March 25, 2013 marks the 379th Anniversary of the legal entity that is Maryland. On this day in 1634 English Catholic settlers landed on St. Clements Island in the Potomac River, land now belonging to St. Mary’s County, Maryland. As an original state, Maryland’s borders and names for local governance changed over the centuries but…
The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland research project at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis began with a volunteer effort to digitize runaway slave advertisements published in Maryland newspapers. When volunteer Jerry Henson first showed then reference director Chris Haley a clipping that charged Aaron Salisbury with aiding and abetting a runaway, something clicked. He…
It was an eventful time at the Maryland State Archives these past two weeks. Although I gave my final Queen Anne’s County presentation over a week ago, I can still feel its effects on my daily work. My typical day revolves around researching slave freedom petitions from the Dr. Loren Schweninger Collection—a topic I have…
Like one of my favorite Presidents of the United States, the under-sung James K. Polk, I pulled off quite a bit of work in just four expressions of the sun’s effect on the Earth. In four years Polk facilitated one of the grandest land grabs in American history by seizing swaths of Mexico and settling…
My first public program with the Maryland State Archives (MSA) Legacy of Slavery in Maryland research project (LOSIM) went astoundingly well. Titled “Pistols and Petitions: Queen Anne’s Slave Self-Emancipation in the 19th Century,” it explored two ways in which Eastern Shore slaves freed themselves by joining the Union forces or petitioning the courts. Although I…
On Saturday I participated in my first public presentation for the Maryland State Archives. For three years David Armenti, the outgoing education coordinator, has participated in the Progressive Education Summit at City Neighbors Hamilton School at the edges of Baltimore City. Because there had been no “ride along” opportunities since my arrival in September, and…
In school I learned that historians use archives to compile evidence or find illustrative examples of a much longer case they are making. Genealogists, who are historians with a narrower interest, meanwhile consult indexes or other records looking for very particular items (usually names) and then move on. In the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland…
The past week at the Maryland State Archives is something of a blur of constant activity book-ended by dull moments while reading 200 year old court records concerning a slave named Robert Moody. Oral Histories Under the new terms of my fellowship’s placement at the Maryland State Archives I continue working on oral history interview…
This past week I returned to the depths of the Dr. Loren Schweninger Collection. This artificial collection, which I’ve previously talked about, is one of the results of over a decade of research and grant funded support to remove the mask of slave history in government records. The product of this effort at the Maryland…
With my Christmas vacation officially starting on Monday with a six o’clock flight and layover to Appleton, Wisconsin, I stayed until six o’clock Friday performing the finishing touches on my William M’Neir case study. I spent the majority of the week playing catch up with HistoryMakers oral history processing, thus delaying my completion of his…
Counterfactual Archivist 