Baltimore’s Captain
George W. Brown
The year was 1914, and the story in the Afro-American, Baltimore, newspaper was breathless with anticipation. Opening day at Brown’s Grove on Rock Creek near the mouth of the Patapsco River was set for May 7, and 2,000 people were expected to board the steamer Starlight for an afternoon of amusements.
“Captain George Brown who is the captain of the Starlight as well as owner and manager of Brown’s Grove has been busy all the winter getting things in shape at the grove, so that those who take the trip Sunday afternoon will find a resort different in many respects from the one which greeted them last year” the newspaper enthused. “Probably the most interesting new feature will be the miniature railway which has been completed and will traverse the entire grove. A new carousel has also been installed.”
Bayside resorts and the accompanying steamboats to ferry their patrons over and back for a day or more of fun were common in the late 1800s through the mid-20th century. The popular beaches at Betterton, Tolchester, and even Kent Island’s Love Point were prized among Baltimoreans who longed to escape the city’s summer heat.
But during the post-Reconstruction era of Jim Crow, Black people weren’t welcome at those resorts. Although some steamboats would carry Black passengers, segregation was the rule onboard. As late as 1952, when Sandy Point State Park opened as the first state park in Maryland that permitted African Americans, the bathhouses remained segregated.
In Annapolis, Black entrepreneurs opened Highland, Carr’s, and Sparrow’s beaches from the 1890s to early 1930s to serve an African American clientele with money to spend but nowhere that would welcome them to do so. They threw parties, hosted concerts, and provided top-notch entertainment. And in Baltimore, an ambitious and savvy young man who arrived from North Carolina in November 1896 “without one cent in the pockets of his seer-sucker suit” would go them one step further.
In 1906, after operating one year with a chartered, 200-passsenger steamboat called the J.W. Newbill, Capt. George W. Brown partnered with Walter R. Langley in 1907 to charter a 450-passenger steamboat; they bought it outright a year later and renamed it Starlight. A 1960 story in the Afro-American states that “In three years, Captain Brown had paid off all the mortgages on his boat and purchased a 45-acre tract on Rock Creek in Anne Arundel County.”
As in this 1929 advertisement from the Afro-American, Baltimore, newspaper, for his new steamer Avalon, Brown marketed his business as “The only steamer and the only park in the State of Maryland run exclusively for Colored People and by Colored People.”
Brown purchased the 190-foot Avalon in 1929. Built in 1888, she was one of several steamboats he renamed, often upgraded, and put into service carrying customers to Brown's Grove and other Bay destinations.
“Both the grove and the steamer that takes them there are owned by a colored man—George W. Brown. Moreover, it is CAPTAIN George W. Brown, and Baltimore is proud of the fact,” said a March 16, 1929, story in the Afro-American.
“He’s visionary, because that type of entertainment and maritime work coming together is really not available to that community,” said Philip J. Merrill, CEO and founder of Nanny Jack & Company, and a historian and archivist who has studied Brown as part of his Old West Baltimore historical project. “If you look at it from an economic standpoint, he’s creating economic opportunities for the Black community” by hiring dozens of Black employees to operate his steamboats and work at Brown’s Grove, a point made repeatedly in news stories and letters to the editor of the time.
“The entire crew of the Steamer Starlight, which is one of the largest excursion steamers on the Chesapeake Bay, is composed of colored men,” noted another Afro-American story. “Most of the officers and mechanics who operate the boat have been trained by Captain Brown, and it was through his efforts that colored men were allowed licenses to do this grade of work. Such an opportunity could never have been obtained by colored men on white boats. All told there are about 50 employees receiving salaries that reach as high as $150 monthly.”
Brown also made a shrewd choice in landing Langley as his partner early on, Merrill said. “The Langley family were produce-dealers, and Langley was a strong Black surname in Baltimore. He aligned himself with a business partner who had some local clout and respect.” Being a successful, well-connected Black businessman in Baltimore wasn’t unique, Merrill said, “but the field that [Brown] is in is extremely unique at the time. He was a pioneer.”
Over 30 years, Brown would become one of Baltimore’s most prominent and beloved Black business leaders, whose every move—from his penchant for top-of-the-line automobiles and high-speed driving to his second marriage to a socialite well-known in Washington, DC, circles—made news. He made it to the top of Baltimore’s business and social circles, becoming a board member of the YMCA, a trustee of the prominent Cosmopolitan Community Church, and a member of the Masons. Yet, he never lost his touch with his roots.
“He was a friend of sinners and Christians, clergymen and dance promoters, the upper crust and the lower,” wrote Ida Peters in a June 13, 1981 remembrance. “Baltimoreans loved him and trusted him. His excursion boat and the grove at the end were a rendezvous from the summer heat. From 1906 to 1935, more than 3.5 million people traveled on his steamers.”
In a letter to the Afro-American editor dated July 27, 1929, Linwood G. Koger urged local clubs, churches, and service organizations to patronize Brown’s Grove and Capt. Brown’s steamboats. Without it, Koger said, Black Baltimoreans would have no place to go for summer recreation.
“It provides the only recreation on the Bay for the poorer people of our group who have not automobiles to go to other watering places and can raise but fifty cents to refresh themselves. Effort is made to keep the entire business clean and respectable. It is as safe as any other boat owned by any people…
…we are fortunate to have some place to recreate ourselves around Baltimore. If Captain Brown’s boat and grove are discontinued we shall not have any place to go and land for recreation, and we, only, shall be culpable. What shall we do about it?”
Brown’s story as much as his success made him a captivating figure. According to articles written about him over the years, he began working at 8 years old in a machine shop in Little Washington, North Carolina. Over time, his skills and ambition led him to the position of foreman over several white employees. “Prejudice reared its ugly head, and threatening letters poured in upon him with the sinister advice to leave town,” according to a March 16, 1929, story in the Afro-American. He held out two more years before giving his savings to his mother and heading to Baltimore in 1896, basically penniless. “He helped unload the boat that brought him and got 50 cents. That insured him a night’s lodging.”
By the spring of 1906, he was working for a laundry business when he was sent to pick up some equipment to ship to Baltimore. “There were two coaches to the train—one for white passengers, the other for baggage, animals, and Negroes,” the 1929 Afro-American article said. “As George Brown rode in that coach, with a bird dog for company, he suddenly decided to devote the rest of his life and energies to some form of transportation for Negroes. A railroad was out of the question; a boat was the other alternative.”
“He immediately resigned his job, chartered a steamer for $25 a day, leased a grove on Bare Creek, and started in the excursion business," the 1929 article continued. "This began an enterprise which is Baltimore’s pride and a monument to the outstanding characteristics of this unusual man.”
Over the years, Brown would charter and own a succession of steamers. A 1927 story announcing his marriage to Clara V. Hare from Holland, Virginia, noted that he began with “the Steamer ‘J.W. Newbill’ valued at $1,500 and capable of carrying 200 passengers. Then came the Steamer ‘Starlight,’ three times rebuilt to carry 550 passengers and valued at $24,000. Last year he brought out the new Steamer ‘Favorite’ worth $75,000 and carrying 1,500 passengers.”
In 1928, he suffered a terrible loss when the $75,000 steamer South Shore—his most ambitious ship to date at 200 feet long and able to carry 2,500 passengers—foundered in a gale of 65-mile-an-hour winds off Atlantic City while under tow to Baltimore. Three of his crew hand-picked to deliver the steamer drowned.
“Although the loss of the South Shore will necessitate the cancellization [sic] of all excursions to Brown’s Grove this year, he will not give up, but will start plans to obtain a new boat for next season, Captain Brown declared in an interview Tuesday,” stated a May 5, 1928, story in the Afro-American.
Brown died in November of 1935. Brown’s Grove was later sold to a white businessman; there’s no trace of it on Rock Creek today. In a remembrance dated December 14, 1935, the Afro-American said Brown’s passing “removes from Eastern business circles one of its most colorful figures. He had a happy faculty of making friends…energetic, capable, courageous, thrifty, and equipped with a marvelous physical body, he improved his boats and his grove, and kept them in such condition that they could be patronized freely by all classes and all races. At his death he was the only steamboat captain in the East with his own boat and excursion resort.”