Henri Ann Daniels, a longtime resident of Bolton Hill and an activist in neighborhood and city affairs, died at the age of 83 on Dec. 15 after a brief hospitalization. A funeral at Douglas Memorial Community Church a few days later attracted a hall filled with family, neighbors, professional colleagues and friends who came to remember the diminutive woman who helped restore Eutaw Place half a century earlier.
“She was a Bolton Hill pioneer,” said BHCA President Lee Tawney.
Henri was one of eight children born to her parents in the small community of Everetts, in eastern North Carolina. Her mother died when Henri was just two and she was raised by her grandparents on a farm they owned nearby. At the age of 10 she moved to Baltimore to pursue an education not easily available to black children in the rural south at that time, where she lived with her older sister, Della.
She graduated from Edmondson High school as a member of its first integrated class in 1959, later enrolling at Morgan State University. She graduated from Morgan and successfully pursued a social work master’s degree at Howard University. According to her daughter, she developed a passion for politics and civic affairs in college that stayed with her for the rest of her life. She ran unsuccessfully for Baltimore’s city council in 1983. Earlier she interned in the congressional office of U.S. Rep. George H. Fallon (D-MD).
She was working for the city, lived on Preston Street, and often walked along Eutaw Place, admiring the neighborhood. A friend told her about a city program to sell off old Eutaw houses that had been allowed to deteriorate, cut up into what the city’s housing director at the time called “real rabbit warrens.” In 1976, she applied and won a lottery to take possession of a four-story building at 1308 Eutaw. That began the expensive and slow process of restoring the building into four distinctive apartments. (More about that here: https://boltonhillmd.org/bulletin/eutaw-place-history/
“I believe that’s how she met my father; he was the contractor,” said her daughter, Dr. Angela Watkins. “I remember as a child we were living on the third floor,” while the work continued on the floors below, she said. Later the family moved down to the entry floor, but at the time of her death Henri had re-located back to the third floor while again renovating downstairs. She and her ex-husband, Vincent Watkins, remained close friends, according to their daughter.
Dr. Watkins, a physician, attended Mt. Royal Elementary School and the Friends School. Her mother was active in PTA activities. She said her mother was passionate about keeping the neighborhood safe and positive. She teamed with the Prince Hall Masons leadership across the street to keep that block of the Eutaw median park well groomed. “She was always committed to something. I grew up handing out leaflets,” her daughter said.
Henri volunteered with Friends of the Lillie Carroll Jackson Museum and worked to preserve Baltimore’s civil rights legacy. She was a longtime member and officer of the church where she was memorialized.
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