Montrose Parkway, which parallels Montrose Road, in Montgomery County, Maryland is now named for famed abolitionist and Methodist preacher Josiah Henson. The parkway runs through the northern part of the former plantation where Henson escaped slavery. Additionally, The Josiah Henson Museum and Park is just south of the parkway.

The formerly enslaved Henson escaped to Canada in 1830. Henson’s 1849 autobiography inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s popular 1852 novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” credited with building support for the anti-slavery movement that led to the American Civil War. Historians also credit Henson for leading 118 other Africans out of enslavement to Canada as part of the Underground Railroad.

Montgomery County, one of the wealthiest and most diverse counties in the United States, borders Washington, DC on the north. The county is about 18 percent Black and home to many newly arrived Africans.

Canada has also memorialized Henson at The Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site, an open-air museum in Dresden, Ontario, Canada. “Our histories are inextricably mixed and connected,” said Canadian Black history advocate Rosemary Sandlier,“ she continued, “With a genesis in Africa, the shared interruption of our progress through the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, and our shared experience of the post slavery period which included clipped progress, degrees of segregation, and anti-Black racism.”