The Shipman Mansion

The Shipman Mansion Foundation welcomes historian Paul W. Schopp back to Edgewater Park for his October 29 program on Timbuctoo, the slavery-era village near Mount Holly where fugitives made their homes. Beginning in the mid-1820s, four fugitive slaves from Maryland established the small enclave to offer a permanent residence for other runaways. No local people of color resided in Timbuctoo, as its founders reserved the land and dwellings for those who had slipped their shackles down south. The settlement grew and thrived, despite slave-catcher incursions, fugitive slave trials in Mount Holly, and the passage of the 1850 federal Fugitive Slave Law. In the Wednesday presentation at the Shipman Mansion – home of the Red Dragon Canoe Club – Schopp will use Powerpoint images to recreate the village and discuss the deprivations endured by its residents who, though they remained following the Civil War, had vanished from the landscape by 1920. Schopp, a professional historian who has documented local history for the past 40 years, became fascinated in 1990 with myriad black history topics in southern New Jersey and initiated documentary research into these topics. He has prepared or participated in preparing successful National Register of Historic Places nominations for Mount Peace Cemetery in Lawnside and Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church in Camden, both in Camden County; and Jacob’s Chapel and the Colemantown Meeting House in Mount Laurel, Burlington County. He also conducted exhaustive research and prepared a full history of Locust Hill Cemetery, a black burial ground located in Trenton, Mercer County. Schopp’s Timbuctoo program will begin at 7 p.m. at the Mansion, 221 Edgewater Avenue, Edgewater Park. One of a series of monthly educational and cultural programs presented by the Shipman Mansion Foundation, the event is free to the public and deserts will be served.