Mr. James Urven was born in the mid 1830s, most likely in Georgia. He sometimes spelled his name “Urven” and other times as “Irvin”.
From his obituary, we learn that he was enslaved in Georgia. During the Civil War, he escaped his enslavers. He joined up with Gen Sherman’s army and was employed as a servant to the officers there. He traveled to DC with the Army, and it was there he left for Maryland.
The first time we find him in Maryland is in the 1870 Census, when he is living with his wife (Ann Rebecca) and two children. Later records show that the couple had married about 1868.
The 1900 Census records the couple living near New Windsor, with an adult son. Sadly of their 14 children, only two were still living by that time. The two men both worked as plasterers, while Mrs. Urven was a servant in a private family. Mrs. Urven died in 1904.
A year later, Mr. Urven remarried to Mrs. Maggie (Moffit) Smith, the widow of Sergeant Ephraim Smith. Sergeant Smith had died in 1902. The couple married in Gettysburg, although it is unclear why. Possibly, Mrs. Smith was Irish and white, as is indicated in some census records. Interracial marriage was illegal in Maryland, and had been since 1691. Maryland was the first of the British colonies to explicitly ban such marriages. Pennsylvania had repealed its ban in 1780. Later records show Mrs. Smith Urven to be Black, so it is difficult to be certain.
In 1910, the couple is living with two of their sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandchild. The two Mr. Urvens continued in the plastering trade as entrepreneurs. By 1920, the couple is living in Westminster, on Green Street. Mr. Urven was a minister, and also took on additional work as the night watchman at one of the hotels in town, while Mrs. Urven worked for a private family.
Mr. James Urven died in the summer of 1922, and is buried in an unmarked grave in Western Chapel Cemetery in Carroll County, Maryland.
