Six years after the end of the Civil War, and three years after the Fourteenth Amendment declared that formerly enslaved people held rights as American citizens, Jane Gates purchased a house in Cumberland, Maryland. Jane Gates was born into slavery and denied the opportunity to learn how to read or write. Despite her illiteracy, oral history tells that she was the first black woman in Allegany County to have a bank account; she is known to have signed her name on legal documents with an X. With these achievements lies a great mystery. How did Jane, illiterate and listed in census records as a nurse and a laundress afford a house so soon after gaining her freedom? This question was pondered by her descendants, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and John Gates, when they dove into their ancestry. What they found was an inspiring, but incomplete history of their great-great-grandmother.
Jane Gates spent her life overcoming barriers. She was presumably born in Allegany County, Maryland circa 1820. Glimpses of her early life appear in written records; in the 1830 census a young girl believed to be Jane is enslaved by Solomon Stover of Allegany County. Nine years later Solomon Stover listed a woman and her two children for sale. In Jane’s obituary, she was described as a servant of the Stover family. This language might have obscured an inhumane and forced relationship between her and the Stovers. If she was enslaved by the Stovers it gives a hint to the conditions of her bondage: domestic labor.
Jane reappears in the property records Christian Stotler of Allegany County, who owned no enslaved people until 1840, when he is listed with a woman aged less than twenty-three years old and her two daughters. In Stotler’s 1859 will he describes Jane Gates with her children. Upon his death Stotler divided Jane’s family, bequeathing two of her daughters to family members and selling her and her sons to Samuel Brady, on the condition that Jane be manumitted (freed for enslavement) after three years. Samuel Brady, owned Brady Farm in Cresaptown of Allegany County. In an eerie continuation, it remains a site of imprisonment, as it now hosts the Western Correctional Institute, a state prison.
In Maryland, slavery was losing its profitability and manumission was becoming more common. Changes in the practice of chattel slavery decreased the need for a year-round labor force while arguments of religious ethics stressed the immorality of the institution. Without the transatlantic slave trade, an enslaved woman’s womb had become the source of future labor and thus key in propping up the whole slave system. By the time of her manumission, Jane was likely aged forty. Jane’s enslavement seems to have lasted until she was no longer able to have more children. While Stotler had guaranteed her freedom, he excluded her daughters and sons who remained profitable in the eyes of the slave system. Perhaps these cold calculations lay behind Jane’s promised freedom and her children’s continued enslavement.
While Jane and her sons were on the Brady Farm, a civil war over the “peculiar institution” of slavery broke out. Although Maryland was a Union state, slavery remained legal while Samuel Brady himself aided the Confederates. The new Maryland constitution of 1864 abolished slavery, nominally freeing the children of Jane Gates. The actual process of emancipation went beyond proclamations, and had to be fought for, by slaves, soldiers, and Unionists on the ground.
Jane Gates, via John Gates and Dolores Gates- Thomas
Jane Gates reappears in the historical record in 1870 where she is listed as a nurse and a laundress in Cumberland, Allegany County. In 1871, she bought 515 Greene Street for $1,400 (around $36,000 in 2025!), a four-room house for her and her several children. How she afforded the house has remained a point of curiosity, as it symbolizes a starting point for her family’s prosperity. 515 Greene Street was the first of many bought by her family and the Gates’ are believed to be the first black family in Cumberland to own multiple properties. Now Jane’s house is being revived as the Jane Gates Heritage House by Sukh Gates, president of the Board of Directors of the Heritage House, along with her husband, John Gates, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Dr. Paul Gates.
Recently, a clue to the mystery of how Jane afforded her home was discovered as a wildflower on the Gates House property. Sukh Gates had befriended Sherry Frick, a Master Gardener, and asked her to design a teaching garden for the House. By accident, Sukh stopped weeding halfway through Frick’s design and left a curious plant untouched that Frick identified as common soapwort. Once they noticed it, they realized soapwort was abundant throughout the property. Soapwort is native to Eurasia, but was brought by European colonists as a form of soap. When the stem is crushed, the sap can be used as a detergent. This common practice earned the plant another name, “bouncing bet,” Bet being a nickname for a washerwoman. Excavation around the Gates House revealed remains of burnt wood near the soapwort patches, suggesting that Jane may have boiled the plant with water in large kettles to make a cleaning agent for her laundry operation.
Laundresses circa 1900, via Buncombe County Special Collections
Perhaps Jane’s occupation as a laundress held the key to her fortune. Laundry was a laborious chore in the nineteenth century. Those who could afford it would hire someone else to wash and press their clothing and linens. The job was demanding and not very rewarding and thus often relegated to Black women denied from other opportunities. Despite its downsides, being a laundress also granted a degree of autonomy. Unlike domestic servants, a role often associated with Black women in the South, laundresses could work from their own homes and spend time with their family. It also paid more and could become the income that would eventually buy a family home, such as 515 Greene Street.
Jane’s soapwort was an ingenious investment. Laundresses had to buy soap out of their own earnings, cutting into their income. Jane grew soap on the cheap, aided by a highly resilient and easily spreadable crop. In this profession she clawed back the freedom denied to her for most of her life. A “servant” no more, Jane was determined to build a life for her family through inventive solutions and diligent work.
Jane Gates Heritage House, via Allegany County
The Jane Gates Heritage House stands as a testament to the resilience of Jane Gates. Surviving the oppressive institution of slavery for the majority of her life, she persevered to become a trailblazer in Allegany County. Jane Gates died as a well-respected member of the community, known as “Aunt Jane Gates” to the people of Cumberland. Her prestige is palpable in her three separate obituaries published in various newspapers, an extremely rare occurrence for people of color. One described her as an “estimable woman of color.” Her legacy continues on 515 Greene Street, as the Jane Gates Heritage House is being brought to life by her ever-grateful descendants.
New information on the life of Jane Gates was recently revealed in the Season Eleven of “Finding Your Roots,” the acclaimed PBS show hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Watch on PBS. The Allegany Museum will be showing a screening of the episode as well as a virtual discussion with Dr. Gates and genealogist CeCe Moore on April 26th. Get tickets here, proceeds benefit the Jane Gates Heritage House.
References
Ancestry.com. 1830 United States Federal Census. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Earthbeet Seeds, “Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis).” https://www.earthbeatseeds.com/products/soapwort-saponaria-officinalis.
Frick, Sherry. “Master Gardener Project Makes Discovery Commemorating the Remarkable Life of Jane Gates.” Maryland Grows Blog, Dec 11 2020. https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/2020/12/11/master-gardener-project-makes-discovery-commemorating-the-remarkable-life-of-jane-gates/.
Finding Your Roots, season 11, episode 10, “Finding My Roots.” written and hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., aired April 8th, 2025, on Public Broadcasting Service, https://www.pbs.org/video/finding-my-roots-b7sruc/
Gates, John and Sukh. phone conversation, 19 and 20 Apr 2025.
McDaniel-Weissler, Ellen. “Allegany Magazine Celebrates African-American History Month– History holds the keys, but Allegany County has the Gates.” Cumberland Times-News, Feb 8 2022. https://www.times-news.com/allegany_magazine/allegany-magazine-celebrates-african-american-history-month----history-holds-the-keys-but/article_a71c0bac-8066-11ec-851e-9b4add73fbfb.html.
Millward, Jessica. “‘That All Her Increase Shall Be Free’: enslaved women’s bodies and the Maryland 1809 Law of Manumission.” Women’s History Review 21, no. 3(2012): 363-378.
Koman, Rita. “Servitude to Service: African-American Women as Wage Earners.” OAH Magazine of History 11, no. 2(1997): 42-49.
Passages of the Western Potomac, ”A former slave buys a house in Allegany County.” https://passagesofthepotomac.org/heritage-attractions/jane-gates-heritage-house/.
PBS, “Who Am I? A Genealogy Guide: African American Lives.” Thirteen PBS, 2006. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/aalives/2006/genealogy_journey.html.
Rhine, Zoe. “Occupations of Black Women in Asheville, 1890 Part III: Laundresses.” Buncombe County Special Collections, March 1 2022. https://specialcollections.buncombecounty.org/2022/03/01/occupations-of-black-women-in-asheville-1890-part-iii-laundresses/.
Western Maryland Historical Library, “Jane Gates - a historical matriarch.” https://www.whilbr.org/AlleganyAfricanAmericans/Jane-Gates-historical-matriarch.
Wills, Matthew. “Emancipation Comes to West Virginia.” JSTOR Daily, Feb 14 2023. https://daily.jstor.org/emancipation-comes-to-west-virginia/.
