Towson University Dorms Named After Slave Owners To Be Renamed

TOWSON, MD — Towson University announced it will remove the names of two prominent Maryland slave owners from its dormitories. In a letter to students, President Kim E. Schatzel said University System of Maryland Board of Regents supported her request to rename Paca House and Carroll Hall.

The renaming request resulted from a comprehensive effort over the past year by a 10-member committee made up of Towson students, faculty, staff and alumni.

The committee's renaming recommendation was unanimous, Schatzel said, as was the support from the university's three shared governance bodies—the academic senate, staff senate and the Student Government Association.

The original names for the residence halls were decided prior to the establishment of the university's current naming policy, which was approved for use in 2017, the school's president said. The University System of Maryland last updated its naming policy in 2020.

Paca House is named after William Paca, a Maryland native and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Paca, who died in 1799 at age 58, had served as a judge, governor and state senator, according to the National Governors Association. While it is not known how many enslaved people lived in his Georgian mansion in Anapolis, the names of five slaves are documented, according to the preservation organization, Historic Annapolis..

Carroll Hall is named after Charles Carroll, another Maryland native who signed the Declaration of Independence. According to the Charles Carroll House, he was the only Roman Catholic and the last survivor of all 56 signers dying in 1832 at age 96. Considered the largest slaveholder at the time of the American Revolution, Carroll reportedly owned nearly 400-500 slaves. In 1828, he became president of the American Colonization Society and sought to resettle slaves in Africa.

Both men had no direct tie to the college, which was established in 1866, decades after Paca and Carroll died, the Baltimore Sun reported.

WBAL-TV reported that in a letter to the regents, Schatzel recognized the men's contributions as founding fathers but questioned "how we can ask our students to accept living and sleeping in a residence hall that, as one student told me, 'was named after a man that enslaved my ancestors and tortured them as part of his daily life.'"

This fall, Towson University will begin work to establish new names for the buildings. In the meantime, Paca House will be known as West Village 1 and Carroll Hall will be called West Village 2.

Keeping in line with the university's facility naming policy, the committee plans to “ensure that Towson University facilities, buildings, and programs are named consistently with the university’s principles, ideals, and values.”

Under the policy, Towson's buildings can be named after prominent state landmarks, scholars or faculty who have left the university system at least a year prior.