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Parkers Creek Oral History Interviews: Selected Segments

The Parkers Creek Heritage Trail embraces all aspects of regional history, with a special emphasis on African American families and their experiences. This emphasis is strongly felt in the oral history effort. The first-hand narratives in these interviews evoke the speakers’ lives from the 1930s to the present, and some include accounts from earlier times that were passed along from family members or friends.

The multi-segment video clip embedded at the bottom of this page was prepared for a public event organized by the Calvert County Public Library in Prince Frederick. The event took place on February 15, 2024, moderated by Darlene Harrod, an ACLT board member. Beginning in 2022, Darlene Harrod has teamed up with Shirley Knight, another board member, and Kirsti Uunila, an archaeologist and historic preservation planner (retired) to carry out the oral history interviews for the Parkers Creek Heritage Trail project.

Scroll down for the link to the nine-minute-long video clip with excerpts from three of the project’s interviews. Here is background information about the speakers, in the order of their appearance.

Shawn Harrod, interviewed in July 2023, is heard in video segments titled “That’s what sparked my hunger for history,” and “The Parkers Creek community and newcomers in the 1980s.” Shawn Harrod was born in 1973 and is the owner of Mike’s House of Style hair styling and barber shop in Prince Frederick, a business founded by former county commissioner Michael Moore. Shawn Harrod is also a pastor at the Beyond the Walls Ministries in Prince Frederick. He is a devoted student of history, and in the interview, he comments on his paternal grandfather’s recollections of his own great-grandfather, Jake Broome. Broome had been enslaved, and after the Civil War, he was the first Black person in Calvert County to write his name in a letter to the Freedmen’s Bureau.
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Ruth “Becky” Alvirta Parker Harrod was interviewed in December 2022, a few months before her passing in April 2023 at the age of 88. As she explains in her first video segment, “I was born in Parkers Creek . . . went to Parkers Creek School . . . and Brooks High School.” Becky Harrod had been a student in the 1940s and 1950s, when Calvert County’s school system was still segregated. In another segment titled “I started work as housekeeper at age 12,” Becky Harrod refers to her service in the home of Annie, Flippo, and Inez “Gran” Gravatt, and in the residence of the physician Page Jett and his wife Gladys Vashti “Ty” Jett. Becky Harrod offers a tribute to her mother Blanche Parker as a teacher, “she knew how to do most everything.” In her early years, Becky Harrod attended Brown’s United Methodist Church in Parkers Creek. Later, she was an active member of the Greater Bible Way Church on Sixes Road. She was predeceased by her husband John Harrod. The couple had 12 children. 

Yvonne Janice Mason Wills was interviewed in September 2021, at the age of 90. Yvonne Wills was born in 1931 and is a resident of Mason Road, which intersects Hallowing Point Road (Maryland highway 231) in Prince Frederick. Her long-time friend (and interviewer) Darlene Harrod has discussed the Mason family’s role in building a community along Hallowing Point and Mason Roads. In 1880, Harrod reports, Yvonne Wills’ great-grandfather Augustus Mason purchased 198 acres, which were subdivided in 1905, creating opportunities for several families to own homes. The result is a community with many African American residents. Although Yvonne Wills lived some distance away, Brown’s United Methodist Church in Parkers Creek was where her stepmother worshiped, and Yvonne’s husband Leroy Wills and other immediate relatives are buried there. This is the focal point of the excerpt from the interview, where Yvonne Wills says, “We could have buried them in other places . . . but we wanted the family to be together.” 

Oral History Video Segments (9 minute duration)

An additional Heritage Trail oral history presentation is featured on this webpage:

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