Speaker Biography:  Wayne Davis is a native of Chicago, Ill. and moved to Columbia, MD in 1992.  He recently retired after more than 32 years as an environmental scientist with the US Environmental Protection Agency where he lead efforts on environmental information reporting and transparency. 

 

As a member of the Savage Historical Society the past few years, his interest in local history has led to a collaborative effort called “Between the Bridges” with HoCo government focused on preserving and documenting the industrial history of Guilford and Savage along the Little Patuxent River and the former Patuxent Branch rail line of the B&O.

 

In early 2018, Wayne created a Facebook group called “Friends of the Guilford industrial Historic District” to share this local history and began an effort on the preservation of the re-discovered Guilford Quarry Cemetery.  Wayne focused on the history of his environmental research topics early on and published a few history papers in the late 1980’s.  Wayne and his brother discovered dozens of family letters from the 1920’s and began researching his own family history.  More recently he has given two presentations to the Savage Historical Society.

 

Mr. Davis will present the background of this recently re-discovered cemetery and how he and others, starting with the name and dates on just one headstone, found clues to two of the families buried in the cemetery and possibly the origin of the 0.2 acre cemetery.  In addition to these two families, there are likely dozens of African American burials from the antebellum after the quarry began operating in the 1830’s.  Support from Preservation Howard, the Maryland Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites, the State Highway Administration and many others have been critical to the effort of preserving and documenting this cemetery.