Confusion over history of Md. cabin museum
in 2006, at the height of the housing bubble, Montgomery County paid $1 million to buy a two-story colonial in North Bethesda with a log cabin jutting out on one side. The house had been on the market only a couple of months, but county officials felt compelled to act quickly: This might be their only chance to save the real Uncle Tom's cabin - the former home of Josiah Henson, the model for the title character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's seminal antislavery novel.
Since 2006, state and county officials have spent another $1 million to expand and study the property, and in recent months, Montgomery has held public meetings to solicit ideas on how to turn the old farmhouse into a public museum.
There is just one problem, though. The house on Old Georgetown Road is not the real Uncle Tom's cabin.
The house was once home to the Riley family, who held Henson as chattel, and the years that Henson spent on the 3,700-acre Riley plantation, from 1795 to 1830, did form the basis of his memoirs, which Stowe relied heavily on. But historians have determined that Henson never lived in the house or the cabin, which was then a kitchen. He lived in slave quarters that are long gone....
Read entire article at Washington Post
Since 2006, state and county officials have spent another $1 million to expand and study the property, and in recent months, Montgomery has held public meetings to solicit ideas on how to turn the old farmhouse into a public museum.
There is just one problem, though. The house on Old Georgetown Road is not the real Uncle Tom's cabin.
The house was once home to the Riley family, who held Henson as chattel, and the years that Henson spent on the 3,700-acre Riley plantation, from 1795 to 1830, did form the basis of his memoirs, which Stowe relied heavily on. But historians have determined that Henson never lived in the house or the cabin, which was then a kitchen. He lived in slave quarters that are long gone....