Table of Contents
Introduction
William H. Commodore (1860-1938) was an African American farmer, married to Suddie Commodore (1871-1951). In census records and deeds, her name is sometimes spelled Sudie; one probate record indicates that her maiden name was Boom, alternatively spelled Boome. The couple’s 11 children, including twin boys, were born between 1890 and 1912.
Land ownership and neighborhood geography
William H. and Suddie Commodore owned five tracts of land totaling about 220 deeded acres (about 240 actual):
- 1. Acquired 1894: 18 3/4 acres from Thomas A. Hardesty
- 2. Acquired 1898: 97 acres from Y.D. Hance
- 3. Acquired 1904: 35 acres (as deeded; 56 actual) from Major Commodore
- 4. Acquired 1910: 50 acres from Luther Chambers
- 5. Acquired 1925: 20 acres from James E. Commodore
The 27-acre tract between properties 3 and 2 was owned by other Black farmers: David Parker from 1871 to 1932 and Woodrow Wallace from 1951 to 1970. Woodrow Wallace is a grandson of William H. and Suddie Commodore. Incidentally, Y.D. Hance (1858-1917), the seller of property 2, is a descendant of the Y.D. Hance buried in the family cemetery now on ACLT land.
Family testimony and archaeological research have identified four former dwellings and one barn site on the land:
- A. Site of William H. and Suddie Commodore’s two-story home, destroyed by fire, probably in the 1950s.
- B. Site of the barn, now gone, associated with dwelling A.
- C. Site of a former dwelling, now gone, described by family as modest, occupied by Commodore son and family.
- D. Site of another former dwelling, now gone, also described as modest, occupied by Commodore son and family.
- E. Former home of Willis Commodore (1890-1968, William H. and Suddie Commodore’s oldest son), two stories, no longer occupied but still standing.
Site E on the map: former home of Willis Commodore and family. These 1995 photographs include the Commodore-period two-story section at right and an addition at the left added by subsequent owners. A large apple tree stands behind the grape arbor.
The four former home sites are arrayed along a now-abandoned road, shown on the map as a dotted blue line. This road connected the family and their neighbors on Scientists Cliff Road (today’s name) to the homes of relatives and friends in the Parkers Creek community, a place defined by Brown’s Methodist Episcopal Church (after 1968, United Methodist Church) and the Parkers Creek School, a one room school that served Black students from 1869 to 1949. The green dashed lines on the map represent ACLT hiking trails as of 2024.
Site A on the map: location of William H. and Suddie Commodore’s old home, which burned in the 1950s, photographed in 2024. The stone pier is one of four that once supported the sills of the house; the cedar trees, now dead, stood nearby; and the metal box may have been the firebox for a stove.
William H. Commodore's parents
Family tradition has long stated that William H. Commodore was the son of a White man named John R. Beckett, and a Black woman named Eliza Commodore, enslaved in the Beckett household. These parents are so identified on William H. Commodore’s death certificate.
William H. Commodore’s death certificate, 1938.
Beckett family, birth of William H. Commodore, by 1880 lives with grandparents
The Beckett family’s former home site and family cemetery are on a property once known as Locust Grove, located on Selby’s Cliffs about one half mile north of today’s Dares Beach. This land is now part of a subdivision called Chesapeake Heights on the Bay. Locust Grove’s prominent 19th century owner was Captain John Beckett (1791-1850), who had fought in the War of 1812, including battles in Canada. He later served in the Maryland legislature.
Captain Beckett’s son, John R. Beckett, was born in 1841 and, after 1850, lived with his widowed mother. Other records indicate that they had a dwelling in Prince Frederick, perhaps in addition to (or succeeding) the Locust Grove property. We believe that Eliza Commodore, William H. Commodore’s mother, was an enslaved domestic worker in Beckett’s household. She would have been twenty years old and John Beckett nineteen when William H. Commodore was conceived in 1859. John R. Beckett died in 1925 and is buried in the cemetery at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Prince Frederick.
The 1880 census reports that the then-teenaged William H. Commodore was living with his grandparents in enumeration district 33, south of Parkers Creek. The household was headed by William Commodore, age 60, born circa 1820, and his wife Ellen, age 64, born circa 1816. Eliza Commodore’s name does not appear, but the household includes five grandchildren: William, age 19, born circa 1861; Mary, age 18; Harriet, age 11; Mager [Major], age 14; and Robert, age 8.
Civil War legacy: Soldier's death and parents' quest for pension
The records of the 23rd Regiment of the U.S. Colored Infantry document the service of William Commodore of Calvert County, who enlisted in February 1864 at age 21 and is listed as missing in action in July of that year. Images of the documents are shown below. We believe that he was Eliza Commodore’s brother, thus William H. Commodore’s uncle and one of his namesakes.
U.S. Colored Troops service record for William Commodore (1843-1864), who died in action within a year of his enlistment.
William Commodore’s parents sought a pension based on the soldier’s service. After the father’s death, the process was continued by Ellen, his widow. Pension records chronicle a process that lasted for more than twenty years. The earliest documents date from 1867, when father William Commodore appeared before a Justice of the Peace and testified that his son died in action at Petersburg, Virginia, on 30 July 1864, leaving no wife or children. William Commodore, the father, is the head of the household in the 1880 census record summarized in the preceding section.
In 1892, as the pension case continued, three friends from the Parkers Creek neighborhood submitted affidavits. They were Alonzo Bell; Jeremiah Boots, identified as “Jerry” in other, unrelated documents; and George Boots.
Jeremiah Boots stated, “I know that Wm Commodore, husband of Ellen Commodore is dead. He died in December 1881. I know this from the fact that I was at his funeral. I think he left about thirty-five acres of land which he left to his children at his death.” Boots also stated, “I knew William Commodore, son of Ellen Commodore, he died or was killed in the service of the United States. He was never married and left no widow or children. He was a son of Ellen Commodore. She has no means of support except what she can do herself and what anyone may give her.” George Boots also testified that William Commodore left no wife or children. The outcome of the case was that Ellen Commodore was awarded a pension and she collected $12 monthly between 1892 and her death on March 22, 1897.
William Commodore’s 1867 testimony includes information that is somewhat incidental to the pension claim, but critically important to the family’s history. Commodore testified that he and Ellen Commodore “were slaves of the same master and live on the same plantation as man and wife, and have so lived since the date of their marriage in the year 1823.” (The marriage date of 1823 is inconsistent with the couple’s ages in the census and was likely written in error.)
We believe that the “same master” mentioned in the preceding deposition refers to the Becketts, with John R. Beckett and his mother Susan Blake Beckett taking over the plantation after Captain John Beckett’s death in 1850. We make this inference based on our knowledge that John R. was the father of the senior William Commodore’s grandson, and that Eliza Commodore was the boy’s mother. We also believe that William Commodore, the Civil War soldier born in about 1843, was probably enslaved in his grandparents’ household, along with his mother and other family members.
It is also the case that two White residents who knew the family supported the pension testimony: Samuel B. Wilson, given the title Captain, who owned land on Parkers Creek and Dr. Benjamin Owen Hance, who lived on land called Angelica, not far from Plum Point on Wilson Road. Both Wilson and Hance landholdings are in the vicinity of Beckett’s Locust Grove, enabling them to be acquainted with enslaved individuals on that property.
Farming the land and other Commodore family occupations
Like most land in the Parkers Creek area, William H. Commodore’s tracts contain a mix of relatively flat ground suitable for agriculture and, for the most part, used to grow tobacco. The tracts also contain steep wooded ravines where timber was cut for farm use and for the market.
Land use on a long ridge that flanks the south side of Parkers Creek, shown on a 1938 Soil Conservation Service aerial photograph with markings added by the author. Tracts 3 and 2, marked in brown, are Commodore properties. In 1938, the intervening land belonged to William H. Commodore’s grandson Woodrow Wallace. Many irregularly shaped open fields are visible on the ridge. The tracts and structures are defined in the information about the map presented at the beginning of this webpage.
William H. Commodore and his family mastered a range of interests and skills beyond the farming that was their main source of income. Census data for 1940 names two of William and Suddie’s sons, John and Willis, and identifies their occupations as “Laborer” and “Fishing Nets.” The latter refers to their employment at Frank Richardson’s pound net operation at the mouth of Parkers Creek, a short walk from Willis and John Commodore’s homes.
A newspaper advertisement hints at an earlier connection to local fisheries. The 22 July 1911 issue of the Calvert Gazette, carries William H. Commodore’s announcement of a $25 reward for “information that will lead to identification of the party who cut my gasoline launch loose from her anchorage at Parker’s Creek.” It is impossible to be certain from this advertisement, but the amount of the reward and the terminology gasoline launch suggest that this may have been a workboat for use in commercial fishing.
The synergy between farming and Richardson’s pound net operation is expressed by a reminiscence from another fishing crew member. In a 1999 interview, Bill Tettimer told about going to the Richardson’s fishing shanty and net yard during an exceptional snow storm in the winter of 1941. “We went up there to mend twine,” Tettimer said, and “we was stuck in there for a week, and that Saturday night, we had to have three–the oxen–the Commodore boys, there was eight of ’em, had two oxen to get us out of that Parkers Creek. . . oxen pulling them two automobiles. . . Commodores owned the oxen.”
A news clipping from 1896 leads off with an eccentric description of a vessel and its sailors but then alludes to Commodore’s store.
Wesley Garner, who resides near Dare’s Landing on the bay, has come in possession of a handsome little vessel, which was stranded at his place Wednesday morning of last week. Two plainly dressed young men who were aboard immediately left the boat when it was beached. They went to Mr. Garner’s house, were given dinner and before leaving stated that they sailed from Baltimore and were on their way to Washington where they hoped to obtain work at blacksmithing. They walked around to the south side of Parkers creek, stopped a while at William Comodore’s [sic] store, thence retraced their steps and were last seen in that section firing pistols and going towards Plum Point. Calvert Gazette, 18 July 1896.
This offhand mention of William Commodore’s store is the only suggestion we have seen of a mercantile establishment associated with the African American Parkers Creek community.
Burials at Brown's Church
Like many of their relatives and twentieth century Parkers Creek neighbors, William and Suddie Commodore and their family worshiped at Brown’s Methodist Episcopal Church (United Methodist after the 1968 denominational merger). Although most members of the immediate family members are probably buried in Brown’s cemetery, we have only identified headstones for eight of William and Suddie’s children. We trust that all rest in peace.
Gravestone of Willis F. Commodore, 1890-1968. Photograph by Linda Davis.
Acknowledgements
This is an updated version of the ACLT blog published on 3 February 2023. Historical research and writing by Carl Fleischhauer, with special support by Kirsti Uunila. Archaeological research by Matthew Reeves in 1997, with funding support by the Maryland Historical Trust, now in the Maryland State Department of Planning. Family members who provided information include Cleo Parker and Sam Commodore. Shelby Cowan’s research provided the Commodore pension record from the U.S. National Archives and William H. Commodore’s death certificate from Maryland state records. Land and property research by Art Cochran with mapping executed by Exa Marmee Grubb.
The Parkers Creek Heritage Trail (PCHT) project is supported by funding provided by the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, part of the Maryland Historical Trust in the Maryland State Department of Planning. The project will explore a wide range of topics, including aspects of African American history in the area. Although a work in progress, you may be interested in a booklet produced by the project entitled, “The African American Community of Parkers Creek, circa 1800-1960,” available here: bit.ly/PrkCrkCommBook. Researchers Kirsti Uunila and Carl Fleischhauer will be happy to receive comments or corrections if you have things to add or spot mistakes in the booklet.
