Seashore Farmers' Lodge

Earnest Parks

The Lodge Needing Repair

I met Earnest several years ago at a Civil War enactment. He and the rest of the soldiers representing the 54th Infantry were in various stages of uniforms. Some were obtained from the dead and others made do with what they found and had. I enjoyed sitting with them for hours listening to them discuss how things were at that time in language used by freed and former slaves.

This is what Sol Legare Community was all about. A place where freed slaves settled and where their generations maintained the pride and history that kept them together. The Seashore Farmers’ Lodge was the meeting place. Now a museum it celebrates the 150-year old Sol Legare Community in a preserved and historical position on the National Register of Historic Places.