“Henry Jones: A Life in the Archival Shadows” presentation at MPAAGHS Monthly Meeting

Mar 14, 2026

Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society (MPAAGHS) will hold its monthly meeting virtually on Saturday, March 14, 2026, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. The meeting will feature a talk by historian Dennis Patrick Halpin entitled “Henry Jones: A Life in the Archival Shadows.” Dr. Halpin will share the little-known account of the life of Henry Jones, an African American man from Baltimore who in the late 19th century was hired to work under despicable conditions on Navassa, a Caribbean Island near Haiti.

Though most people have not heard of Henry Jones, he lived a fascinating and tragic life. Henry was born to an enslaved mother, Louisa, and Henry Jones in Pocomoke City, Maryland in 1864-1865. Henry Jones, Sr. died in service during the Civil War and in the wake of this tragedy, Louisa moved with Henry to Baltimore. Louisa raised Henry as a single mother in the years immediately after the Civil War. In 1888, Henry was recruited under false pretenses to work on Navassa Island. While on the island, the company that governed Navassa attacked its workforce, including Henry, in an event since remembered as the Navassa Riot. The next year, Henry was one of three men convicted of murder as a result of the riot.

Dr. Halpin follows Henry as he sought to navigate Baltimore during the Reconstruction Era and his subsequent incarceration in Brooklyn and Atlanta. While in prison, Henry learned to read and write and put those skills to use in a campaign to clear his name. Henry’s story is one that takes us into courtrooms, the meetings of civil rights activists, the Supreme Court, and the nation’s first federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Dr. Halpin is hoping to draw upon the collective expertise of MPAAGHS meeting attendees to further uncover sources related to Henry’s family and life.

Dennis Patrick Halpin is an associate professor and associate chair of the history department at Virginia Tech. His research has explored how race, class, and gender shaped the 19th and 20th century urban experience in the United States. His first book, A Brotherhood of Liberty: Black Reconstruction and Its Legacies in Baltimore, 1865-1920, published in 2019, examined some of the nation’s first civil rights activists from the end of the Civil War until 1920. Dr. Halpin is currently working on a book that tells the long history of Navassa Island through the lives of the Black men who worked there in the late nineteenth century. He earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Florida Southern University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University.

MPAAGHS 2026 dues ($25) are now due and may be paid online via MPAAGHS’s Payments webpage or by mailing checks made payable to MPAAGHS to:
MPAAGHS
4114 Tidewater Trail
Jamaica, VA 23079

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