presented by Montgomery History, the county's historical society
"Human Bondage and Georgetown’s Early Wealth"
With Jim Johnston
Tuesday, December 7th @ 2:00 p.m.
Early Georgetown was not the polite society conjured by books like The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club. Rather, it was built in part from trafficking in human beings – African slaves and British convicts and indentured servants – and from their labor. For instance, in 1805, Francis Lowndes, the son of a trafficker in humans, sold to Robert Peter the 8 ½ acre tract now known as Tudor Place for the seemingly princely sum of $6,000, but Peter had the money as evidenced by his selling inherited family slaves for $100,000 a few years later. Jim Johnston leads you on a tour of the real history of an early Georgetown that was diverse in the extreme with homes of fantastic wealth and hovels of abject poverty.
