Remus Adams Blacksmith Shop

señal, text plate, mapa. Road sign, text plate, and map illustration.

Signs of People

Born as a free man around 1824, when slavery still existed in Baltimore County, Remus Adams is one of the most well-known African Americans within the historic Winters Lane community, the largest and most intact mid-19th-century African American neighborhood in Baltimore County.

He was likely drawn to blacksmithing as it offered free African Americans in Maryland a level of financial independence during a pre-Civil War time, when they were limited to certain trades and occupations. Most free Black men in Catonsville around this time were farmers.

Adams owned a blacksmith shop and his business venture was largely successful. He was also politically active, advocating for greater protections for Black people in Reconstruction-Era Maryland, often traveling to Washington, D.C. to lobby. He trained young African American men to be blacksmiths; invested in the local community growing along Winters Lane; helped fund and operate the first school in the area for Black children; and supported other Black-owned businesses as a member of the Catonsville Cooperative Association.

Remus Adams died in 1898. Although considered a potential site for a new school for African American children, by 1909, the blacksmith shop was replaced with a school for white students only.

A historic black-and-white postcard of a long, two-story stone building with a shingled gabled roof and shuttered upper windows. The ground floor has two sets of wooden double doors, one plastered with event posters. A staircase on the right climbs to a second-floor door. Below, a horse-drawn wagon is parked under an attached shed roof.

Blacksmith shop at 615 Frederick Rd. Courtesy of Baltimore County Public Library. Diggs' picture by Jen Rynda, courtesy of Baltimore Sun Media.

Louis Diggs, an older Black man wearing a cap and a camouflage-print shirt under an open jacket, smiling and looking off to the side.

"The 1870 U.S. Census Report lists Remus Adams as being forty-six years of age, a male, Black, occupation as blacksmith, owning real estate valued at $15,000. It noted also that he was eligible to vote."

Louis S. Diggs (1932-2022) was a local historian and author of thirteen books documenting forty African American settlements in Baltimore County.

"That's a lot of money for that time, especially for African Americans. He was very successful. Almost 100% of Black men here in Catonsville during that period had nothing, they were just domestic workers or worked in a factory. They were unable to make any decent money."