Archaeologist Authors ‘Belvoir,’ the Story of a Former Annapolis-Area Plantation

BSOS story about Dr. Schablitsky's new work, Belvoir.

 

"Julie Schablitsky is well-known for her work discovering where famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman lived during some of her teenage years—at the Dorchester County home of her father, Ben Ross. But well before her archaeology career took her down the path of piecing together the life of the Underground Railroad’s “conductor,” Schablitsky found herself at an Anne Arundel County, Maryland historic site that is the namesake and focus of her new book, Belvoir.

 

“Instead of finding France, we found Africa. We ended up finding this other story that no one really talked about or acknowledged,” Schablitsky said. “Belvoir really led us to doing a lot of the Harriet Tubman work, because Belvoir showed us that buttons have stories. Pipes have stories. Little broken pieces of bone in the ground can tell us what people who lived there ate, and what they caught. It made me realize how important archaeology is to trying to discover these stories, because they’re not in our history books—they’re in the ground.”

 

Read the story here to learn more about Dr. Schablitsky's work!

Published on Thu, 11/06/2025 - 14:12