particular, highlight the diversity of the area’s historic properties. Funding for the project was approved by the Prince George’s County Planning Board on April 11, 2019 through the Community Planning Division’s Planning Assistance to Municipalities and Communities (PAMC) program.

The Prince George’s County Planning Department’s Historic Preservation Section identified seven potentially significant Aquasco properties that had not yet been researched or surveyed (see Table 2). Five properties (the Cemetery for Enslaved African Americans at Eastview, the John Wesley Church Parsonage Site, the Dent-Brooks House, Wheeler Tabernacle, and the Samuel Gray Farmstead) were found to be highly significant to African American historic and cultural heritage. A sixth, the Whitehall Tenant House, was found to, at one time, have been part of the large land holdings of an African American farmer, Samuel Stamp. A final resource, the Delilah Waters House, expands the inventory of properties that are significant in general. A chain of title for each property is included in the appendices.

This reports explains the historic evolution of Aquasco-Woodville, and explores the seven properties, paying particular attention to those significant to African American heritage. These open a window to our understanding of this heritage, and the evolvement of African-American property acquisition and ownership that flowered after the close of the American Civil War. Further research and documentation will be needed to tell this important story more fully.