Location Details
- 121 South Bentz StreetFrederick, MD 21701
This house was owned by Roger Brooke Taney, future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, from 1815 to 1823.
Roger Brooke Taney began his career as a lawyer in Frederick, MD, and practiced law there between 1801 and 1823. He owned this house from 1815 to 1823. Taney later became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and was the chief author of the infamous Dred Scott case in 1857, in which Taney “affirmed” that African Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The Dred Scott case was one of the catalysts of the Civil War. Taney and Abraham Lincoln also clashed in 1861 over the arrest of John Merryman in Baltimore by military authorities. Taney claimed the military had no right to hold Merryman without a judicial inquiry, but Lincoln claimed the Constitution gave the President extra-legal authority in times of war. Taney is buried in Frederick, in St. John’s Catholic Church Cemetery.
For Additional information
- Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) documentation
- Charles S. Adams, The Civil War in Frederick County, Maryland – A Guide to 49 Historic Points of Interest (Shepherdstown, WV: The Author, 1995), 7
- Susan Cooke Soderberg, A Guide to Civil War Sites in Maryland – Blue and Gray in a Border State (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 1998), 90.
