Heritage Communities and Human Rights: A Case Study from Catoctin Furnace, Maryland

Abstract

ABSTRACT The village of Catoctin Furnace, located in rural Maryland, in the United States, houses an early iron furnace site. Operational by 1776, its workforce in the early years was almost entirely enslaved African and African American people. A local non-profit, the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc. (CFHS), on the board of which one of the authors serves, has made the search for a descendant community of these enslaved and freed Black workers a principal focus, while also preserving the heritage of European labourers and trying to foster economic and cultural activity in the village. So far, no living, direct descendant of a person who was enslaved at Catoctin Furnace has been identified, meaning the site can be considered ‘orphan heritage’. Looking at the site through the lenses of orphan heritage and ‘fictive kinship’ provides an alternative analytical framework which may be usefully applied at other sites. This case study helps us understand the notion of ‘rights-based approaches’ and how site managers can handle the sometimes clashing needs and desires of different groups while balancing their respective rights to heritage and to other human rights, as well as the use of artistic modes of interpretation in democratising access to the past.