Join Friends of the Ship Caulkers’ Houses to discover the history of the free and enslaved community of Black ship caulkers who lived and worked in Fells Point during the mid-19th century. The Caulkers’ House are located at 612 and 614 S. Wolfe Street in Fells Point

Between 1842 and 1854, the buildings became homes to African American ship caulkers Richard Jones, Henry Scott and John Whittington. The shipbuilding industry in Fells Point depended on free and enslaved black labor. Caulking, the process by which a ship is waterproofed and sealed, was dominated by Black workers, including Frederick Douglass who worked as a caulker in Baltimore in the 1830s. For a time, the Black Caulker Association held a near monopoly over Baltimore’s caulking industry.

The houses on Wolfe Street were named the Caulker Houses in honor of the caulkers who lived there. The houses are also known as the “Two Sisters Houses” after sisters Mary Leeke Rowe Dashiell and Eleanor Marine Dashiell, descendants of the Leeke, Marine and Dashiell families. They owned the houses prior to the acquisition by the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point.