Ms. Marion Queen’s Lunch Counter and Snowball Stand (4505 Church Street)

Sarah Marion Queen and her husband, Stanley L. Queen, purchased their home at 4505 Church Street in 1939. According to the 1940 census, they had three children at the time–Annie Mae, 14; Bernice, 11; and Sterling, 9. They went on to have three more–Barbara, Stanley Jr., and Arthur. 

The Queens were hardworking and entrepreneurial. Mr. Queen’s occupation in the 1940 census is recorded as a “general hauler,” and he later became part of the North Brentwood police force. According to personal accounts from Minding Our Own Business, Mr. Queen is said to have owned a garbage and hauling business called Queen’s Trash Company. He also worked as a wood, coal, and ice supplier at 41st Street, a bus driver, a trustee for the school board, chief fireman, and chief of police of North Brentwood. According to his oldest son, Sterling Leo Queen,

he also kept a two-acre vegetable farm down at my mother’s mother’s home down in Collington, Maryland. He has had quite a few pigs, and he would kill pigs and sell the meat, and he would put them in the storage room upstairs. Back in them days you didn’t have a big freezer. You would salt them down and use them as you needed them.

Their son Sterling joined Mr. Queen on a lot of his jobs, including to the wharf to get fish right off the boat. Mr. Queen, his son Sterling, and his grandson Sterling Jr. were also war veterans, as recorded at the North Brentwood Memorial Garden Marker. 

Sarah Queen, better known as Ms. Marion, is remembered by many for her lunch stand at their Church Street home. According to personal correspondence with Ms. Una Palmer, Ms. Marion made “yummy food–meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, homemade cakes, snow cones.” Ms. Palmer remembered how teachers would walk right across the street during school lunch breaks to get food from Ms. Marion. Her eldest son, Sterling, remembered that

Mama used to sell snowballs for the kids. First [when] we started, we had the hand thing. Then we bought the machine that took all that kind of work out of it. She sold dinners and she had snowballs.”

Barbara Spriggs remembered specifically how

on Fridays we would meet and go ‘round there. She sold crabs, and watermelon slices, and sodas for twenty-five cents. Then we could sit there in the backyard–her backyard was fixed up with tables and stuff. We would sit back there and eat watermelon and crabs.

The Queens reportedly also sold Christmas trees and wreaths at their Church Street home, and ran a fish market on 41st Avenue, selling “fish, fresh vegetables, fruits, ice, wood, and coal.” Their Church Street home is no longer standing, but it was located approximately where the parking lot of the current First Baptist Church of North Brentwood now exists. 

Sources

Historical Marker Database, North Brentwood Memorial Garden. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=214770

Communities. African-American Historic and Cultural Resources. pg. 76.

Map of Nelson-Queen House from Maryland Historical Inventory form