Oaklands or Contee was a slave plantation owned by the Snowden family,[1] and remains as a historic home surrounded by residential development.

The house is a three-story Federal architecture manor of brick construction,[2][3][4] and was built by Major Thomas Snowden and his wife Eliza Warfield from Bushy Park, Howard County.

Dennis Simms, born in 1841, recalled such in 1937 as part of the Library of Congress Slave Narrative project.

We stuck pretty close to the cabins after dark, for it we were caught roaming about we would be unmercifully whipped.

If a slave was caught beyond the limits of the plantation where he was employed, without the company of a white person or without written permit of his master, any person who apprehended him was permitted to give him 20 lashes across the bare back...We were never allowed to congregate after work, never went to church, and could not read or write for we were kept in ignorance.