Clipper Lane

A historic Black community in Montgomery County, Maryland

Macedonia Baptist Church, Bethesda, MD. The heart of the River Road communities: Clipper Road, Dorsey Road, Crows Hill

In the 1900 U.S. census, John and Martha Clipper and their six sons and two daughters lived in Bethesda, Maryland next to George Clipper (his son? 27 years apart in age) and George’s wife Lucy and their three children. The adult men were working as day laborers. Apparently the census takers had stopped listing an occupation for women who were doing the work of keeping the house, because no occupation is listed for any of the women on this census page unless they were a servant.

Detail from 1916 Deets & Maddox Map, Plate 11-0 (Bethesda) showing Clipper Lane families and early location of the local lodge – the Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 Lodge of the Order of Moses

By 1910, three of the sons, William, C. (Cleveland?) and I. (Ike or Isaac?) family lived one behind the other on this lane off of River Road. Clipper Lane, Dorsey Lane, and River Road/Graysville were all connected communities, who would have worshipped together and whose children would have gone to school together.

Macedonia Baptist Church was moved to Clipper Lane in the 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s urban development that was pushing its way north from Washington DC, pushed local black families out of their neighborhoods to areas in the county that were further north. The church is now surrounded by industrial development, restaurants, large apartment buildings, and Whole Foods.

If anyone knows a more specific location or has information about founders and residents of this community, please let us know.

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References

Deets, Edward H., and Charles J. Maddox. 1917. “A Real Estate Atlas of the Part of Montgomery County Adjacent to the District of Columbia.” Https://Mchdr.montgomeryhistory.org. Montgomery History. 1917. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12366/455

McMahon, Heather. 2022. “Historic Resources Study: African-American Communities along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.” National Park Service History. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service. https://npshistory.com/publications/choh/hrs-african-american-communities.pdf

Roberts, Steve. 2017. “Uncovering the ‘Lost Colony’ in Bethesda.” Bethesda Magazine. Today Media. May 22, 2017. https://bethesdamagazine.com/2017/05/22/uncovering-the-lost-colony-in-bethesda/

Wallace, Glenn. 2018. “Montgomery County Cemetery Inventory Revisited: River Road Moses Cemetery.” Https://Mcatlas.org. Montgomery Preservation, Inc. 2018. https://mcatlas.org/filetransfer/HistoricPreservation/Cemeteries/327_River-Road-Moses_Bethesda/327_River-Road-Moses_Bethesda_2018/327_River-Road-Moses_Bethesda_2018_Survey.pdf

This article is part of MoCoLMP's project mapping our historic Black communities and their relationship to sites of enslavement during the Civil War. The map also shows the locations of the three known lynchings in 19th century Montgomery County, MD.