Robert Tyler (b. circa 1818 - d. 1891)
MSA SC 5496-047809
Emancipated from the Cracklin District, Montgomery County, Maryland,
1864
Biography:
Robert Tyler was emancipated from slavery on Nathan Cooke, Sr.'s farm in 1864. By 1870, he was residing near Uriah Bowman's farm near Gaithersburg.1 Tyler lived with his wife, Susan (b. 1828), and their five children, Martha E. (b. 1852), Robert H. (b. 1854) Elias Perry (b. 1862), Wilson (b. 1866), and Otho A. (b. 1869).2 Wilson and Otho Tyler were the only children in the family who were born free. Although the Tylers' children were illiterate in 1870, their three sons were able to read and write as adults.
In 1870, Robert Tyler was working as a farm laborer in the Cracklin District of Montgomery County.3 That year, farm laborers in that district who boarded with their employers earned an average of thirteen dollars per month, or slightly more if they had their own quarters like Tyler did. Many African American farm laborers faced racial discrimination when applying for their wages, especially in areas of southern Maryland.4 However, in 1866, the Freedman's Bureau agent R. G. Rutherford had claimed that the black laborers in Montgomery County not only received fair wages for their work, but that some had also become landowners themselves.5
Robert Tyler joined the growing number of African American landowners in Montgomery County on June 5, 1876, when he paid the farmer Roszel Woodward $79.69 for one and a half acres of land.6 The property neighbored the Emory Grove United Methodist Church, a African American church founded to years earlier.7 Tyler purchased another acre of adjoining land in 1885, this time from his neighbor Abraham Lancaster Jr., the son of the black landowner Abraham Lancaster Sr. The land was part of the tract "Flower Hill."
In 1880, Tyler and several other residents of the area, including the church's trustees, gave the county commissioners permission to lay "a public road leading from the Gaithersburg and Laytonsville Road to Watkens Mill through their property." The mill's owner, N. J. Watken, had requested the new road. Tyler's house (labelled "R. Tiler") ended up near the intersection of the new and the old roads, as shown on a plat included in the deed.8
Robert Tyler died intestate in 1891, while his wife Susan died several
years later. In 1896, Elias Perry Tyler, Wilson Tyler, Otho Tyler, and
Otho's wife Josephine recorded a deed that settled Robert Tyler's estate,
paid the late Susan Tyler's debt of $32.75 to the former slaveholder Elias
H. Etchison, and stated the layout of Robert Tyler's land. Following their
father's death, Elias and Robert Jr. continued to work as farm laborers
in Montgomery County, while both Wilson and Otho worked at sanatoriums.
Otho was employed by the Chestnut Lodge Sanatorium in Rockville,9
and Wilson worked at St. Elizabeth's Government Hospital for the Insane
in Washington D.C.10
1. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Robert Tyler, 1870, Montgomery County, District 1, Page 21, Line 31 [MSA SM61-275, M 7256].
2. U.S. Census Bureau (Census Record, MD) for Robert Tyler, 1870, Montgomery County, District 1, Page 21, Line 31 [MSA SM61-275, M 7256].
3. U.S. Census Bureau (Census
Record, MD) for Robert Tyler, 1870, Montgomery County, District 1, Page
21, Line 31 [MSA SM61-275, M 7256].
Montgomery
County District 1, Simon J. Martenet, Martenet and Bond's Map of Montgomery
County, 1865, Library of Congress, [MSA SC 1213-1-464]. The Huntingfield
Map Collection.
G. M. Hopkins.
Atlas
of Fifteen Miles Around Washington Including the County of Montgomery,
Maryland (Baltimore, MD: Garamond/Pridemark Press, Inc.: 1975) 22.
4. Qtd. in Richard Paul Fuke. Imperfect Equality: African Americans and the Confines of White Racial Attitudes in Post-Emancipation Maryland (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1999) 27.
5. Fuke 17.
6. MONTGOMERY COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records), Liber EBP 15, Folio 454, 1876-1876, [MSA CE 63-25]. Roszel Woodward and Eliza J. Woodward to Robert Tyler, June 5, 1876.
7. Nina Honemond Clarke. History of Nineteenth-Century Black Churches in Maryland and Washington, D.C. (Silver Spring, MD: Bartelby Press: 1983) 205-206.
8. MONTGOMERY COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records), Liber EBP 23, Folio 109, 1880-1881, [MSA CE 63-33]. The Colored Peoples' Emory Grove Church, et al, to the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, June 29, 1880.
9. "Montgomery Board Plans School Cost." The Washington Post 30 January 1931: 20. ProQuest databases.
10. "Slap at Mr. Moody: His Aid Not
Wanted in the Asylum Inquiry." The Washington Post 11 May 1906:
2. ProQuest databases.
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