The city of Baltimore grew up in the Age of the Bicycle. The introduction of the first precursor to the bicycle, the Draisine or hobby-horse of 1818, corresponds with Baltimore’s triumphant entry onto the national stage in the War of 1812. Baltimore, a mere village during the Revolutionary War, blossomed into America’s third greatest economic and industrial power in the 19^th century. It is no surprise that in 1819 Charles Willson Peale, father of America’s scientific museums, recorded the introduction of America’s first bicycle in Baltimore. The ‘tracena’ was locally made by piano-maker James Stewart and modeled after the German Draisine. Throughout the bicycle’s development, from hobby-horse, to velocipede, to high-wheel, to the modern pneumatic safety bicycle, Baltimore was a natural stage.

The high wheel or penny-farthing type of bicycle, such as this example, was first introduced in the late 1870s. Baltimore – Stores & Business – Establishments – George W. Slee, Eutaw Place, ca. 1895, MdHS, SVF.

As velocipede mania swept America in 1868 and into 1869, the Hanlons, America’s most influential early bicycle innovators, raced publicly in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park, while Baltimore inventor Richard Gornall developed an elegant child’s bicycle of his own design (on exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society). At the end of the 1880s, as bicycling transitioned from elitist high-wheel club cycling to more democratic safety-bicycle riding, Baltimore and Maryland hosted the national meets of the League of American Wheelmen—including rides and races specifically for women. Baltimore stories abound from cycling’s golden age—of celebrities like Babe Ruth –  as much a cycling ‘scorcher’ as a baseball hitter – and writer H.L. Mencken, for whom learning to ride in 1898 was a “great and urgent matter.”

League of American Wheelmen Ninth Annual Meet Official Programme Cover, June 18-20, 1888, MdHS, PAM 5142.

League of American Wheelmen Ninth Annual Meet Official Programme Back cover, June 18-20, 1888, MdHS, PAM 5142.

Modern Baltimoreans treasure their cycling culture and heritage. Since the 1970s individuals as well as organizations like Baltimore Heritage, have mapped out historic cycle rides that highlight local history and sometimes intentionally follow historic cycling parade routes. Many of today’s Baltimore cyclists ride under the banners of Baltimore Bike Party, an offshoot of the ‘Critical Mass’ movement, or BikeMore and the Baltimore Bicycling Club, vibrant advocacy organizations, while local cyclists can choose between the support of a thriving commercial cycling market and at least three cooperative bicycle projects: it can truly be said that the bicycle (“The Great Leveler) is alive and well in Baltimore today. (Paul Rubenson)

On Thursday, August 7th, MdHS wants you to join us in celebrating the bicycle: 

• Visit the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) for FREE from 10:00 AM – 7:30 PM and experience the special one-day exhibition: American Wheels to the Front: The Involution of American Bicycles (1868-today)
• Enjoy a FREE Young Defenders First Thursday Happy Hour in the Courtyard at MdHS from 5:00 – 7:30 PM
• Eat from local food trucks and imbibe beer and wine (cash bar: $3/beer; $5/wine)
• Witness demonstrations of historic bicycles by modern high-wheel men starting at 6:00 PM
• Take part in a celebratory bike ride led by Baltimore Heritage departing MdHS at 7:00 PM

Please enjoy this slideshow of images from MdHS’s collections. It captures both the evolution of the velocipede and how we as Marylanders have celebrated it over the years.

SVF Bicycles & Tricycles Penny-farthing (Tintype)

SVF Bicycles & Tricycles Penny-farthing, 4 x 2.5 inch tintype. Photographer and date unknown, Subject Vertical File, MdHS.

SVF - Baltimore - Stores & Business Establishments - N.T. Slee B

SVF - Baltimore - Stores & Business Establishments - N.T. Slee Bicycle Shop, ca. 1895 (2310-2312 Madison Avenue). Z24.22.VF MdHS.

B350-I Bicycle Shop Man

Bernard J. Logue pines away for the old days at his North Broadway bike shop. B350-I Bicycle Shop Man, July 9, 1955. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, MdHS.

Z24.1087 Baltimore Bicycle Club ca. 1898

Baltimore Bicycle Club, ca. 1898, Z24.1087, MdHS.

Z24.807 Ladies on Bicycles

Ladies on Bicycles. Photographer and date unknown, 4 x 5 inch copy negative, Z24.807, MdHS.

Z7-240-PP20 Bicycle Group at Penwood Park

Bicycle Group at Pennwood Park, June 24, 1897. Baltimore Camera Club, Brown Photograph Collection, Z7-240-PP20, MdHS.

PP97-18 Katherine and Peter Yates

Katherine and Peter Yates, ca. 1899. Photo by Walzl's Imperial Portrait Studios, cabinet card. Chandlee Photograph Collection, PP97-18, MdHS.

MD793 Pamphlet Rules and Regulations for Bicycles, Tricycles...

These are the rules of the road. Get to know them. Pamphlet: Rules and Regulations for Bicycles, Tricycles, and Carriages in the Public Parks of Baltimore, 1896. BCLM Collection, MD793, MdHS.

MX.599 Child’s ‘Velocipede’ Bicycle, Hanlon Type REF PHOTO

On display at MdHS. Child’s ‘Velocipede’ Bicycle, Hanlon Type. Made by Richard Gornall, Baltimore, Md. Ca. 1868-1870. BCLM Collection, Museum Department, MdHS.

SVF Bicycles & Tricycles bicyclist ca. 1890

Bicycles & Tricycles bicyclist, ca. 1890. Photo by A.L. Rogers, Hagerstown, cabinet card, SVF, MdHS.

Z7-242-PP20 Unidentified woman and bicycle.

Unidentified woman and bicycle, not dated, Baltimore Camera Club, Brown Photograph Collection, Z7-242-PP20, MdHS.

Z8-316-PP20 Mrs. M.M.Brown on bicycle

Mrs. M.M.Brown on bicycle, July 30, 1899. Baltimore Camera Club, Brown Photograph Collection, Z8-316-PP20, MdHS.

Z24-804 Men on Bicycles

Men on Bicycles, date & photographer unknown. Z24-804, MdHS.

B350-K Bicycle 3-Seater

"Bicycle 3-Seater," July 9, 1955. Probably taken at Clifton Lake by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, B350-K, MdHS.

B350-A Bicycles 3 High Wheels of the 1880s

Charles Logue, Donald Lang, and Richard Inglehart re-enact the Gay '90s at Clifton Lake. "Bicycles 3 High Wheels of the 1880s," July 9, 1955. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, B350-A, MdHS.

B350-C Bicycles 3 High Wheelers

Richard Inglehart, Donald Lang, and Charles Logue re-enact the Gay '90s at Clifton Lake. "Bicycles 3 High Wheelers," July 9, 1955. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, B350-C, MdHS.

B350-G Bicycle 4-Seater

Members of the Century Road Club: Donald Lang, Mildred Lauf, Richard Inglehart, and Mary Leary. Probably taken at Clifton Lake. "Bicycle 4-Seater," July 9, 1955. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, B350-G, MdHS.

B350-J Bicycle - Wooden

John Phillips rides a wooden "clown" bike. "Bicycle - Wooden," July 9, 1955. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, B350-J, MdHS.

MC2152 Man demonstrating scissor grinder (bicycle-powered knife

Man demonstrating scissor grinder (bicycle-powered knife sharpener) for spectators on Baltimore City street, ca. 1895-1900. Unidentified photographer, BCLM Collection, MC2152, MdHS.

MC9479 Bike Excursion

"Bike Excursion," Photograph by John Dubas, ca. 1920. BCLM Collection, MC9479, MdHS.

B796-Q Ocean City Waitresses. 7/1947.

"Ocean City Waitresses," July, 1947. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine, BCLM Collection, B796-Q, MdHS.

August 6-8, MdHS is proud to host the International Cycling History Conference:

In 2014 the International Cycling History Conference is celebrating its quarter century. The Conference has been notable for bringing together academics, curators, collectors, and enthusiasts to debate and present new knowledge on all aspects of cycling history. The Conference has a notable track record in bringing to light critical, interesting, and previously unappreciated stories from the history of cycling. Examples include such diverse subjects as exposing the fraudulent ‘Leonardo’ claims to invention of the bicycle, to the role of Col. Albert A. Pope in formation of the bicycle monopoly in 1899, to discussion of the role of cycling in women’s liberation.

For more information on the conference: http://www.cycling-history.org/

Be sure to check out these resources:

BikeMore

Baltimore Bicycling Club

Baltimore Bike Party

Baltimore Heritage

The tools of the trade: Calipers and Craniometer used in the nineteenth century practice of Phrenology.
From “Elements of Phrenology” published in 1834 by George Combs, one of the nineteenth century’s leading phrenological theorists. (Not from MdHS’s collection.)

On February 17, 1827 an assemblage of distinguished minds from Baltimore’s medical community gathered at the home of Dr. Richard Sprigg Steuart for the inaugural meeting of a new scientific and medical organization. Among those present were Dr. William Donaldson, Sprigg’s medical partner; Dr. H.H. Hayden, dentist and future founder of Baltimore College of Dental Surgery; Dr. Joshua I. Cohen, of the prominent Baltimore family; Doctors G.S. Gibson, Patrick Macaulay, and G.S. Sproston;  chemist and geologist Julius Ducatel, and Mr. Edward Denison. The Baltimore Phrenological Society was born.(1)

Phrenology (from the Greek phren for mind and logos for discourse or knowledge) is a pseudoscience that purports to measure a person’s psychological, intellectual, and personality capacities through the study of the size and shape of the skull. The man largely responsible for ushering in the modern era of phrenology at the end of the eighteenth century was Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828).

The basic premise of phrenology, laid out by Gall in The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, with Observations upon the possibility of ascertaining the several Intellectual and Moral Dispositions of Man and Animal, by the configuration of their Heads, published in 1819, is that the human mind consists of 27 faculties—character, personality, and intellectual traits—each with its own “organ” or region in the brain. These range from: reproductive instincts, aptitude for being educated, satire and wit, kindness, and the love of one’s offspring to poetic talent, mathematical abilities, pride, guile, and murderous instincts. Later phrenological practitioners expanded the number of faculties to 40 or more.

From Illustrations of Phrenology, published in 1832: “These two heads stand at two extremes of human and cerebral organization: the first presents the most noble and beautiful outline: the second is scarcely human in its form. The minds manifested through them were equally unlike: the first is the head of the great German Goethe: the other, that of an idiot.”
Calvert, George Henry, Illustrations of phrenology (Baltimore: W. and J. Neal, 1832)

According to Gall, the brain is shaped by these organs, which vary in size according to the individual—the larger the organ the more pronounced the specific trait would be exhibited in the subject. The skull, in turn, is shaped by the development of the organs, producing the various bumps, protuberances and crevices that make each human skull unique. Thus, to the practiced phrenologist the “surface of the skull can be read as an accurate index of psychological aptitudes and tendencies.”(2)

Although today phrenology is dismissed as a pseudoscience, some of its tenets—that certain functions are localized in the brain, and that specific areas of the brain can grow with use—are scientifically accepted fact. But for a time in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century it was accepted by large numbers of people that a person’s character, intelligence, and personality could be gleaned by precise measurements of the the bumps on the skull.

Phrenology emerged in England in the 1790s, promoted principally by Gall and his student Johann Gaspar Spurzheim; by the late 1820s it had crossed the Atlantic and began to attract followers in the United States precipitating a boom in popularity that lasted until the 1840s. Societies and organizations promoting phrenology and providing head readings emerged, with the first established in Edinburgh, England in 1820.

By the end of the 1820s phrenological enthusiasts were meeting in cities in the United States. Following its founding in February of 1827, the Baltimore Phrenological Society grew from nine to 22 members, attracting prominent Marylanders such as lawyer John H.B. Latrobe, William Ellicott, grandson of the founder of Ellicott Mills, author and statesman John Pendleton Kennedy, and State Senator and Judge William Frick. The group gathered on a weekly basis at member’s homes to discuss the merits of phrenology, host lectures, and measure skulls.

Edgar Allen Poe’s keen interest in phrenology was probably sparked by the fact that his own cranium, with its high, broad forward, was judged to be of superior phrenological quality. Poe would write to his friend, writer Frederick William Thomas, that “speaking of heads—my own has been examined by several phrenologists—all of whom spoke of me in a species of extravaganza which I should be ashamed to repeat.”
Edgar Allen Poe, not dated, Cased Photograph Collection, CSPH 277, MdHS.

The main tools of the practicing phrenologist were calipers, used for “ascertaining the general size of the head,” and the craniometer, which measured “the length from the medulla oblongata, or top of the spinal marrow, where each organ originates, to the point where it reaches the surface of the brain.”(3) Both devices involved inserting metal rods into the subjects ears. The Baltimore organization examined the heads of Baltimoreans, both young and old, male and female, prominent and obscure. Among those who sat for readings were Prince Charles Bonaparte, Solomon Etting, and William Wirt. The group also recorded measurements of their own skulls.  John H.B. Latrobe “organs” were larger than his fellow members in 12 of 25 categories measured, including firmness, benevolence, and wit but smallest in philoprogenitiveness (love of one’s offspring). John Pendleton Kennedy scored highest in self-esteem and love of approbation.

John Pendleton Kennedy was connected with one of the more famous advocates of phrenology, Edgar Allen Poe. While in Baltimore in the early 1830s, Poe became acquainted with Kennedy, who seems to have helped him get hired as an editor and critic with the Southern Literary Messenger, a literary journal published out of Richmond, Virginia. Poe became fascinated with phrenology around the time he was in Baltimore in the mid-1830s. In a book review of Phrenology and the Moral Influence of Phrenology by Mrs. L. Miles published in the journal in 1836, Poe boldly asserted that,

“Phrenology is no longer to be laughed at. It is no longer laughed at by men of common understanding. It has assumed the majesty of a science; and, as a science, ranks among the most important which can engage the attention of thinking beings…with proper caution, and well-directed inquiry, individuals may obtain, through the science, a perfectly accurate estimate of their own moral capabilities – and thus instructed, will be the better fitted for decision in regard to a choice of offices and duties in life.”(4)

The novelist, editor, and poet would go on to include references to phrenology in some of his stories, such as “The Imp of the Perverse,” published in 1845.

New illustrated self-instructor in phrenology and physiology, O.S. Fowler & L. N. Fowler, (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1859).

By the 1840s, the “science” of phrenology had been essentially discredited. The Baltimore Phrenological Society appears to have been a short-lived enterprise, lasting less than two years. However, following a visit and lecture from phrenologist Lorenzo Niles Fowler in 1847, another society was established in the city. Lorenzo, along with his brother Orson Squire Fowler, was largely responsible for a revival of popular interest in phrenology beginning in the 1860s and continuing into the early twentieth century. This brand of phrenology, was less scientific and more entrepreneurial than its predecessor, with practitioners charging fees to read heads. It also was used, along with the close related physiognomy, in support of theories of racial superiority. While the British Phrenological Society founded by Lorenzo Fowler in 1887 carried on until 1967, there is no evidence that the second incarnation of the Baltimore Phrenological Society survived the nineteenth century. (Damon Talbot)

Phrenological analysis of artist Rubens Peale, the son of painter and naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Rubens’s brother, Rembrandt, established Baltimore’s Peale Museum. Rubens also served as director of the museum.
Phrenological Analysis of Rubens Peale by Dr. Collyer, November 21, 1836, BCLM Works on Paper Collection, ML5927, MdHS.

Sources and further reading:

(1) The original name of the organization was the Phrenological Association of Baltimore; Phrenological Association of Baltimore, Minute Books, 1827-1829, MS 1102, MdHS.

(2) Victorian Web.org/science/phrenology

(3) Combe, George, Elements of Phrenology (New York: William H. Coyler), 1834. p 203.

(4) Poe, Edgar Allen, Critical Notices, Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II, No. 3, March 1836.

Bernard Becker Medical Library: Phrenology

The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore: Poe and Phrenology

Fowler, O.S., ed., The American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, Vol. IX (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1847

Fowler, O.S., ed., The American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, Vol. X (New York: Fowler and Wells) 1848.

Fowler, O. S., & Fowler, L. N., New illustrated self-instructor in phrenology and physiology: with over one hundred engravings (New York: Fowler and Wells) 1859.

Calvert, George Henry, Illustrations of phrenology (Baltimore: W. and J. Neal, 1832)

Feel the Bumps on my Head

History of Phrenology

Hungerford, Edward, “Poe and Phrenology,” On Poe: The Best from American Literature (Duke University Press) 1993.

Phrenology: History of a Pseudoscience

Beatles fans outside the Holiday Inn on Lombard Street, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

As Baltimore celebrates the 200^th anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner and the successful defense of Fort McHenry from invading British forces, there’s another British invasion worth remembering. It occurred fifty years ago and was of an entirely different sort. On September 13, 1964, The Beatles invaded Baltimore for a one-day stop during their first American tour. John, Paul, George, and Ringo played two concerts at the Civic Center (today know as the Baltimore Arena) and then quickly moved on to the remaining stops on their 32-performance tour schedule from August 19 to September 20.

Baltimore photographer Morton Tadder was there to document the performances. Born in 1929, Tadder began working as a photographer’s assistant while still in high school and over the next six decades established himself as one of Maryland’s premiere commercial photographers. His clients included McCormick, Baltimore magazine, U.S. Steel Corporation, and Playboy. He was also the official photographer for both the Orioles and the Colts.(1) Tadder was hired by the London Express to photograph the Fab Four for what would be their only Baltimore appearance. The newspaper asked him to only shoot only one roll of film, but Tadder ended up filling up more than ten rolls, capturing the Beatles in concert (only the afternoon performance), the between show press conference, and the masses of teenage girls.

The Beatles visit to Baltimore was typical of any of the group’s appearances at the height of Beatlemania: screaming girls, press conferences, high security, car chases, and hiding in hotels. The music itself was almost incidental. Crowds gathered all day outside the Civic Center and the Holiday Inn across the street, where the Beatles were staying, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the group. Two girls unsuccessfully tried to deliver themselves to the concert in a box marked “Beatles Fan Mail.” Another girl, intent on fulfilling her plan to marry Ringo, persuaded a Civic Center employee to show her the Beatles dressing room. She left a note with her telephone number and “I love you Ringo” affixed to some coat hangers.

An estimated 26,000 screaming fans packed into the Civic Center for the two concerts. Seventy-one police officers were lined up three deep in the orchestra pit in front of the stage. After sitting in patient anticipation through the opening acts—Bill Black’s Combo, The Exciters, Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry, and Jackie DeShannon—the crowd exploded in shrieks and applause when the Beatles hit the stage. Although little could be heard of their performance above the din of the audience, the group ran through a set list of 12 songs: “Twist and Shout,” “You Can’t Do That,” “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” “Things we Said Today,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “If I Fell, I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Boys,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” and “Long Tall Sally.”

After an all night private party held at La Ronde, the revolving restaurant perched atop the Holiday Inn, the Beatles left the hotel by limousine destined for more of the same hysteria in Pittsburgh, the next stop on the tour. Despite the party, the frenzied pace of touring, and general condition of being a Beatle, The Sun reported that the group departed Baltimore looking “fresh and restive.” George and Paul “were neatly dressed in suits and blue shirts, Ringo was tie-less, and John, in sunglasses, long-hair and white shirt with bold black spots, looked like a blind Dalmatian.”(2) (Damon Talbot)

Underbelly would like to thank Morton Tadder for granting permission to use his photographs. Captions for the photographs below were taken from various contemporary articles from the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post. 

Beginning on September 14, an exhibit of Tadder’s Beatles photographs will be on display at the Unicorn Gallery, 626 South Broadway. Info: 410-675-5412. 

“We believe they would be quite good looking with the hair back out of their eyes. If [only] when granting a press interview they were nicely dressed instead of rumpled and tieless – Paul was the exception here.”
Beatles Press Conference, Baltimore, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“Ringo Starr – that lovable drummer – the hind quarter of the musical four, shook his locks at the girls in a way that was talented: in a way that Rudolph Valentino, with his plastered down sideburns would have envied.”
The Beatles, Baltimore, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“The Beatles had been snugly guarded in their hotel throughout the morning by a main portion of a 200 man city police Beatle Guard. They slipped out and into the auditorium in a short furious limousine dash that confounded a crowd of several hundred teenagers gasping outside the hotel.”
Beatles fans outside the Holiday Inn, Lombard Street, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“The youngsters had been jiggling in anticipation for hours before showtime, screaming at intervals when the spirit overtook them…A loudspeaker sternly warned “Do not run into the building, walk,” but in 30 seconds the recorded voice was obliterated by the shrieks of joyful, happy, exuberant Beatlemania.”
Beatles fans lined up outside the Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“There were nearly 13,000 worshippers at each of the two performances – not quite as many as appeared last year for Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk singers. It was an audience of believers who performed like veterans.”
Beatles Concert, Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“If, up close, it was apparent that the Beatles were in their 20’s and shaved, from the audience their faces were truly cherubic. They were four baby boys, each one peering from beneath his own fringed Victorian Ottoman.”
The Beatles, Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“The Civic Center screamed in feverish excitement like some sluggish animal finally come to life. Teen-agers, mostly, and girls, primarily, burst loose in hysteric recognition when the quartet appeared. They had come. It was real. The hanks of hair. The flesh. The electrocuting guitars that had left fainting bodies throughout the land.”
Audience at Beatles Concert, Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“When Beatle Paul said, “Thank you very much,” and kicked up a leg a meter or so, it was so pure, so true, so honest Paul that some of the most devout cried real tears.”
Paul McCartney, Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“Only a bar here and there could be heard of the songs as wave after wave of shrieks swelled through the mammoth auditorium….There were several cases of hysterics treated at the arena first aid station but not an unusual number, ‘considering the girls were talked into hysterics by the activities in the other cities.’”
The Beatles, Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“The enormous cavern of the building had become a vibrant, pulsating shrine with waves of shrieking adulation that burst with concussive force…They stood on the cushioned seats and bounced blissfully up and down, They jumped, high and higher, and when the excitement was too much they clasped their heads in their hands and shrieked with pleasure. Clearly, something wonderful was happening.”
Audience at Beatles Concert, Baltimore Civic Center, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“The hotel party had begun shortly after their second performance and was limited to their entourage and a very select few…The boys were dressed casually – levis and English boots – and stimulated by some impromptu singing by The Exciters, the affair turned Hootenanny.”
The Beatles, Baltimore, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

“The mop topped quartet left the Monumental City today for their next shriek-fast at Pittsburgh, and police relaxed their tightest security measures in decades.”
The Beatles, Baltimore, September 13, 1964, Morton Tadder Collection, MdHS.

Sources and further reading:

(1) Mr. Tadder donated tens of thousands of Maryland related photographs he took over his long career to the Maryland Historical Society in 2004. The collection is currently unprocessed – Special Collections staff is working on making it available to the public.

(2)Levine, Richard H., “Beatles quit Baltimore: Leave city after Private, All-Night Hotel Party,” The Baltimore Sun, September 15, 1964.

Burger, Jim “Long Exposure: Morton Tadder has been shooting Presidents, Pitchers, Performers, and Playboy Bunnies for over 50 years,” Baltimore City Paper, September 8, 2014.

Gardner, R.H., “Marcia’s bid to meet Ringo is failure,” The Baltimore Sun, September 14, 1964.

Levine, Richard H., “Thousands see Beatles shake Civic Center,” The Baltimore Sun, September 14, 1964.

Memories of the Beatles 1964 Concert in Baltimore, Examiner.com, September 13, 2011.

Schoettler, Carl, “Beatles photos: a magical history tour,” The Baltimore Sun, September 13, 2004.

The Beatles American Tours

Live: Civic Center, BaltimoreThe Beatles Bible.com.

The Beatles ’64: The photographs of Morton Tadder, exhibit brochure, The Maryland Historical Society, September 12, 2–4 – February 15, 2005.

Woodfield, John, “Beatles Gone, but not Forgotten in Baltimore,” The Washington Post, September 15, 1964.

(This is the second part of a two part series – The first part of the story was posted on May 15, 2014 and can be read here.)

Baltimoreans, perhaps more than the residents of any other major American city, were poised to meet the challenge of school desegregation. The city’s public school system had already grappled with these changes, gradually integrating some teacher activities, adult education classes, and even its premier college preparatory high school: Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.(1)

When the Supreme Court’s decision came down on May 17, 1954, many local officials had at least begun thinking about the practical implications. Education officials were confident that civility would win out. The school board had decided to continue with its free choice enrollment system, only changing any stipulation related to race. Effectively, Baltimore parents could select any school for their children to attend, unless there was an issue of overcrowding. Superintendent John Fischer was intent on avoiding any accusation of “social engineering” that might result from forced integration by redistricting or busing. No white students would be forcibly enrolled in the “colored schools,” or vice versa for black students.

Baltimore City Police officer separates white and African-American students at Southern High School to prevent fighting, October 1, 1954. Baltimorecitypolicehistory.com (Not from an MdHS collection.)

The nation’s attention was also focused on Baltimore, one of the first school systems below the Mason-Dixon line to voluntarily desegregate following the ruling. The city schools, with an enrollment of about 141,000 students, officially opened on an integrated basis on September 7, 1954. Only six white students chose to attend formerly all-black schools, none in the secondary grades. Nearly 1,600 African-American students would enter 49 formerly all-white schools, accounting for less 3 percent of total black enrollment.(2)(3) Many, such as Emily Price who transferred to Eastern High School, wanted to take advantage of unique programs that they had no access to before integration. An Afro article from September 11 reported that “Emily plans to take a commercial course in preparation for a stenographic job which she hopes to obtain here after she finishes her education.”(4) However, there was no direct mention of her or any other black student’s experience as they entered these environments.

Not every school could count on as smooth a transition as might have been experienced at specialized institutions with largely middle-class populations, as Eastern and Poly were. White parents from Charles Carroll Barrister Elementary School in working class southwest Baltimore employed several tactics to protest the integration of twelve African-American students into the formerly segregated school.(5) After demands for a meeting with system superintendent John Fischer were declined, thirty white women picketed the school and attempted to dissuade students from attending. Their homemade signs included messages such as “Segregation Is Our Heritage” and “Are We Satisfied? No. We Want Our Rights.” The protesters were actually successful in the short run, as only 169 of 587 reported for school that day. However, these efforts fizzled out as the school board showed no signs of yielding to anti-integration sentiment. None of the affected students spoke to reporters, one African-American parent asserted, “My child is going to stay in there,” as others praised the treatment by teachers.(6)

A 1955 segregation demonstration at Southern High School. Baltimorecitypolicehistory.com (Not from an MdHS collection.)

The most highly publicized, and potentially violent, protest occurred at Southern High School. The institution, then located at the corner of William Street and Warren Avenue in Federal Hill, was set to enroll thirty-six African-American students in an overall population of almost 1,800. Baltimore Sun reporters described a chaotic scene taking place outside of the school, on October 1, 1954:

“Hundreds of students participated in picketing, while others circled the building in automobiles, trucks and jeeps, shouting their objections to desegregation.”(7) While most of the protesters were students at the school, women, young children and other whites from the community were also represented. Several small skirmishes in the area led to at least six arrests. Twenty-four-year-old Jack Zimmerman was detained after he struck 14-year old Leon Thompson, a black student who was being escorted from the school by police. Law enforcement and other officials feared that the situation would develop into a full-scale riot, as nearly one thousand anti-integrationists surrounded Southern. Luckily, the nearly fifty police officers in the vicinity were able to keep things largely under control. Walter Sondheim, then president of the city school board, also gave credit to the school’s leadership and student body. In a 1971 interview he said:

“The kids at Southern High School were great! The captain of the football team and the president of the class walked out of Southern High School, I remember seeing them—actually acting as a kind of a body guard escort for colored kids. You know, a magnificent example. The thing brought almost an air of good feeling in Baltimore.”(8)

Sondheim may have employed a bit of revisionist history, especially considering that about half of Southern’s student body had left school to participate in the protests themselves. In both situations, news reporters and local officials were quick to cite the purported influence of the National Association for Advancement of White People. This organization led by Bryant Bowles had gained support through its highly publicized protests against integration in Milford, Delaware. He had since attempted to capitalize on the attention by setting up operations in Baltimore, though the actual impact on local incidents is unclear.(9)

Perhaps the most glaring omission from the varied media accounts of events in Baltimore is the perspective of the students and teachers who were on the front lines of desegregation. Even articles which specifically mention, or have pictures of those participants, hardly give any voice to them. A piece from The New York Times addressed the issues at Southern, featuring the story of Becky Kekenes, a white teacher who had driven two black students away from the mob. The author noted that, “within a few days, she was reduced to tears by a series of goads and insults.” Her perspective was apparently ignored in the local press, while those of the few African-American students at the school were similarly omitted.

The week after the incidents in South Baltimore, tempers around the city were still simmering. Hundreds of white students, primarily from Merganthaler Vocational-Tech High School, left school to march against integration though only three black students were enrolled there. Newspaper reports claimed that these boys were rebuffed by students at City College and Polytechnic, when they attempted to rally support for the “strike.” Heading towards City Hall, the mob of young men carried signs saying “They Go or We Go, Mervo.”(10) They were ultimately dispersed by Police Commissioner Beverly Ober, who had been quite active during the previous week.

After meeting with leaders from the school system and city over the weekend, Ober broadcasted a stern warning over radio and television. The disturbances would no longer be tolerated, and any further action would lead to mass arrests. This announcement, along with similar threats of suspension from several principals, caused the public outcry to settle down. A commission of the state government later praised the black community as “a model of controlled emotions and disciplined calmness” in the face of these various protests.(11) Certainly any organized resistance against white anger could have blown up the proverbial powder keg. Still, many individuals did seek to actively exercise their rights despite the significant risk involved.

Kieffer Mitchell Sr., whose father Clarence Mitchell was the NAACP Washington Bureau director, was one of seven African-American students to transfer into Gwynns Falls Park Junior High in West Baltimore. Clarence later recounted that his son was “struck in the face” by a white man who was there to protest. His account appeared in the NAACP magazine, The Crisis, but not in the local press. Mitchell went on to organize a counter-protest against anti-integrationist whites, who had begun targeting his son’s school. Kieffer recalled that he had a lonely experience at the school, where white students were either actively hostile or ignored him altogether.(12) The mixture of fear, anger, and unfamiliarity must have led to many more confrontations, left unreported by those invested in painting a positive picture of the situation.

Describing her experiences at Garrison Junior High School as an African-American in the 1950s, Ruth Stewart remembered:

“That was terrible. You would be walking with your little food, and they would stick their foot out and trip you. And you wouldn’t say anything because you was scared … And they would take my money… take my coat… stuff like that. Not that we weren’t doing stuff to them too, but they had us outnumbered.”

Despite her mother’s warning, Stewart was not prepared to passively absorb the disrespect. She recalled being in several fights during her time at Garrison, largely in response to white students who “would call me all kind’s of black this and the other.” Ultimately, she was expelled from the school.(13) Neither the Sun nor the Afro seemed to address such incidences of interracial violence, though Ruth Stewart’s experience was likely not uncommon in the city schools.

A year after the Supreme Court’’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling ended school segregation, first-graders recite the Pledge of Allegiance in 1955 at Gwynns Falls Elementary School. [Source:Richard Stacks, Baltimore Sun, accesses from Colorlines.com.] (Not from an MdHS Collection.)

While Baltimore did not experience the type of wide-scale violence and intimidation tactics that plagued integrating districts around the country, it would be naive to conclude that this was a success story for desegregation. White Baltimoreans were much more likely to express their opinions privately, through their school choices and residential mobility. The school population of both races had been increasing steadily through the 1940’s and early 1950’s but that trend would quickly shift. White enrollment began to decrease after 1956, and continued to do so at a rate of nearly 2,000 students per, for the next twenty years.(15)

The city school system would become majority African-American in 1960, just six years after it had desegregated. Certainly more students were in class with those of the other race, but this improvement was minimal as well. In 1961, nearly three quarters of the city’s schools were over 90 percent black or white, a figure that remained steady through the 1970’s.(16) Some, like Garrison Junior High and Lake Clifton High School, effectively shifted from completely white to predominantly black student bodies over a ten year period after integration. During the same time frame, the city itself lost about 100,000 white residents to the suburban counties.

Baltimore, once touted as the model for effective school desegregation, ultimately found that the laissez-faire approach could not ensure that children of different races would be educated together. By 1973, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights was threatening to withhold federal funds, charging that the city was not doing enough to integrate its schools. The city was one of eighty-four districts to be targeted by the OCR, hardly an outlier in the difficulties faced by the nation’s public schools. Regardless, Walter Sondheim’s “air of good feeling” did not last long as Baltimore would eventually be seen as a black city, with several pockets of white neighborhoods. Its schools still struggle with segregation today, hampered by many of the same fears and misunderstandings that characterized the nation 60 years ago. (David Armenti)

David Armenti is the Student Research Center Coordinator at the Maryland Historical Society.

Source and further reading:

When we heard there was a two-alarm fire at the old Mayfair Theatre on the 500 block of North Howard Street last week, many MdHS staffers rushed outside and around the corner to see for ourselves. The once proud building is one of our favorite neighbors and we were all concerned. Most of us instinctually reached for our iPhones. James Singewald, Imaging Services technician and staff photographer, grabbed his camera.

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald.

From about 1824 to the mid- or late-1960s, the two buildings at the northwest corner of Howard and Franklin Streets [500-504], served as a hotel. From 1824-1840 William Frame  operated the Golden Horse Tavern on the site. From 1840-1858, the hotel was operated by Daniel McCoy (1807-1872). The name was changed to the Franklin House in 1859 when it was sold to George Leisenring. Since then the hotel has been known as the Delphey House, Academy Hotel, New Academy Hotel, Stanley Hotel, and the New Stanley Hotel. In the 1940s there was a Read’s Drug Store in the corner building [500-502], and in 1948, the New Stanley Hotel was operating in the smaller building next door [504]. The last known business that operated there was a clothing store called Bottoms that had a sister shop called Tops on the 400 block of North Howard which is now the home of Current Gallery.

The back of this photo reads: “The Natatorium, on Howard Street, where the Auditorium now stands, was the ‘best lil swimmin’ hole’ in these parts. The photograph, from the collection of J.E. Henry, 252 West Hoffman Streets, was taken in the late 1880s. The Natatorium was presided over by Professor Butterworth as swimming instructor, and many a Baltimore business man, now fat and 40, learned to swim in the big tank, which was two feet deep at one end and eight feet at the other. When the place lost its popularity as a swimming tank it was converted into a theater, art gallery and concert hall by the late James L. Kernan.” Natatorium. Howard Street, Baltimore, ca. 1880-1900. Subject Vertical File, MdHS.

The site of the former Mayfair Theater has undergone many changes over more than a century. Originally, this was the location of the livery stables for the adjoining Franklin House hotel, mentioned above. In 1876 Silas Conn dubbed them the Academy Stables in honor of the neighboring Academy of Music. The stables last appeared in a City Directory in 1878 and were probably demolished soon after. By 1880 they had been replaced by the Natatorium, Baltimore’s first indoor swimming club. It was built by the Natatorium and Physical Culture Association of Baltimore City, which was formed by Dr. James A. Steuart. In 1885 the building was acquired by the Oratorio Society, and by 1890, James Lawrence Kernan bought the building with intention of converting it into a theater. He changed the name of the building to the Howard Auditorium and reopened it on April 6, 1891. Soon after, the name was shortened to Auditorium, which it was called for the next 49 years.

Auditorium Theatre, North Howard Street, Baltimore. Also known as Kernan’s Theatre and the Mayfair Theatre, ca. 1925. Unidentified photographer, Julius Anderson Photograph Collection, BCLM Collection, 1994.42.042, MdHS.

Kernan had long planned to build a brand new theater on this site, but wasn’t able to until 1903. In the meantime, he converted the Auditorium into a skate rink known as the Ice Palace for year round skating. His palace was plagued with operational problems, as one can imagine a year-round ice ink located in Baltimore in the 1890s would be, and by 1895, Kernan decided again to remodel the building into a vaudeville theater. Within less than a year from its re-opening, Kernan converted the Auditorium into a concert hall.

Howard Street and Franklin Street, ca. 1915. Shows The Auditorium Theatre (now Mayfair Theatre), Turkish Bath, Academy Hotel, Kernans Hotel (now The Congress apartments). Hughes Company, PP8 Hughes Company Photograph Collection, Z9.399.PP8, MdHS.

In 1902, Kernan announced plans for the “greatest entertainment complex ever built in Baltimore, the Million Dollar Triple Enterprise.”  The Auditorium and the site adjacent to it were selected for a complex comprising of two theaters and a luxury hotel. The Maryland Theater was built around the corner at Franklin and Eutaw and opened on March 19, 1903. The original Auditorium was demolished in 1903 and the new Auditorium was built on the same site and opened on September 12, 1904. Kernan called it “without question the coziest and prettiest theater of its size in America.” On December 24, 1904, Kernan opened the Turkish baths in the basement of the Auditorium. The grand opening of the Million Dollar Triple Enterprise took place on September 4, 1905. It was described as “the greatest combination of buildings in the world.” (1)

During most of the 1920s and ’30s the Auditorium presented stock shows and by 1929, the theater was redecorated and wired for sound featuring two-a-day movies and a large orchestra. After a few shows, the theater went dark. The theater did not open again until November 1929 and by 1932 it was once again struggling. Financial hardships forced the Kernan Company to sell the properties. In July 1932, the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia bought all three properties at auction for $225,000. Even with new ownership and mix of shows, movies, conventions, and even lectures, by the late 1930s the Auditorium was not able to stay open. In the summer of 1940, C.W. Hicks acquired the theater. After more re-modeling, the theater re-opened in 1941 entirely as a movie house, and was re-named the Mayfair. In 1957 it was acquired by JF Theatres, a Maryland chain ran by Jack Fruchtman that also controlled the Parkway and the Times (now The Charles) among others.(2) Its final re-modeling came in 1963, for the Baltimore premier of Lawrence of Arabia.

The Mayfair remained an operating movie theater until 1986 when it was put up for auction. The bid minimum was not met and it has remained vacant since. The city acquired the building the following year. In 1993 there was a glimmer of hope when the mayor announced a plan to make Howard Street the “Avenue of the Arts.” The plan never came to fruition. The roof collapsed in 1998 and the Mayfair has continued to deteriorate. Before the fire last week, workers had begun dismantling the theater’s marquee, recently deemed a safety hazard.

The future remains uncertain for the Mayfair, or rather its shell. The roof collapse and the fire do not bode well for it. On the other hand, the old structure is a survivor and with the revitalization of the Hippodrome, and renovation plans underway for old theaters like the Parkway and the Centre, one can hold out hope that the Mayfair, or at least its facade, will be added to the list of Baltimore’s historic theaters and buildings to be preserved. (James Singewald)

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

[NN] Howard Street fire. 500 block, North Howard Street, Baltimore. September 24, 2014. Digital photograph by James Singewald. Special Collections

SVF Natatorium, Howard Street, Baltimore.

Subject Vertical File Natatorium. Howard Street, Baltimore. ca. 1880-1900. Filed in Baltimore City, after Museums and before Newspapers & Magazines. Verso: "The Natatorium, on Howard Street, where the Auditorium now stands, was the 'best lil swimmin' hole' in these parts. The photograph, from the collection of J.E. Henry, 252 West Hoffman Streets, was taken in the late 1880s. The Natatorium was presided over by Professor Butterworth as swimming instructor, and many a Baltimore business man, now fat and 40, learned to swim in the big tank, which was two feet deep at one end and eight feet at the other. When the place lost its popularity as a swimming tank it was converted into a theater, art gallery and concert hall by the late James L. Kernan."

1994.42.042 Street scene. Auditorium Theatre. 516 North Howard S

1994.42.042 Street scene. Auditorium Theatre. 516 North Howard Street, Baltimore. Also known as Kernan's Theatre and the Mayfair Theatre. Featuring "The Monkey Talks." Shows automobile parked in front. Ca. 1925. Unidentified photographer 8x10 inch silver gelatin print Julius Anderson Photograph Collection Baltimore City Life Museum Collection Special Collections

MC 2174 Howard Auditorium Music Hall at night.

MC 2174 Howard Auditorium Music Hall at night. Howard Street near Franklin Street, ca. 1900. 5 in x 7 in glass negative Baltimore City Life Museum Collection The Auditorium is also known as the Natatorium and the Mayfair Theater.

Z9.399.PP8 Howard Street and Franklin Street, ca. 1915.

Z9.399.PP8 Howard Street and Franklin Street, ca. 1915 Shows The Auditorium Theatre (now Mayfair Theatre), Turkish Bath, Academy Hotel, Kernans Hotel (now The Congress apartments). Hughes Company, PP8 8x10 glass negative Hughes Company Photograph Collection

Sources and further reading:

(1) Robert K. Headley. Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Dierctory of Theaters, 1895-2004. 2006. McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers. [MPN 1993-5 475 H43], 206-207.

(2) “Jack Fruchtman Sr., 86, theater owner,” Fred Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, July 3, 2001.

The Passano-O’Neill Files: Howard Street[500-504 North] & Howard Street [506 North].

“Howard Street Buildings that Burned have a Long History,” Jacques Kelly, Retro Baltimore /Baltimore Sun, September 26, 2014.

Urban Exploration: Mayfair Theatre, YouTube

The Mayfair on Kilduffs

The Mayfair on Cinema Treasures

Lost to fire. Old Terrapin Park a.k.a. Orioles Park, the fifth. Baltimore – Stadiums – Oriole Stadium, 1938, photographer unknown. Subject Vertical File, MdHS.

On the evening of July 3, 1944, the International League Baltimore Orioles squared off against the Syracuse Chiefs at Oriole Park on 29^th Street and Greenmount Avenue. The Orioles entered the game with a slim first place lead over the Montreal Royals, while the Chiefs were fighting to stay out of last place. Nonetheless, the Chiefs jumped out to a 4-1 lead. The Orioles scored two in the sixth and one in the seventh to push the game into extra innings. However, the Chiefs would then erupt for seven runs in the tenth inning, sparked by a grand slam from 17-year-old shortstop Bob “Orb” Carson.[1] The Orioles still maintained their hold on first place, but the game became known for another reason. Unknown to any of the participants at the time, the game would be the last one played at Oriole Park.

The park’s wooden structure left it vulnerable to fire. After every game the grounds crew, consisting of Mike Schofield and Howard “Doc” Seiss, watered down the stands in order to extinguish all cigar and cigarette butts. They followed the same procedure after the Chiefs’ victory on July 3. However, in the early morning hours of July 4, a fire started by the third base grandstand. The flames quickly engulfed the stadium, a result of the creosote used to protect the wooden structure from decay. Schofield described the scene as a “sheet of fire.” The heat became so intense that it cracked windows in nearby houses, damaged cars and businesses, and melted the asphalt on 29^th Street. In all, the fire forced fifteen hundred people to evacuate the neighborhood and caused $150,000 in damage. Along with the park, the Orioles lost the physical evidence of their history, as the fire destroyed photographs, trophies, and documents.[2]

The “sheet of fire” that burned Oriole Park provided a symbolic dividing line in Baltimore’s sporting history. The destruction of Oriole Park marked the beginning of the end to Baltimore’s minor league heritage. Yet, the fire’s aftermath showed Baltimore’s potential as a major league town. The city rallied around the Orioles as they pushed for the International League title. Facing off against the American Association’s Louisville Colonels in the Junior World Series, the Orioles and Baltimore gained national attention when one home game outdrew the Major League World Series taking place in St. Louis. Baltimore no longer represented a minor league city, but a city with major league potential that would not be fulfilled until the St. Louis Browns arrived ten years later.

Known initially as Terrapin Park, the stadium had ironically been built in 1914 to mark Baltimore’s return to the major leagues. The city had a brief major league history. The Baltimore Orioles joined the American League in 1901. However, after the 1902 season, the team left for New York, becoming the Highlanders and then the Yankees. For twelve years, Baltimore lacked a major league team, though the International League Orioles filled the void admirably. In 1914, major league baseball returned to the city with the creation of the Federal League’s Baltimore Terrapins.[3] The Federal League stood as an “outlaw” league that competed against the established American and National leagues. For two seasons, the Terrapins played in the new stadium, but interference by the American and National leagues led to the dissolution of the Federal League after the 1915 season.[4]

Damn Yankee was once our very own. George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr. bats in Oriole Park V. “Babe Ruth at bat,” Robert Kniesche, 1931, PP79.40, MdHS.

The Terrapins cut into the gate receipts of the minor league Orioles who played across the street.[5] Their arrival forced the Orioles to make several financial decisions. In the summer of 1914, as the Terrapins played their first season in Baltimore, Orioles owner Jack Dunn sold the contract of Babe Ruth to the Boston Red Sox. Ruth, who had won 22-games with the Orioles and the Providence Grays that year, would go on to have a storied major league career with the Red Sox and the Yankees.[6] Dunn also sold the contracts of eleven other players to major league teams, and then moved the team itself to Richmond in order to make payroll. When the Federal League folded after the 1915 season, Dunn sold the team to Richmond-area investors. He then purchased the Jersey City Skeeters and moved them to Baltimore, playing games in the new stadium – now renamed Oriole Park.[7]

“Frederick “Fritz” Maisel at old Oriole Park,” Robert F. Kniesche, ca. 1931. MdHS, PP79-18.

Jack Dunn, Baltimore Orioles manager, 1921. MdHS, PVF.

For the next twenty-eight-and-a-half seasons, the Orioles made Oriole Park their home, and played some of Baltimore’s best baseball. The Orioles won 100 games in 1919, and went on to win seven-straight International League titles. In the process, they made six-straight Little World Series appearances against the American Association champion, and won three of them. Oriole Park provided the venue for such players like Frederick “Fritz” Maisel and Robert Moses “Lefty” Grove. A speedster known as the “Catonsville Flash,” Maisel hit .336 in 1919 and stole sixty-three bases. Grove, a left-handed pitcher, won 108-games with the Orioles in five seasons before advancing to the majors, where he won 300-games in a Hall of Fame career with the Red Sox and Philadelphia A’s. The period from 1919 to 1925 represented one of the most impressive periods of baseball in Baltimore. While subsequent Oriole teams did not enjoy the same success, they did come close to winning the International League in 1936, 1937, and 1940.[8] The Orioles appeared headed for the post-season in 1944 when the fire destroyed Oriole Park.

The fire had a significant logistical impact on the team. When the fire struck, the Orioles were in the midst of a home stand, and held a slight first-place lead over the Royals. They had been slated to play an Independence Day double-header against the Chiefs. The fire cancelled the double-header, and, by night fall, the Royals gained first place. In the fire’s aftermath, the city agreed to give the Orioles use of its football field, the 65,000-seat Municipal Stadium. The grounds crew, though, needed time to adjust the field for baseball use. Consequently, the Orioles went on the road to complete their home stand against the Bears and the Jersey City Giants. On July 16, the Orioles returned to their new home to play a double-header against the Giants. The Orioles resoundingly won both games in front of 13,000 people.[9]

At the same time, the fire had a significant impact on the community and its relationship with the Orioles. Writer Jacques Kelly noted that “Oriole Park was one of those classic urban ball fields. The property seemed to be scissored out around rowhouses, a florist’s greenhouse, streetcar tracks and the village’s Episcopal church, St. John’s Huntingdon.”[10] The park defined a significant part of Greenmount Avenue, and the Orioles defined an important part of Baltimore as a whole. As a result, the city rallied around the team after the fire, turning out in large numbers at Municipal Stadium. Orioles General Manager Herb Armstrong estimated that 118,500 fans came out to the team’s first twelve home games in the new stadium. As the Orioles heated up for the stretch run, winning eighteen of nineteen games at one point, attendance rose. Columnist John Steadman noted that the Orioles played in front of 20,000 to 40,000 people. Those crowds would not have been possible in old Oriole Park, which seated approximately 11,000.[11]

The Orioles ultimately won their division on the last day of the 1944 season, and they went on to face the Newark Bears for the International League’s Governor’s Cup. In a series that went a full seven games, the Orioles won their first International League title since 1925, defeating the Bears in front of 14,747 drenched fans at Municipal Stadium.[12] The victory set the stage for the Junior World Series against the American Association champion Louisville Colonels. Beginning the series in Louisville, the Orioles took two of three on the road, including a then-record 14-inning contest in game three. The series shifted to Baltimore, where the Orioles and Colonels played before a crowd of 52,833 fans in game four. The Colonels won the game 5-4, but the Orioles rebounded by winning games five and six to win the Junior World Series.[13]

Baltimore Municipal Stadium, not dated. Photograph by the Hughes Company, MdHS, MC7082.

The fire to Oriole Park and its aftermath showed the nation Baltimore’s potential as a major league city. In Municipal Stadium, Baltimore had a facility where teams could play in front of large crowds. Game four of the Junior World Series highlighted Baltimore’s potential. Playing in front of 52,833 fans, the Orioles and Colonels actually outdrew a major league World Series game between the St. Louis Browns and St. Louis Cardinals, which drew fewer than 35,000 fans. In doing so, Baltimore received nationwide attention. Shirley Povich of The Washington Post noted how game four left the baseball world “gasping,” but, more importantly, the game helped mark “the resurgence of Baltimore as baseball town.”[14] That resurgence could not have happened but for the fire that destroyed Oriole Park in July 1944.

The “sheet of fire” that destroyed Oriole Park provided a major turning point in Baltimore’s quest for major league status. In the fire’s immediate aftermath, Rodger H. Pippen of the Baltimore News-Post predicted that “… what appears to be a baseball tragedy, may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Baltimore rose from the ashes of its great fire in 1904 to be a bigger and better city. Our Orioles will come through just as soon as war conditions permit, with a bigger and better place for their games.”[15] Municipal Stadium showed off Baltimore’s potential as a location for major league teams seeking a new city. Using this potential, city officials even looked into measures to make Baltimore even more attractive, including plans to build the first-ever domed stadium in the United States. The domed stadium never materialized, but that did not prevent the Browns from moving to Baltimore in 1954 to become the Orioles.[16] Symbolically, the “sheet of fire” burned down Baltimore’s minor league image, allowing the city to rise from the ashes as a major league town. (Richard Hardesty)

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

With all the stadium hopping and league swapping, tracking the places we’ve called Oriole Park over the decades has never been an easy task for baseball fans much less historians. This handy chronology will either completely clear things up or cause your head to spin like a Gregg Olson curveball.

“The Burning of the Peggy Stewart” by Francis Blackwell Mayer, 1896.
(Not part of the MdHS collection)
Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 1545-1111

This Sunday, October 19, marks the 240^th anniversary of the burning of the brig “Peggy Stewart,” or as the event came to be known, the Annapolis Tea Party.  It was a relatively minor event during the American Revolution. But, it was one that demonstrated the incendiary climate of Maryland and divided loyalties of the colonists in the years leading up to the war, when a few chests of tea could rouse the passion of patriots across the colony.

The Peggy Stewart, a brigantine, loaded with goods consigned to the Thomas Charles Williams & Co., arrived in the port of Annapolis, Maryland from London, England on October 14, 1774. Hidden in the ship’s hull, unbeknownst to the ship’s captain, Richard Jackson, were seventeen and a half chests, over 2,000 pounds, of tea. The chests had been wrapped in blankets and surreptitiously loaded onto the brig, perhaps by Thomas Charles Williams, himself.

In order for the goods and the 53 indentured servants aboard the ship to come ashore, taxes had to be collected. This included paying the much-hated “tea tax,” which was passed by the British government in 1773, on the tea that had been smuggled on the Peggy Stewart.  The tax expanded upon taxes on tea levied in the 1767 Townshend Acts and incited further protests and boycotts of English tea. In December, 1773, rebellious Bostonians, the Sons of Liberty, tossed tea from ships into the harbor during the infamous Boston Tea Party. Patriot leaders across the colonies passed resolutions to ban payment of these taxes. The colonists were growing more openly hostile to British rule. Despite this, the ship’s co-owner and local merchant, Anthony Stewart paid the customs on the imports, concerned over the ship’s leaky condition and the crew and passengers who had been aboard the ship for almost three months.

“Anthony Stewart” by John Hesselius, 1760′s.
(Not part of the MdHS collection).
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Word spread of Stewart’s deed, which in truth was in line with the law,  incensing the local patriots. He most likely understood the potential backlash to his act of paying the tax. Stewart had induced their ire before by defying bans on the importation of taxed goods and for his ardent support of the British. A committee of local merchants, lawyers, and other influential men had agreed to boycott certain British imports taxed under the Townshend Acts.* In 1769, Stewart and his father-in-law James Dick were first caught attempting to bring restricted goods into Maryland. It was decided that the illegal items would be stored indefinitely. Stewart and his father-in-law once again tried to bring unauthorized cargo into the colony aboard the Good Intent. This time, they faced stricter punishment, and the ship was returned to England without unloading any of its wares, not just the banned items. This previous punishment may have also impacted Stewart’s decision to pay the customs on the tea, because he worried that the Peggy Stewart would not withstand the autumn storms it would encounter on the return journey to London. To make matters worse for Stewart as he had recently openly revealed his Loyalist leanings. At a committee meeting, he opposed measures to prevent payment of debts to the British by Maryland citizens, becasue he had felt this would damage trade relations on both sides of the Atlantic.

The cards were stacked against Stewart when a meeting was convened to decide the fate of Stewart and the much maligned tea. Thomas Charles Williams’ brothers, Joseph and James, also faced reprimand as they were in their brother’s employ and guilty by association. Some accounts of the Annapolis Tea Party suggest the Williams brothers were the ones who discovered the tea and reported in to both Stewart and the Annapolis committee, but this did not exempt them from punishment. The men in attendance decided that burning the tea at the gallows in the town square would both demonstrate support for the actions in Boston and the patriot cause, as well as demonstrate the consequences of illegal importation.  However, the group was persuaded by committee member Matthias Hammond to withhold judgment until more of the local leaders could weigh-in.

An artist’s rendering of the doomed brig, Peggy Stewart.
Maritime Committee Research Files, MdHS.

Stewart must have been terrified at the events unfolding in the square before him. He stood to lose his brand new ship, payment for the goods aboard the ship, as well as potentially his house and life. To add to his anxiety, his wife, Jean, was confined to bed at home after the recent birth of their daughter, Wilhelmina. He decided he could not “expose himself any longer to the Fury of a lawless mob,” and he and his father-in-law consented to burn the brig.(1) Stewart, Dick, and the Williams brothers were then conveyed to the ship to set fire to it.

While aboard the ship, about to light it on fire, they received word that not everyone agreed that they should destroy the ship. They naturally hesitated, but they were once again threatened. Richard Jackson, the captain, testified that “Mr. Rezin Hammond and Mr. Charles Ridgley, who were then on Board, told Mr. Stewart…that if he did not Immediately set fire to the Brigantine that his House and Family would be in danger that night. (2).” The Peggy Stewart burned “with all her sails and Riggin standing and Colours flying…. (3).” The brig sank into the Annapolis harbor, and her ruins now lay beneath reclaimed land under Luce Hall at the United States Naval Academy.

Receipt for goods brought from London on the Peggy Stewart. Receipts, 1774, October 22 and November 10, Revolutionary War Manuscript Collection, MS 2018, MdHS.

Matters in Annapolis did not improve for Stewart after his ship was destroyed, and the events of October 19^th only cemented his loyalist position. He “continued on all occasions strenuously to oppose the Measures of the Enemies of Government he at Length became so obnoxious to Them that they sought every Opportunity to harass and distress Him….(4).” His unpopular politics even aroused so much anger “that he was hanged and burnt in Effigy in different Parts of the Province….(5).” Stewart was forced to flee Annapolis and his property seized. He eventually made his home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and spent many years petitioning the British government for compensation for his losses as a loyal British citizen.

His business partner, Thomas Charles Williams, did not escape unscathed either. His brothers bore the brunt of the punishment in Annapolis, but the news of his treachery spread quickly across the colonies. Williams inconveniently arrived in New York the same day the account of the Annapolis Tea Party was published in the local newspapers. He was met with anger and threats, so he “fled out of the Town in Disguise and concealing himself in the Woods, for that Time escaped their Fury (6).” A bounty was placed upon his head, and search parties were sent after him. For three months, he eluded them until he finally gave himself up in Philadelphia. He was able to atone for his dastardly deeds by signing a letter dictated for him, but when it came time for him to take up arms against the British, he once again disappeared. He too spent years fighting to receive recompense for his lost property. (Lara Westwood)

*The widespread protests across the colonies forced the British government to repeal most of the taxes put in place by the Townshend Acts in 1770, but the tax on tea remained and was expanded with the 1773 Tea Act.

Sources and Further Reading:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Fischer Transcripts, ca. 1764-1851, MS 360, MdHS.

Barker, Charles A. The Background of the Revolution in Maryland. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940.

McWilliams, Jane Wilson. Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

“Shipwrecks.” Cheaspeake Bay Program.

Underbelly staffers Eben Dennis and Joe Tropea were recently invited by Lance Humphries, chairman of the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy Restoration Committee, to tour the Washington Monument as work on the restoration project was winding down. Along with the many historical facts they learned, amazing views they took in, and vertigo they experienced, Dennis and Tropea came away with something neither expected: a profound respect and appreciation for scaffolding. JD Belfield Enterprises deserves to be commended for their fine work. Anyone in doubt should scroll down to see what used to pass for scaffolding as recently as the 1970s and ’80s.

Washington Monument under scaffolding on a beautiful August morning. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

Our tour begins in the underbelly of the monument.

Underneath the Washington Monument. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

We found some very interesting 19th century graffiti.

An aristocrat? Underneath the Washington Monument. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

J.W. Hogg, 1829. One of many people who signed their names on this wall. Underneath the Washington Monument. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

And then we saw this.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Underneath the Washington Monument. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

Back to the surface where we take an elevator ride, but then still have to climb three stories to reach the top.

Washington Monument under scaffolding. Notice the remarkably sturdy elevator on the right. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

It’s hard to imagine that this used to pass for safe scaffolding.

Washington Monument under repair, c. 1975-1985. Photo by Richard Childress, PP177.2112, MdHS.

Or this.

Washington Monument under repair, c. 1975-1985. Photo by Richard Childress, PP177.2111, MdHS.

All of the marble used on the monument was locally sourced. The base that the Washington statue sits on came from here:

Most of the marble came from General Charles Ridgely’s quarry in Hampton, but the 15 foot piece used to carve Washington came from Mrs. Taylor’s quarry.
Beaver Dam Quarry, c. 1910, photographer unknown. CC1003, MdHS. (Reference photo)

Closeup of Washington Monument. (Photo by Eben Dennis, 2014.)

The lightening rod attached to Washington’s head. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

Top of the monument looking north. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

View from the Washington Monument, looking south. (Photo by Joe Tropea, 2014.)

Recent Saturday morning trips with my mother to Lauraville once again prompted interest in our family’s deep roots in the neighborhood and the lure of the area today. Library staff receives frequent calls and research requests on the subject and claim it is one of the city’s most popular communities.

We grew up listening to my mother’s stories of growing up on Halcyon Avenue in Lauraville during the Great Depression, of my grandfather losing his engineering job the day their youngest daughter was born, at home because they could not afford the hospital, and going to live with his mother on Hampnett Avenue. He found work through the New Deal’s WPA, digging ditches for a time and after several years moved his young family back into a second home on Halcyon Avenue before buying a house on Tyndale Avenue in 1944.

“Lauraville Nan” Nancy Elizabeth Kidd, c. 1932.
(From Author’s collection)

Nancy Kidd, Pearl Kidd, Judith Ann Kidd, Angela Kidd, Judith Kidd, and Angela Lee Kidd, c. 1940.
(From Author’s Collection)

Nancy Elizabeth Kidd is the oldest of three daughters born to James Milton Kidd and Martha Lynn Roush Kidd. Her memories are undergirded with love, security, and faith, immersed in a large and extended family that had been in Lauraville for several decades before she was born in the late summer of 1929.

My grandfather’s parents, Frank Kidd and Judith Epple Kidd had moved to Lauraville from west Baltimore in the early years of the twentieth century where Frank worked as a machinist. They had six children two of whom died young. The remaining four grew up healthy and successful and also put down roots in the neighborhood, gathering for Sunday dinners and holidays, caring for each other day-to-day through the happiest as well as the darkest times.

Our Saturday morning excursions fed my mother’s need to clarify her memories of specific dates, moves, and addresses and thus began a search through crumbling City Directories in the library’s belly. Without exception information in the directories verified addresses and moving dates for her immediate family and for extended family living in Lauraville. We had phenomenal results, gratifying on so many levels, particularly in watching my mother’s quiet relief that time has not impaired her keen memory.

Lauraville today is much as she remembers with its narrow, winding streets, some of them one way, others not (but should be), tall canopied shade trees overarching a charming variety of homes representing an eclectic mix of architectural styles, including nineteenth-century Suburban Villa, Italianate Duplex, and I-House; and early twentieth century Shingle Style and Dutch Colonial Revival cottages — and the Queen Anne house at 2809 Ailsa Avenue was home to one of my mother’s closest friends.

2809 Alisa Avenue: A lush and verdant Queen Anne style home in September 2014. Photograph by Author.

Ailsa Avenue, Lauraville (Hamilton), 1911, August Siefert, photographer, BCLM Collection, MC7500, MdHS.
The house at 2809 Ailsa Avenue is visible on the left side, third house from the front.

City residents fled the congested and unhealthy areas of Baltimore City in greater numbers in the late nineteenth century. Transportation improvements such as the electric railway connected the city to the county suburbs making a move “out the Harford Road” more feasible for many. Lauraville, named for the first postmaster’s daughter, attracted businesses and families and by 1880 the population had grown to five hundred. The small village remained part of Baltimore County until the city’s final annexation in 1918, an action approved by the Maryland General Assembly that tripled the size of Baltimore City.

Fire convention, Harford Road and Grindon Lane. Lauraville (Hamilton), August Seifert, photographer, BCLM Collection, MC7511, MdHS.

Although geographically removed from the city, Lauraville—and the  families that lived there—faced issues and challenges that touched those in other parts of Maryland and the nation. The 1918 flu pandemic, for example, likely weakened fifteen-year-old Mary Kidd’s heart and caused her death the following year. Other family members served in the Great War, one devastatingly injured with mustard gas. And racial tensions erupted in all-white Lauraville when the trustees of the historically black Morgan College, formerly the Centenary Bible College, announced plans to relocate to northeast Baltimore. The neighborhood improvement association met with college president John Spencer asking that he not build a school “where it is not wanted,” but plans moved ahead and the college community thrived. Interestingly, Judge Morris A. Soper, a subject of previous underbelly posts, served as Chairman of the State Commission on Higher Education for Negroes in the 1930s and on Morgan’s board of trustees for decades. The college put his name on their library in 1939.

The racial balance in Lauraville has tipped since those early years. The 2010 Census Data shows that 58 percent of the 12,273 residents are African-American; 36 percent are white. The neighborhood is stable and the poverty rate is low. In 2001 preservation-minded citizens secured Historic District designation on the National Register of Historic Places, official recognition of its architectural significance.

Members of the Kidd family remain in the area and are scattered throughout Maryland and Virginia, with a few in California. Nearly 80 of us gathered for a reunion in 2002, celebrating the centennial of my grandfather’s birthday, a far more diverse group than the earlier generations but one still rooted in those century-old traditions that sustain us. And for my mother and me, those Saturday morning rides through Lauraville are halcyon days indeed. (Patricia Dockman Anderson)

Dr. Patricia Dockman Anderson specializes in U.S and Maryland History, Nineteenth Century; Social and Cultural History; Catholic History; and Civil War Civilians. She has served as a member of the History Advisory Council for the Women’s Industrial Exchange, the Baltimore History Writers Group, and the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission. Dr. Anderson is the Director of Publications and Library Services for the Maryland Historical Society, editor of the Maryland Historical Magazine, and a professor at Towson University.

Grindon Lane, Lauraville (Hamilton), Summer scene. ‘Probably taken from Weitzel Avenue, looking east toward Harford Road,” 1911, August Siefert, photographer, BCLM Collection, MC7513, MdHS.

Grindon Avenue looking east from Weitzel Avenue, November 2014.

Green’s Cotton Mill, Lauraville area (Hamilton), Taken from underneath Herring Run Bridge, 1912, August Siefert, photographer, BCLM Collection, MC7520, MdHS.

Grindon Lane, Lauraville – Hamilton, 1910, August Seifert, photographer, BCLM Collection, MC7514, MdHS.

Sources and further reading:

Baltimore City directories, 1927-1940. (The complete run of Baltimore City Directories are available to the public from Wednesday through Saturday, 10:00-5:00)

Julie Saylor, “Preserving Our Past: Ensuring Our Future: A Historic Preservation Plan for Lauraville, 2013,” Lauraville Improvement Association, lauravillemd.wordpress.com,accessed 10/15/2014

Family photos and stories, Author’s collection

An image of the Washington Monument from Mayor Schaefer’s 1973 holiday card. Original pen and ink drawn by Baltimoer artist Betty Wells. Ephemera, Series I, MdHS

Like so much of the City of Baltimore, the annual monument lighting bears the stamp of Mayor William Donald Schaefer. Schaefer, mayor from 1971 to 1987, got the inspiration for the idea following a trip to Indianapolis in 1972, when the beauty of the city’s monuments and statues aglow in holiday lights left him in awe.* Before the annual tradition began here in Baltimore, local garden clubs had been decorating Mount Vernon Square and the Washington Monument with greenery, as can be seen below.

This photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine shows the greenery that the garden club decorated the base of the monument with in 1962, ten years before the first lighting. BCLM, B391-F, MdHS

The Maryland Historical Society will be having an open house tonight to coincide with the 43rd monument lighting here in Mount Vernon. Come join us for food, decorations, and a performance by the Notre Dame Institute’s choir. There’s even a rumor that Santa Claus himself may be showing up. The museum will be free and open to the public- see you there!

*At this point I see absolutely no evidence that they stole our football team in retaliation for our appropriation of their decorating ideas.

Sources:

“Washington Monument Gets Holiday Look at Mayor’s Bidding,” Baltimore Sun, December 14, 1972.

“Deck the Streets,” Baltimore Sun, December 18, 1963.

The grand Grecian columns at the entrance to Venable (Baltimore/Municipal) Stadium. Old Stadium (Baltimore Stadium), February 3, 1937, A. Aubrey Bodine, B244-2, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, MdHS.

(This is the first part of a two part series. The second part will be posted in January, 2015.)

Baltimore has been lucky enough to host two storied professional football teams: the-team-that-must-not-be-named, ahem, the Colts and the two-time Super Bowl Champions Baltimore Ravens. Not to mention the fantastic local college and high school teams. Marylanders are a little spoiled when it comes to great football. When the Colts organization fled in the night to Indianapolis in 1984, Marylanders mourned the loss of their beloved football team. The team left behind almost forty years of faithful fandom and an historic stadium which welcomed some of the greatest athletes in football and baseball.

The famous Memorial Stadium began its varied career as the Venable Stadium, located on 33^rd Street in Baltimore. The land surrounding 33^rd Street was intended to become a grand park, similar to Druid Hill and Clifton Parks. To build this park, the city purchased the “Holyrood” estate from Kate French Taylor for $40,000 in 1907. The mansion was torn down to make way for park construction, but the project was halted and the area remained vacant for years. An abandoned clay brick quarry was also on the property. It had filled with water, and city dwellers swam there in summers and ice-skated in the winter. Sadly, during the winter following the city’s purchase of the park, a boy drowned in the quarry after skating over a patch of too-thin ice. The Department of Sanitation turned the former quarry into a landfill during World War I, which further diminished the desire to build a public park on the property.

Venable Park never quite came to be, but Venable Stadium was built in 1921. The Army 3^rd Corps and the Quantico Marines played an annual football game at the Johns Hopkins University stadium. The game was always a huge success, but the Hopkins stadium was too small to accommodate the ever-growing crowd. Mayor William F. Broening wanted to keep the game in the city, so he decreed that the city needed an official stadium. Parks and other lots across the city were surveyed to find a place to construct a bigger, better arena. Planners initially hoped to convert the Mount Royal Reservoir, but the residents of neighborhood vehemently opposed the plan. An unused reservoir in Clifton Park was then chosen as the site for the stadium by City Engineer Henry G. Perring, but Secretary of the Park Board J.V. Kelly had a better idea.

Kelly suggested that Venable Park should house the new stadium. He felt the landfill could be excavated and re-purposed more cheaply than one of the old reservoirs. He told The Baltimore Sun that the inspiration had struck him as he drove down 33^rd Street to his office in Druid Hill Park. When he proposed the plan, some members of the Park Board were skeptical; others didn’t even know the location of the park. Kelly “found a map…and pointed out the park location, and enthusiastically explained that a stadium located there could be more conveniently reached from all sections of the city….”(1) His suggestion beat out the other contenders.

An artist’s rendering of the stadium complex. The entrance/administration building was the most elaborate feature of the stadium. Entrance to Baltimore Stadium, CB294, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, MdHS.

The stadium was built in an impressive seven months. The trash was cleared away and a horseshoe shape was dug into the ground. The stadium had earthen walls, the seats were wooden planks, and it cost a mere $458,000 to build. The entrance was the grandest feature of the area, comprised of 24 Greek-looking arches and columns. The end result was rather primitive by today’s standards, but it could hold the anticipated crowd. The administration and clubhouse building remained incomplete on game day, but it was (mostly) ready to host the Army-Marine game on December 2, 1922.

Venable Stadium opened with enormous fanfare and attracted a high-profile audience. The Baltimore Municipal Journal reported, “It was really very much more than a football game that took place on December 2, 1922. It was a tremendous step forward for the city of Baltimore. At no other football game could so many cabinet officers and so many high United States officials be found. Twelve hundred distinguished visitors from official Washington and the Army-Marine and Navy fliers were guests of the city.”(2) A special phone was even installed to keep President Warren Harding and the first lady, Florence, abreast of the game’s events. The game was also broadcast to Army and Marine bases across the country, which was unheard of in its day.

A huge parade kicked off opening day. The procession weaved through the city to the new stadium. Soldiers from all over the Mid-Atlantic marched alongside the Baltimore Police and city officials. Airplanes flown by the Maryland National Guard and the 50^th Squadron from Langley Field whizzed overhead to announce the arrival of the cavalcade. Almost 70,000 people flocked to town to watch the game: 44,000 spectators crammed into the stands, 10,000 stood around the playing field, and about 15,000 watched from outside of the stadium, some climbing trees and sitting atop roofs to catch a glimpse of the action.

The contest lived up to expectations. The Marines eked out a win over the Army squad by score of 13 to 12. Sun correspondent, Raymond Tompkins, proclaimed that after the game, the stadium could no longer be considered new, because “It has lived and suffered, if a giant of concrete and earth can do that. It knows the blackest depths of despair and the most golden heights of triumph, ending with a struggle that could have rocked a mountain.”(3) The grand opening went off without a hitch. The Journal even praised the city for its efficiency in traffic control after the game—the stadium “was emptied of this vast throng in twenty minutes and the United Railways had carried the crowd away in thirty minutes. Still more remarkable was the success of the special traffic arrangements for the automobiles. For there was not a single accident.” (4)

A cartoon about the Oorang Indians’ visit to Baltimore to play the Baltimore Professionals. It ran in the “Baltimore News” prior to the game. Wikipedia.org. (Not from MdHS collection)

The second game played at Venable Stadium was not nearly as successful, but perhaps more historically important. The week after the Marine-Army game on December 9^th, the Oorang Indians played the Baltimore Professionals. The Oorang Indians, hailing from LaRue, Ohio, only lasted one season in the National Football League, but legendary multi-sport athlete and Olympian Jim Thorpe played for and coached the team. While the team was formed by Walter Lingo as a publicity stunt to sell Airedale terriers, it was the only professional football team comprised of all Native American players. The players also performed traditional Native American dances and sports alongside plucky terriers at half-time rather than returning to the locker room. The Indians’ big star Thorpe would not take the field in Baltimore. He was still recovering from injuries sustained in a previous match and not even the thrill of the newly invented half-time show could muster Baltimoreans. The Baltimore Professionals won the match. The game drew a crowd of less than 5,000.

A rivalry for the ages. Front cover, Army Navy Game Official Program, 1924, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

The stadium primarily hosted military football games in its first few years. The Naval Academy football team frequently played rivals, such as Notre Dame and Army, at the stadium, which always drew large crowds, thus requiring more seats. At one point, Venable Stadium was expanded to hold 80,000 spectators on its wooden benches. In 1924, Baltimore hosted the Army-Navy game for the first time. The game was as hotly anticipated as the Army-Marine game two years prior. Notables once again flocked to Baltimore, including President Calvin Coolidge and the First Lady. The Midshipmen were shut out, but the Academy agreed to play one game a season in the city’s stadium. Navy brought their biggest opponents to Baltimore. Most notably, they played the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at the stadium every two years. Before every game, the Midshipmen paraded through the city to the stadium. It became such an event that a special platform was built at Clifton Park to accommodate the crowds of cadets.

Despite the Midshipmen’s residency at Venable Stadium, it hemorrhaged money. The Park Board could not consistently fill the stadium without a permanent professional team. Local high schools played in the giant arena, and various professional football teams only used the stadium on occasion. Renovations and repair costs outstripped revenue. This deficit also stalled the installation of concrete seats, which would replace the wooden benches which rotted and splintered from weather exposure. The Great Depression also led to a drop-off in attendance and therefore revenue.

The stadium languished for years until 1944 when tragedy struck Baltimore’s other major sports arena, Oriole Park. During the summer of that year, the baseball stadium burned to the ground during the night after an Oriole-Syracuse Chiefs game. Because the Orioles needed a place to play out their season, they moved into Venable, or as it was now called, Municipal Stadium. This heralded a new era prosperity for the stadium, and also a new professional football team, the Baltimore Colts. (Lara Westwood)

The Midshipmen

"Navy Football Squad, 1924," Army Navy Game Official Program, 1924, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

West Point's squad

"Army Football Squad, 1924," Army Navy Game Official Program, 1924, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

Catching the leprechaun

Front cover, Navy-Notre Dame Game Official Program, 1941, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

A fearsome showdown

Front cover, Navy-Princeton Game Official Program, 1924, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

Entrance to Baltimore Stadium

CB294 Entrance to Baltimore Stadium. REFERENCE ONLY. Baltimore City Life Museum Collection 8x10 inch Glass Negatives Box 01

Old Stadium (Baltimore Stadium)

B244-2 (print) Old Stadium (Baltimore Stadium) February 3, 1937 Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine 5 x 7 inch print photograph Baltimore City Life Museum Collection

Oorang Indians Cartoon

A cartoon about the Oorang Indians'' visit to Baltimore to play the Baltimore Professionals. It ran in the "Baltimore News" prior to the game. Wikipedia.org. (Not from MdHS collection)

A rivalry for the ages

Front cover, Army Navy Game Official Program, 1924, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

Sources and Further Reading:

“Baltimore Then and Now.” Baltimore American, December 4, 1955.

“Kelly Tells Stadium Story.” Baltimore Sun, August 28, 1947, Morning ed.

“Opening of Baltimore Stadium a Memorable Event in the History of the City.” Baltimore Municipal Journal 10, no. 23 (1922).

Patterson, Ted. Football in Baltimore: History and Memorabilia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Passano File: “33rd Street”

“Stadium Cost to City Put at $1,000,000.” Baltimore Sun, September 1, 1932, Evening ed.

King James I to George Calvert, Patent under the Great Seal creating Calvert Baron Baltimore of Baltimore in Ireland, 1624, MS 174, Document #38, MdHS.
Known as the “Patent of Nobility” the 26” x 17” parchment gave George Calvert his title as Baron Baltimore. Five of his descendant would also hold the title.

The story of how the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) acquired the papers of the state’s founding family is not well known. In fact it isn’t even a singular story. Simply preparing this piece about the collection unearthed a tale that highlights shaky provenance, the concept of authenticity in an archive, and the importance of institutional knowledge.

In 1839, a scientist and “student of Maryland history” named John Henry Alexander noticed two large trunks labeled “CALVERT PAPERS” while visiting the British Museum in London. Intrigued, he tucked the information away in the back of his mind. Thirteen years later Alexander returned to the museum in the hopes of examining the contents of the trunks, but was dismayed to find that the no one on the current staff had any recollection of the trunks or the documents. It would be another three decades before the mystery was solved.

In 1887, five years after the Maryland General Assembly passed “An act to provide for the preservation, arrangement, publication, and sale of Ancient Documents pertaining to Maryland,” MdHS finally traced the location of the long disappeared Calvert Papers to the estate of Colonel Frederick Henry Harford, a distant descendant of Henry Harford, the “illegitimate heir of the last Lord Baltimore.”

An initial investigation determined that the papers had been stored for an indeterminate time in a chest in Harford’s greenhouse, in no apparent order, mixed with other family papers. They were also in very poor condition, with “some signs of damp . . . on a few of the papers, so that, if the chest should remain for some years longer in it’s present place, the papers may be seriously injured.” Even more distressing, Colonel Harford, obviously not a scholar, had directed his gardeners to use a large portion of the papers to fill a divot on the grounds of his property.

MdHS Librarian, John Wesley Murray Lee, not dated, PVF, MdHS.

Acting swiftly under the leadership of Mendes Cohen, the society raised money from prominent Baltimoreans including Enoch Pratt, Charles Bonaparte, and Albert Ritchie, and sent a representative to England for the purposes of acquiring the papers. In April of 1888, MdHS Librarian John Wesley Murray Lee arrived in England and negotiated the purchase of the 1,300 plus documents for approximately $1,100 (about $27,000 in 2014). After carefully packing the papers in iron trunks, Lee escorted the historic acquisition to Baltimore aboard the steamship Servia, and the manuscripts were soon safely stored in the society’s fireproof vault.

The Calvert Papers contain many of the Maryland’s oldest and most historically important documents. The manuscripts, “on paper and parchment . . . ranging from the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,” down to the second half of the eighteenth century, are a varied assortment of materials including Council books, journals of the Colonial Houses of Assembly, rent rolls, grants of land, heraldic and genealogical parchments and scrolls, and hundreds of pieces of correspondence of the Lords Baltimore, governors, and private citizens.

One of the most important documents in the collection related specifically to Maryland is Cecilius Calvert’s instructions to the colonists setting off for the Americas aboard the Ark and the Dove. Dated November 13, 1633, the letter from the Second Lord Baltimore to his brother Leonard, the first governor of the colony, lays the foundation for Maryland’s laws. Perhaps it’s most important feature is the statement on religious toleration in the opening clause:

“His Lo requires his said Governor & Commissioners th in their voyage to Mary Land they be very careful to preserve unity & peace amongst all the passengers on Shipp-board, and that they suffer no scandall nor offence to be given to any of the Protestants, whereby any just complaint may hereafter be made, by them, in Virginea or in England, and that for that end, they cause all Acts of Romane Catholique Religion to be done as privately as may be, and that they instruct all the Romane Catholiques to be silent upon all occasions of discourse concerning matters of Religion; and that the said Governor & Commissioners treate the Protestants wth as much mildness and favor as Justice will permitt. And this to be observed at Land as well as at Sea.”

The papers also contain “a great mass of documents illustrating every phase of the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute between the Calvert and the Penn families.” Among these are two copies of surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon’s map of the famous boundary line that today bears their names. In 1763, the Calvert and Penn families commissioned the two Englishmen to determine the border between the two colonies, and settle the argument over 4,000 square miles of contested land. After five years of slow, painstaking work through rigorous frontier, the survey was completed, the dispute settled, and Dixon drew an exquisite map of the line. The surveyors printed two hundred copies of the large 76” x 27” map in early 1768. The pair of copies discovered in Colonel Harford’s greenhouse more than a century later are two of only nine extant copies known today.

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, A Plan of the Boundary lines between the Province of Maryland and the Three Lower Counties of Delaware, 1768, MS 174-1051, MdHS.

One of the most notable items in the Calvert papers didn’t come from a greenhouse trunk in England, but the equally unlikely location of Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1894, Mendes Cohen, Chair of the Library Committee, received a letter from a man named John Roland Phillips, who upon his father’s death inherited an accumulation of documents collected by his father relating to the Calvert Family. In this batch of documents, added to the original Calvert Papers and given manuscript number MS 174.1, was a copy of an amazing manuscript entitled “A Briefe[sic] Relation of the Voyage Unto Maryland” written by Father Andrew White, one of the Jesuit priests who accompanied the Maryland colonists aboard the Ark and the Dove. Written in English this narrative describes the entire voyage of the first settlers.

White produced two versions of this manuscript, one in English and another in Latin entitled Relatio Itineris in Marilandium. The two versions were composed with different audiences in mind, and vary in certain aspects. The Latin version was intended for his superiors in Rome, whereas the English, with descriptions of the Maryland climate, soil, and “products of the earth,” was written in the hopes of drawing investors to the new colony.

It is entirely possible that the copy in the papers acquired from Phillips was written in Father White’s actual hand. Evidence of this possibility exists in another manuscript bundled in this batch of documents; a dictated and signed letter from Leonard Calvert, that refers to this English copy as having been written by “a most honest and discreet gentleman, wherefore you may be confident of the truth of it.” The body of the letter contains very similar handwriting to that in the Brief Relation. They appear to have been written by the same scribe, so there is a good chance Father White penned both.

Settlement of Maryland by Lord Baltimore, ca 1861, Emaniel Leutze, Oil on Canvas, 1884-2-1, Museum Department, MdHS.

Father White’s original Latin text returned with the Ark to London in the summer of 1634. Once it arrived a copy was made which was then sent to the Jesuit archives in Rome. Shortly thereafter the original manuscript went missing and remained unaccounted for until 1998. The MdHS purchased what is presumed to be this missing copy in auction from Sotheby’s, bringing the English and Latin version together again 364 years after they were created.

Although there is a good chance that MdHS has three original documents written by Father Andrew White (the two Relatios and the dictated Leonard Calvert letter) it should be acknowledged that there is a chance that we have none at all. Evidently there were at least two other possible scribes aboard the ship. We make no claims to be handwriting experts, but these documents do seem to share remarkably similar penmanship. It is likely that the scribe is the same in all of the manuscripts.

After doing a little research we found that GeorgetownUniversity has a document entitled “Prayers written in English, Latin, and Piscatawayas which has been authenticated as being in Father White’s hand.” We welcome handwriting experts out there to do your own research and let us know what you think.

In a final postscript to the story behind the acquisition of the Calvert Papers, the society sponsored another excursion to England in July of 1889 in a last ditch attempt to recover the missing portion of the Calvert papers buried in Colonel Harford’s yard. Meeting with the Colonel Harford, MdHS member Julian LeRoy White discovered that Harford had originally directed his butler to burn the documents, but he had buried them instead. With the aid of two of Harford’s workmen and the butler, White began the excavation:

“We dug all that day through all that part of the heap which might possibly, according to the butler, contain the Papers . . . We went down to water almost, and found nothing except some enormous worms . . . almost the size of small eels . . . If there were papers there the damp could not have failed to destroy them.”

Marylanders may lament the loss of a portion of the Calvert papers to the worms, but it should be noted that much care has been put into the stewardship of the extant collection in the 127 years since their arrival. The papers have been arranged, described, conserved, and then microfilmed in 1972. Though much work has been done with this collection our query into the provenance of the Father White letter reminded us how much work can still be done. Take some comfort in the fact that the continued metaphoric excavation of the remaining documents will prove to be fruitful. (Eben Dennis and Damon Talbot)

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of the MdHS News.

Sources and further reading:

A Brief History of the Mason Dixon Line.

Anderson, Patricia Dockman, “A History of the Maryland Historical Society, 1844-2006,” Maryland Historical Magazine, Volume 101, No. 4 (Winter 2006).

Andrew White, Apostle of Maryland.

Ellis, Donna M. and Karen A. Stuart, The Calvert Papers: Calendar and Guide to the Microfilm Edition (The Maryland Historical Society: Baltimore, 1989)

MHS Fund Publications, The Calvert Papers, 1888-1889.

MS 174, Calvert Papers, 1621-1775.

MS 174.1, Calvert Papers (additonal), 1633-1638.

Thaler, David S., “Mason & Dixon and the Defining of America,” MdHS News, Fall 2008.

A full house for the Colts vs. Washington Redskins game on October 23, 1955. “Colts vs. Redskins, Baltimore Memorial Stadium,” October 23, 1955, Robert F. Kniesche, PP79.1331-2, Robert F. Kniesche Photograph Collection, MdHS.

(This is the second part of a two part series. The first part was posted on December 11, 2014.)

Oriole Park’s fiery end in 1944 provided a much needed revenue source for Baltimore’s Venable Stadium. The project had become an expensive city-wide joke. The stadium had become known as the city’s “White Elephant.” Venable failed to ever generate a profit, despite the efforts of many Park Board members over the years. Sensing an opportunity to solve two problems, Mayor Theodore McKeldin offered the stadium to the homeless Baltimore Orioles, then part of the International League of Professional Baseball Teams.

The minor league baseball team made Venable, or as it had come to be known, Municipal or Baltimore Stadium, its home, and the stands were regularly filled once again. The Venable name had fallen out of favor as Baltimoreans forgot its namesake, Richard M. Venable. Venable had helped establish the city’s park system and was a former president of the Park Board, but city residents and newspapers more often called the 33^rd Street stadium Baltimore or Municipal Stadium. To prepare for the incoming Orioles who had lost their park midseason, the stadium underwent a hurried transformation from a football to a baseball stadium, so the team could finish league play. The diamond was awkwardly configured on the existing field. The results were far from ideal, but it could hold far more spectators than Oriole Park ever could. Huge crowds flocked to watch the Orioles play at Municipal Stadium, and this success extended the Orioles’ residence at the stadium.

The following year, the team played all of its home games there. The city seized the opportunity to keep the team in the stadium in 1947 and decided it was time to upgrade Municipal. The newly returned crowds highlighted the failing condition of the arena. Necessary repairs and improvements had been delayed because of the lack of funding. The stadium had no official box office or ticket booths. Bathrooms were little more than wooden outhouses outside of the stadium. The backless wooden bench seating also garnered Municipal another unflattering nickname: “Splinter Heaven.” A long-term deal with the Orioles baseball team meant that a bigger, better stadium could be built on 33^rd Street.

This however drew protest from the surrounding neighborhood. The residents had put up with the annoyances of living near the stadium when they thought the arrangement was temporary. They were fed up with the rowdy sports fans, overwhelming traffic that kicked up dust from the unpaved parking lots, and the bright lights and loud noise that radiated from the stadium during night games. The Stadium Neighborhood Protection Committee filed suit against the city. The association wanted concessions from the city and the team for the inconveniences the stadium caused.

The field was set up for both football and baseball games. “Fan view inside Memorial Stadium. Baltimore Colts vs Chicago Bears at Memorial Stadium, Baltimore, MD.,” October 1960, A. Aubrey Bodine, B1558, A. Aubrey Bodine Collection, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, MdHS.

Both sides hired Baltimore’s premiere legal eagles. Wilmer H. Driver represented the Stadium Neighborhood Protection Committee, and the City Solicitor, Thomas Biddison, worked the case for Baltimore. The Baltimore Orioles also hired as slew of lawyers to fight the neighborhood association. The case made it up to Maryland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. In the end, the city and the Orioles won the case. The only concessions made to the residents were that innings could not be started after 11:30 p.m., the parking lots must be paved, and the PA system couldn’t be too loud. The court case also affirmed that the stadium could legally be used for professional sports, which opened the door to bigger opportunities.

The planning for the new stadium coincided with the return of professional football to the city. Bob Rodenberg acquired and moved the defunct Miami Seahawks from the All-America Football Conference to Baltimore in 1947. This hardly seemed like a gamble. He knew that the city loved football. The Washington Redskins had periodically played in Municipal and had always drawn good crowds. The Seahawks were renamed the Colts as result of a naming contest won by Charles Evans of Middle River, Maryland. Rodenberg initially wanted to call his team the Whirlaways after the Triple Crown winning racehorse, Whirlaway. The Colts moniker honored the city’s connection to horseracing. This team only lasted until 1951. The AAFC and the National Football merged in 1950, and the Colts were included, but poor play combined with financial instability led the league to dissolve the team. Baltimore was once again without a professional football team, until 1952, when the league commissioner challenged the team to sell 15,000 tickets in six weeks to reenter the league. The challenge was met in less than five weeks. The Baltimore Colts were reinstated in 1953. Carroll Rosenbloom moved the floundering Dallas Texans to the city with the trademark blue and white uniforms, thus creating the team that the city rooted for until 1984.

The Baltimore Colts original colors were green and silver. Program, 1948, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

The new stadium also helped cement a deal to get a major league baseball team back in Baltimore. The St. Louis Browns from the American League moved to the city in 1954. The International League team was bought out and moved to Havana, Cuba, and the Browns took over the Orioles name.

Memorial Stadium was a far cry from Municipal. Construction on the new stadium was completed in 1950 and cost $6.5 million to build. It was built from reinforced concrete, had actual seats, and an imposing entrance. The firms of J. L. Faisant and L. P. Kooken were responsible for the design. The name Memorial Stadium was chosen to honor Marylanders who had served in the military, and was even more fitting with the recent end of World War II and the start of the Korean War during the construction period. Some had advocated naming the stadium after Baltimore’s native son, Babe Ruth, but this was met with criticism and ultimately rejected. A second deck of seating was added in 1954, just in time for major league Orioles’ Opening Day.

Both the Orioles and Colts met great success in their new stadium. Over one million fans attended the O’s games during their inaugural season despite the team’s 54-100 record. The baseball team won six American League pennants and three World Series championships during its tenure in Memorial. Many baseball greats graced the diamond for the O’s, including Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken, Jr., Frank Robinson, and Boog Powell.

The Baltimore Colts also regularly sold out games. The raucous passion of the fans garnered Memorial the nickname of “The World’s Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum” by the Chicago Tribune writer, Cooper Rollow. Baltimore Sun columnist Jacques Kelly concurred with Rollow’s characterization of Colts fans, writing that “tickets were scarcer than Inner Harbor parking places, the old stadium reverberated with great touchdown huzzas. You didn’t need to turn on a radio back then; a going-crazy, packed-to-the goalpost crowd broadcast enthusiasm over a 12-block radius.”(1) Baltimoreans loved to cheer on the Colts greats, “the Golden Arm” Johnny Unitas, Art Donovan, and Lenny Moore, just to name a few. The Colts won back-to-back National Football Championships in 1958 and 1959, and made it to the Super Bowl twice, losing to the New York Jets in 1968, and winning in 1970 versus the Dallas Cowboys.

The 33^rd Street stadium had returned to greatness. The city continued to update the structure, adding more seats and luxury amenities for the next two decades. Trouble began to brew again when the Colts were purchased by Robert Irsay of Chicago. The Colts owner, Rosenbloom, got the Los Angeles Rams in the deal. Irsay did not plan to keep the Colts in Baltimore and drew the ire of the loyal fans by openly shopping the team to other cities. He brokered a deal with the city of Indianapolis, and the team shipped out during the night on March 29, 1984. Baltimore would remain without a football team until 1996.

The 1954 Season schedule booklet starring the Oriole Bird. Baltimore Orioles Schedule, 1954, Sports Ephemera Collection, MdHS.

By that point, the stadium needed to be overhauled once again. The city was divided on whether to upgrade Memorial or build a whole new facility for the Orioles. In the end, the plan for a new stadium won out and Camden Yards at Oriole Park was built specifically to accommodate baseball. The O’s played their last game at Memorial Stadium in 1991. The city attempted to lease out the arena for other events, such as rock concerts, but the neighborhood vigorously protested this measure. A Canadian Football League team, the Baltimore Stallions, temporarily called Memorial home, but support for the team fizzled when Art Modell announced that he wanted to bring the Cleveland Browns to the city. The Ravens played two seasons at Memorial, but eventually the team built its own stadium, PSI Net, or as it is now known, M & T Bank Stadium.

Memorial Stadium was demolished in 2001, despite protests from Baltimoreans who remembered the glory days. The landscape of 33^rd Street is vastly different. Apartments surround the where the stadium once stood. But, the property’s sport history legacy has not been totally forgotten, a YMCA was built on the stadium grounds, and in 2010, the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation in conjunction with the YMCA of Central Maryland built baseball field on the location of the old stadium. Home plate sits on its old, familiar spot on 33^rd Street once again. (Lara Westwood)

Sources and Further Reading:

(1) Kelly, Jacques. “Enjoy an Old Classic, Memorial Stadium, While It Lasts.” Baltimore Evening Sun, April 5, 1988.

Ballparks of Baseball. “Memorial Stadium.”

Baltimore Orioles. “Orioles History.”

Bready, James H. Baseball in Baltimore: The First 100 Years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Indianapolis Colts. “History Highlights.”

Jacobs, Ben. “Baltimore’s Greatest Canadian Sports Team: A Brief History of the CFL Colts.” The Classical. December 15, 2011.

Passano File.

Sandler, Gilbert. “Baltimore Glimpses.” Baltimore Evening Sun, November 13, 1979.

Sandler, Gilbert. “So You Think Memorial Stadium Is Spartan.” Baltimore Evening Sun, December 12, 1978.

Sharrow, Ryan. “Ripken Sr. Foundation Completes Memorial Stadium Youth Field.” Baltimore Business Journal. December 7, 2010.

Vardon, Jordan. “Green vs. Garrett: How the Boom of Professional Sports Helped to Create, and Destroy, Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium.”

This week’s post is a re-blog of a New York City Historical Society post that originally appeared January 15, 2014.  All images are from the collection of the New York Historical Society. You can read the original post here.

Portrait of Solomon Northup from his memoir, 12 Years a Slave.

Title page of an 1853 printing held in the collections of the New-York Historical Society (E444.N87)

Challenges to the legality of bondage, shown in acclaimed director Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave—which won the Best Picture for Drama at the Golden Globes last year—are not without precedence, as evidenced by a document held in the manuscript collections of the New-York Historical Society: a list of persons to be freed. While the film tells the story of the unlawful enslavement in 1841 of Solomon Northup, a free African American from upstate New York, the N-YHS list is related to an earlier case in Maryland. Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in the movie, was kidnapped in 1841 on the streets of Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery in Louisiana, where he labored for twelve years on bayou plantations.

His 1853 memoir depicts the horrors of American chattel enslavement from the perspective of a freeborn man who had lived that way for decades. His slave narrative went on to contribute to the national dialogue on abolition. Northup was unsuccessful in his pursuit of legal action against his captors, as the laws of the jurisdiction prohibited his testimony against a white man in the nation’s capital, the scene of the crime.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Portrait File, PR 52, New York Historical Society

A half century before, in the courts of the neighboring Upper South state of Maryland, Charles Mahoney successfully challenged the legality of his enslavement. Mahoney brought suit in 1791 against Father John Ashton, an influential Catholic Procurator General, Jesuit missionary, head of the White Marsh Mission, and slave owner. Mahoney received a favorable ruling in Maryland’s Court of Appeals in May of 1799. Mahoney’s counsel had successfully argued that he be manumitted on the grounds that he was a descendant of a freewoman, Ann Joice, who had been unlawfully enslaved. (Joice’s descendants had long asserted their freedom, and in 1770 her grandsons, the brothers Jack Wood and Jack Crane, took an axe to the neck to the man who claimed to be their overseer.)

The 1799 verdict in Mahoney v. Ashton not only freed Charles Mahoney, but also all known descendants of Ann Joice. Her descendants were owned not only by Ashton, but also by several other Maryland planters.

One such person in possession of Mahoney’s relatives was Ashton’s cousin, Charles Carroll of Carollton (1737-1832), a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In compliance with the court ruling, Carroll accounted for Joice descendants currently held at his estate at Doughoregan, and those formerly owned by him.

In May of 1799, Carroll took an inventory of Mahoney’s relations, including a list of the names of 23 newly freed persons, and “A list of negroes sold on Doughoregan Manor since December the 2d, 1799 by Mr. Carroll.” In consequence of legal reversals, for a few more years, Mahoney’s family continued to petition the Maryland courts for manumission, with a final favorable ruling being delivered in 1802.

This post was written by Julita Braxton, EBSCO Project Cataloger, New York Historical Society.

“A list of negroes who obtained their freedom of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Esq., in May, 1799 – in consequence of the verdict obtained by Charles Mahoney against the Rev. Mr. John Ashton, May Term, 1799”, New York Historical Society.

A list of negroes who obtained their freeedom of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Esq. in May 1799.
From the collection of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Manuscript Department, New-York Historical Society.

“The above is an exact list of all the negroes that were sold and who obtained their freedom belonging to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Esq.,” New York Historical Society.

MdHS needs your help identifying bands, people, dates, and places from the Baltimore music scene of the late 1980s and ’90s in the photos below. Please help if you can.

Reference photo #1: SOLVED, mostly. All Mighty Senators at the Hour Haus. L to R: Ben Watson (cutoff), Mitchell Valient (percussionist/dancer), Frank Carrino, Andriana Pateris, and Warren Boes (cutoff). Joseph Kohl. Date and location unresolved. PP284, MdHS.

I’ve been preparing to process the Joseph Kohl photograph collection for a while now. Because the collection is so modern—our third most modern by my count—it has never been a high priority since it arrived here in 2003. The challenges of processing it have ranged from procuring funding to finding the time to dive in. Processing photograph collections is only one aspect of my job. Granted it is one the most fun and rewarding. Another consideration was finding help. It’s a big collection consisting of well over a thousand prints and many more negatives and various pieces of ephemera, and due to the graphic nature of some of the shots, I couldn’t just throw this project at the next intern who happened along. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to forge ahead past the challenges as if things will just fall into place. And as luck would have it, that’s what appears to be happening.

Reference photo #2: SOLVED, mostly. Ben Watson and Frank Carrino of the All Mighty Senators at the Hour Haus. PP284, MdHS.

Recently help arrived from longtime City Paper photographers Josh Sisk and Joe Giordano, who have been crucial in helping spread the word about the wonders of Kohl’s collection. Together we’re in the early stages of planning an offsite exhibit of some of Kohl’s work that might not hang easily here at the Historical Society. (Again, some of them are “dirty” pictures.) I’m counting on Joe and Josh to get the word out, which will hopefully to lead to a mature, qualified volunteer or intern to help with processing.

Reference photo #3: OK, we know who this is. It’s the late great Mark Harp! at the Action Theater Rehearsal Studio, c.1996-99. Joseph Kohl. Date unknown. PP284, MdHS.

I am also counting on your help, dear gentle and aged reader. Based on the responses I’ve gotten on Facebook when I post samples of Kohl’s work, this should be no problem. So after you ponder a while, please tell me who this smokin’ guitarist is. And remember, if and when possible with all the photos, please include names, places, and a guess at the date.

Reference photo #4: Unidentified smoking guitarist. Date unknown. Joseph Kohl. PP284, MdHS

It turns out this next shot was not a band at all, but rather a group of actors known as Impossible Industrial Action. They later became Action Theater and Joe Kohl was their company photographer from about 1994 on, according to Thomas Cole (pictured below).

Reference photo #5: Clockwise: Thomas Cole, Tony Tsendeas, Donna “Vida” Sherman, and Robin Hogle (center). Joseph Kohl. PP284, MdHS.

The guitarist below looks familiar. But that could be because solo face makes everyone look related.

Reference photo #6: SOLVED! Brian Daniloski (left) and Hank Rosschen (right) of Stranger Than Fiction. Brian gets extra points for the Buttsteak T-shirt. Joseph Kohl. PP284, MdHS.

This band, it turns out, is not from Baltimore at all. It’s L.A.-by-way-of-New-Jersey’s Dramarama.  The photo appears to have been taken at a festival. Did Dramarama ever play Artscape?

Reference photo #7: SOLVED! Jon Easdale and Mark Englert of Dramarama. Venue and date unknown. Joseph Kohl. PP284, MdHS.

Can you name this band? It sort of looks like Max’s on Broadway in the background.

Reference photo #8: Another unidentified singer and guitarists. Joseph Kohl. PP284, MdHS.

Kohl’s work came to MdHS in various boxes, bags, and plastic tubs. The first step in processing it is to get it into appropriate-size protective boxes and an acid-free environment. The next step will be to identify as much of the work as possible and create a finding aid. Along the way, we will look at digitizing some of the work. If you personally knew Joe Kohl or recognize more than a couple faces above, I would like to speak with you and invite you to come view the collection. Please email any information you have about the above reference photos here: imagingservices@mdhs.org

Be sure to include names, places, dates if you know them. Thanks in advance for your help. (Joe Tropea)

This is the first in a series of posts by Maryland Historical Society fellows which highlight their experiences researching the MdHS library and their varied and exciting historical research. The Lord Baltimore Fellowship promotes scholarship in Maryland history and culture through research in the MdHS library collections. To read more about this opportunity and how to apply, please visit the Fellowship page on our website. 

‘The Christiana Tragedy’ is from “The underground railroad” by William Still. He was chairman of the Vigilance Committee and member of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. As fugitive slaves reached Philadelphia (and freedom!), William Still interviewed them about their experiences as slaves and their escape methods. He compiled many of these stories in this book, published in 1872.

I have been a Lord Baltimore Fellow at the Maryland Historical Society for the past year. Much of the time has been spent reading diaries filled with faded handwriting, correspondence both illegible and legible, meticulously-organized scrapbooks, and notes of previous historians. I scrolled through months of newspaper articles on microfilm – reading each ad, article and page – hoping to find little details that other historians may not have used or found significant. Some days came and went with no clues or leads, and on other days I found many sources that would help me tell a new story…

I am researching the “Christiana Riot of 1851″ which occurred in the small town of the same name in Pennsylvania. Edward Gorsuch, a Baltimore County citizen, was killed by fugitive slaves refusing to return to a life in bondage.(1) This topic has been explored before. For the past forty years, historians have studied the event in terms of  race relations and racial violence in Pennsylvania. Prior to that, historians wrote about the effects of the riot in terms of its national significance or as a general study of the local history of Pennsylvania. But no one has focused on how Marylanders reacted to the Christiana Resistance, the lack of enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law or to the murder of a Baltimore County citizen. This is what I found interesting. What did Marylanders think about it? My research focuses on the aftermath of the incident in Maryland – a slave state inhabited with the largest number of free African-Americans in the country – a very interesting dynamic.

The story began on an idyllic farm in northern Baltimore County in 1849. Four slaves – Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, and Joshua and George Hammond – escaped from Edward Gorsuch’s farm and found refuge, freedom, and work in Christiana, Pennsylvania. For two years, Gorsuch used every possible legal method to find and bring home his “property,” including petitioning Maryland Governor Philip Francis Thomas, but he was unsuccessful. When the controversial Fugitive Slave Law passed in 1850, Gorsuch had suddenly another means to recapture the fugitive slaves. He was now legally allowed by the federal government to enter a free state to recapture the men. In August 1851, William Padgett, Gorsuch’s informant, told him where the fugitives were living.

On September 11, 1851, a posse quietly approached a small stone house in Christiana. They were armed with weapons, warrants, and a U.S. Marshall. William Parker, another Maryland fugitive who rented the home, refused to let the fugitive slaves surrender.  The commotion in the early morning hours attracted neighbors – some came to offer assistance; others to prevent a possible illegal slave kidnapping.  The short and brutal fight left Edward Gorsuch dead, his son Dickinson severely wounded, and all other slaveholders running for their lives. William Parker and the fugitives from Baltimore County escaped. This incident eventually led to the largest treason trial in U.S. history (Thirty-eight people were charged with treason which ended in an acquittal or charges were dropped). No one was ever convicted of the murder of Edward Gorsuch.

Town meetings held immediately after the Resistance typically expressed outrage over the murder of a Marylander and concern about “property” and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. This meeting held in Baltimore County just a few weeks after the Resistance focused only on the issue of protecting property. The Baltimore Sun, October 4, 1851, Micro 1287, MdHS

On September 15, 6,000 people gathered in Monument Square in Baltimore to express outrage at the events in Christiana. Town meetings were also held in Baltimore County, both in Monkton and in Towsontown. The men who attended these meetings were some of the most powerful men in the state and included present and future politicians. What did they have to say? Did they differentiate their opinions between the issue of the murder and the concern over enforcement of the new federal law? My research will include the thoughts and opinions of men, women, former slaves, free African-Americans, slaveholders, and abolitionists.

Governor E. Louis Lowe, the presiding governor of Maryland from 1851 to 1854, spoke about Christiana in his Annual Message to the Maryland General Assembly on January 7, 1852. He called the trial a “farce” and a “mockery.”

Frederick Douglass.
Frontispiece from “Life an Times of Frederick Douglass,” 1884.

Frederick Douglass met William Parker (the leader of the resistance) while both men were enslaved in Maryland. Parker, along with two other resisters, left Pennsylvania and stopped at Frederick Douglass’ Rochester, New York home on the way to Canada. One of the many times he wrote about this event in depth was in his last autobiography:

“I could not look upon them as murderers. To me they were heroic defenders of the just rights of man against manstealers and murderers. So I fed them, and sheltered them in my house…I shook hands with my friends, received from Parker the revolver that fell from the hand of Gorsuch when he died, presented now as a token of gratitude and a memento of the battle for Liberty at Christiana…”

The Milton Inn, or as in was known in Booth’s time, the Milton Academy. The Inn now operates as a restaurant at 14833 York Road in Sparks, Maryland. Photograph by author.

In 1849, John Wilkes Booth (yes, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln) was friends and classmates with Tom, Edward Gorsuch’s youngest son, at the Milton Academy in Baltimore County.(2) Although most of Booth’s correspondence was destroyed after Lincoln’s assassination, some surviving papers were published for the first time in 1997. Among them was a rough draft of a speech written in December 1860. He wrote,

John Wilkes Booth, circa 1865.
Portrait Vertical File, MdHS.

“…Gentlemen, when I was a schoolboy, my bossom friend was a boy 3 years my senior  named Gorruge [Thomas Gorsuch], he was as noble a youth as any living. He had two brothers grown to be men. And and an old father who loved and was beloved by them. He was all that a man of honour should be. Two of his negros committed a robbery, they were informed upon. They nearly beat the informer to death. they ran away from Maryland, came to this state [Pennsylvania]. The father, the two sons, and the boy my playmate, came to this state under the protection of the fugitive slave law (not only to recover their property, but to arrest the thieves who belonged to them).^“

Pages from Rebecca Gorsuch Mitchell’s scrapbook from the time of the 60th anniversary. Collections of LancasterHistory.org

In 1911, the citizens of Lancaster County wanted to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the event in the spirit of reconciliation. Family and friends of those who participated on both sides of the event were invited, as well as political and community leaders. W. U. Hensel, a local attorney and historian, coordinated the event and kept a scrapbook of correspondence and newspaper articles. I found some very interesting letters including many from Dickinson Gorsuch’s daughter, Rebecca (Edward’s granddaughter). In many of her letters she expressed gratitude and pleasure for the commemoration of the event.

“…I cannot express to you all this visit meant to me, the hospitality + goodwill extended by from (cross out from) all whom we met…Mr. Hensel, you gave such pleasure as will never be forgotten. (plus sign) then to crown all that beautiful medal that will be one of my cherished possessions…”

I found it difficult to understand her gratitude at the commemoration of an event that killed her grandfather and almost killed her father. I thought perhaps it was a sign of southern hospitality, but it appears to be genuine as Rebecca Gorsuch Mitchell had a lot of correspondence with Hensel in the same glowing terms – offering family diaries and letters for his research and invitations to visit her.

John Crowther, who knew the Gorsuch family, expressed disgust at the thought of commemoration festivities.

“…I know if they were living it would be very distasteful to them to have the memory of that disgraceful occurrence perpetuated. They were all staunch Union men, and law-abiding citizens, none in the county stood higher…”

These are just a few comments made by Marylanders regarding the Christiana Resistance and/or the murder of Edward Gorsuch. My research continues, not only at MdHS, but also the Maryland State Archives, the National Archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library of Congress and other institutions.

History’s Mysteries

As with any research project, some questions are answered, some questions lead to more questions, and some questions lead to dead ends. My present ‘dead end’ are a series of missing pages from an 1851 diary of Dickinson Gorsuch. MdHS has many of Dickinson Gorsuch’s diaries in the Gorsuch-Mitchell Collection of Papers, MS 2733, but pages are torn out of this particular diary.

Dickinson-Gusrsuch Travel Diary.
Gorsuch-Mitchell Collection, MS 2733, MdHS.

The diary entries end on August 17, 1851, the day before the posse left Baltimore County for Pennnsylvania. After that a number of pages are ripped out and the rest of the book is blank. The diary, Dickinson Gorsuch’s travel diary,  is written in a very different style compared to the other ones in the Gorsuch-Mitchell Collection of Papers at MdHS (MS 2733).  MdHS has many of his diaries, but not from the critical years of 1851 and 1852.

Image of the 1851 Dickinson Gorsuch Diary, Moore Memorial Library.

Moores Memorial Library in Christiana holds photocopies of Dickinson Gorsuch’s 1851 diary which is in a different format, but same handwriting and style. The Library does not know the provenance of these photocopies. I do not doubt that these are his – MdHS has fifteen diaries of his in the Gorsuch Mitchell Collection – it’s the same handwriting and style. The MML copies are very much like the MdHS ones – farm account books with daily entries noting the day-to-day business of running a farm with added personal notes. Where is the original? Rebecca Gorsuch Mitchell, Dickinson’s daughter and Edward’s granddaughter, mentions the diaries to W. U. Hensel in their correspondence about the 60th anniversary. She gave them to him fo research, but did he return them? They are not in his collection.

Finally, I am extremely grateful to the Library staff – Damon, Lara, Eben, and Dr. Pat Anderson for their support as well as the opportunity to research as a Lord Baltimore Fellow. (Debbie Harner)

Footnotes:

(1) Immediately after the incident and well into the 20^th century, the events depicted above were referred to by historians and journalists as the “Christiana Riot,” “the Christiana Outrage,” or the “Christiana Tragedy.”  Today most historians refer to it as the “Christiana Resistance” as it was not a true riot, but rather an act of resistance and/or an act of self-defense by the fugitives.

(2) The Milton Academy is now known as The Milton Inn.

Sources and Further Reading:

MS 2733, Papers, 1798 – 1921. The Gorsuch-Mitchell Collection, Maryland Historical Society

Annual Message of the executive to the General Assembly of Maryland. : January session, 1852. Annapolis: Thomes E. Martin, Printer, 1852. MJK3852 1852 Maryland Historical Society

MG 76 W. U. Hensel Collection, Lancaster County Historical Society

Slaughter, Thomas. Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)

Still, William. The underground railroad : a record of facts, authentic narratives, letters, & c., narrating the hardships, hair-breadth escapes, and death struggles of the slaves in their efforts for freedom /  as related by themselves and others…. (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872) Maryland Historical Society

Rhodehamel, John and Louise Taper, Eds. “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me” The Writings of John Wilkes Booth. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997)

www.internetarchive.org The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself, 1892, p. 350

The Maryland Historical Society will partner with the National Park Service and the Baltimore School for the Arts to produce Facing the Great War, three original short plays performed by BSA’s sophomore students that will focus on the experience of Marylanders during the World War I era. FREE performances will take place on March 21st at 2 PM at Fort McHenry, and March 28th at 2 PM at the Maryland Historical Society. Grant funding for the program was provided by Wells Fargo.

When the United States declared war against Germany and the Central Powers in the spring of 1917, the nation was already in the midst of social and technological shifts that would be further altered by the decision. Progressive reforms were sweeping the country’s urban centers, and Baltimore was no different. Blight, delinquency, and rapid population increases forced local governments to push for major changes in the social landscape. For the federal government, this environment facilitated its ability to support WWI veterans, many of whom were mentally and physically scarred from their time overseas. Organizations such as the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) also stepped up to provide essential care, while also increasing public awareness of the issues.

The Greatest Mother in the World.”
The American Red Cross. Circa 1917-1919. MdHS Poster Collection. Oversize, 1910-1919, Folder 11.

“A Man May Be Down But He’s Never Out!”
The Salvation Army. Circa 1917-1919. MdHS Poster Collection. Oversize, 1910-1919, Folder 12.

The United States Army set up General Hospital No. 2 at Fort McHenry, which would ultimately become one of the largest such complexes for receiving soldiers returning from action. Its development occurred quite rapidly. The site went from having less than 30 Civil War era buildings at its opening in August 1917, to over 100 structures by the end of 1919. Dr. Norman B. Cole would recollect his time there in the latter year, when the hospital had to accommodate “the terrible flood of American war wounded,” whose numbers would reach “roughly 3,500 patients.”(1)

The medical facilities were overseen by Lieutenant Colonel Harry S. Purnell, and included several departments that pioneered new treatment strategies tailored to the needs of the victims of modern war.(2) The advent of trench warfare, combined with the increased use of mustard gas and other chemical agents and advanced weaponry, created a uniquely afflicted veteran population. Hospital staff could not help but be shocked by some of the injuries they encountered. Gertrude Weil worked as a reconstruction aide at General Hospital No. 2 and later remarked that “there were amputees, blind boys, shell-shocked and gassed soldiers; some were in such bad shape that they refused to let their relatives visit them.”(3) For a nation that was just entering the world’s military stage, and had not had a major conflict on its own soil for over 50 years, the situation was certainly unfamiliar if not unprecedented.

“Headshot. Injured Soldier, M. Giovanni,” U.S. General Hospital No. 2, Fort McHenry, McFee Photograph Collection, PP32.932, MdHS.

“Headshot. Injured Soldier,” U.S. General Hospital No. 2, Fort McHenry, McFee Photograph Collection, PP32.927, MdHS.

The American Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army, among others, joined efforts with the U.S. Army to address the array of issues faced by these men. It was a two-pronged undertaking, as the physical rehabilitation and psychological recovery of soldiers both posed significant challenges. Experts in orthopedic surgery, physiotherapy, and neuro-surgery were assigned to the hospital, often incorporating new technology and treatment strategies. The Maxillo-facial department was established in order to deal with the complexity of injuries, which required a combination of dental and surgical expertise. While trench warfare largely protected a soldier’s body from damage on the battlefield, his upper body and face were more likely to be exposed. This situation resulted in a large volume of facial and jaw injuries, nearly 340 of which were treated at Hospital #2. Most of these were documented by Sgt. 1^st Class Eugene McFee , formerly a newspaper photographer who was employed as the chief X-Ray technician.

McFee’s photograph collection, housed in the MdHS’s archives, provides a fascinating and eerie glimpse into the rehabilitation process for the men. Many of the soldiers had either lost eyes, or had large gashes and portions of their faces missing. These men, along with those who had lost limbs or the ability to use them, were certainly concerned about how they would be received by society. Approximately 1,000 veterans would be fitted for orthopedic or facial prosthetics at Fort McHenry. Artists Elizabeth Cook and Helen Richardson were brought in to fabricate masks, intended to ease the anxiety-ridden transition to civilian life. Their role was “In a word to give to the men, faces as presentable as possible.”(4)

The character Richard Harrow, played by Jack Huston, from HBO’s Boardwalk Empire serves as a familiar example of the work artists Elizabeth Cook and Helen Richardson once did at Fort McHenry.

“Eugene McFee with X-Ray equipment and patient,” U.S. General Hospital No. 2, Fort McHenry, McFee Photograph Collection, PP32.545, MdHS.

The hospital also incorporated job and life skills training into its rehabilitation program. The Educational Department was officially funded starting June 28, 1918, when the U.S. Congress passed a bill “providing for the training, education, and placement afterward of disabled soldiers.” Participants could earn up to $150 per month during the training period. This concept of occupational therapy was beginning to take hold, focusing on a person’s need to feel useful despite his or her disabilities. The department promoted the idea that, “While the activity may not directly improve his physical condition, the idea of having definite work to do has been a great mental and moral help to many a man.” For one veteran who had a fractured jaw and could only move in a wheel-chair, aides noted a dramatic psychological improvement since he began learning “knotting, bead and basket weaving and leather tooling.”(5)

Veterans at the Baltimore campus had the opportunity to pursue numerous vocations, catered to their particular ailments and pre-existing skills. For those with lower body and facial injuries, the mechanical drafting school required only “Two Good Hands and at least One Eye” to train for jobs that could earn between $80 to $200 a month. As for the Print Shop, “two good hands and some gray matter are the only prerequisite,” meaning a man with prosthetics or permanently damaged legs could make a living in the profession. Veteran printing apprentices even produced the hospital’s newsletter, The Trouble Buster, a primary source that provides fascinating details for research on the site and time period. Other options included bookkeeping, photography, tire repair, electrical work, and shoe repair.(6) Publications were sure to emphasize the therapeutic nature of such practical work, while also attempting to ease the stigma of disability that many men would still carry with themselves.

Blind soldiers, most likely exposed to mustard gas on European battlefields, were tended to by the Red Cross at its Evergreen campus in North Baltimore. While these patients would have had access to some of the same occupational training and social events provided at the military base, the lack of sight did require a more specialized program. Photographs are the main source of information about the rehabilitation at Evergreen. Within the collection, we see blind veterans engaged in wood-working, poultry farming, musical training, and even learning human anatomy relying on their senses of touch.

“Students Making Hammocks, Baskets, and Caning Chairs.” Evergreen-Red Cross Institute for the Blind Photograph Collection. 1918-1920, PP148.20, MdHS.

It is also interesting to note that the photographs from Evergreen indicate that training among the blind veterans was racially integrated. We know that there were black soldiers residing at General Hospital No. 2, though there presence was largely mentioned in passing and primarily through Baltimore’s Afro-American Newspaper. One article entitled “Colored Soldiers at Fort McHenry,” lauded the efforts of Miss Rosina Joseph, a local black welfare worker who interacted with soldiers of both races at the fort hospital.(7) U.S. military units were certainly segregated during their campaigns in Europe, despite the fact that many African-American soldiers ended up serving under French army officers. Racial discrimination in the Baltimore area remained a fact of life, even for veterans who displayed the physical and emotional wounds from the war. Perhaps army leadership felt that only those soldiers who were literally “color blind” could handle the extended periods of integrated rehabilitation that occurred at the Red Cross institute.

“One of the Bi-Weekly Patients’ Dances” The Trouble Buster: Anniversary Number. April 26, 1919, McFee Photograph Collection, PP32, MdHS.

Rosina Joseph and Gertrude Weil are only two examples of the crucial role that the local population played in Hospital No.2’s success. Baltimoreans provided staff, economic support, and perhaps the most crucial elements, recreation and social interaction. The Fort’s recreation department was largely furnished and staffed by civilians working through the Red Cross or Y.M.C.A. Soldiers could play volleyball, bowling, basketball and tennis, even when they were disabled. One organization’s director was proud to report that “the one-armed baseball teams defeated their opponents — two-armed teams that played with one arm behind their backs.”(8) The Trouble Buster was similarly ecstatic about the ability of “patients without trimmings, such as arms and legs,” who could still participate in the various activities on-base. Furthermore, local sponsorship made it possible for soldiers to see vaudeville shows, movies, musical performances, and take boat rides during their free time. The social dances, put on by the Red Cross, were likely just as important for the men’s morale. With music provided by the Army band or other traveling acts, these social events were very popular mostly because of “the attractive Baltimore girls who attend[ed].”(9)

The military-produced publications may have been a bit optimistic about the hospital’s success in rehabilitating soldiers’ hearts and minds. However, there is no denying that the advanced techniques and opportunities for specialized education gave returning veterans a much stronger foundation for post-war life than any previous generation. U.S. General Hospital No. 2 also brought purpose to the long-ignored grounds at Fort McHenry, while giving the local community a major stake in the future of its military men. The base’s newsletter reflected that sentiment, giving its readers this final thought:

“Long after this hospital is no more, thousands of appreciative doughboys will remember the goodness of Baltimore, Which gave so freely of its pocketbook and hospitality to make happy their last days in the service of the country.”

(David Armenti)

David Armenti is the Student Research Center Coordinator at the Maryland Historical Society.

“Enjoying The Show At Convalescent House,” The Trouble Buster, Anniversary Number. April 26, 1919, McFee Photograph Collection, PP32, MdHS.

Footnotes:

(1) Dr. Norman B. Cole. “Hospital Days at Old Fort McHenry.” Sunday Sun Magazine. 18 January, 1959. Dielman-Hayward File, Oversize, MDHS Library.

Anne Owen Tiernan, 1775–1841.
Portrait from Charles B. Tiernan, The Tiernan Family in Maryland, as Illustrated by Extracts from Works in the Public Libraries, and Original Letters and Memoranda in the Possession of Charles B. Tiernan (Baltimore: Gallery & McCann, 1898).

In 1826, when artist J. Wattles painted Anne Owen Tiernan’s portrait, he saw a woman with wide-set eyes under arched brows, high cheek bones, a deep bow in her upper lip, and silver streaks in the dark hair she had tucked neatly under a cap and tied beneath her full chin—and he captured a hint of a smile in the finished likeness. Tiernan, fifty-one years old at the time, looks poised, confident, and satisfied, her small, long-fingered right hand holds her reading glasses in her lap and the left rests on the arm of a carved and upholstered sofa. At the time she sat for this portrait, Anne Tiernan had been married for thirty-three years to Luke Tiernan, wealthy Baltimore merchant and one of the most generous contributors to the Cathedral (Metropolitan) Church. Eight of their nine children had lived to adulthood and three had married, all into equally prominent Catholic families. This year, 1826, also marked nearly two decades of her service to the city’s poor female children, primarily through her work with the Female Humane Association Charity School (FHACS). Fifteen years later, when she died in 1841, Anne Tiernan had helped manage the care, education, and religious training of Baltimore’s destitute and orphaned girls, in this predominately Protestant organization, for nearly thirty years.(1)

Much of what survives on the activities of the charity school rests in the pages of the five reports published during the first thirty-six years of their work. The first report, published in 1803, includes a brief history of the group’s founding in the fall of 1798. Concerned for the welfare of the city’s indigent women during the coming winter, they organized themselves into a group, the Female Humane Association (FHA), and coordinated relief—primarily clothing and food. The FHA was one of several private organizations that strove, with church outreach and municipal offices, to “comfort the wretched,” particularly seasonal wage workers, during the often brutally frigid seaport winters. Urban workers, often day laborers, stood idle for weeks and sometimes months when the frozen harbor immobilized the water trades, milling, manufacturing, and construction work. This then was the population that attracted the concerned, and sometimes sympathetic, benevolent efforts of the upper classes.(2)

A Brief Account of the Female Humane Association Charity School of the City of Baltimore, 1803, Warner and Hanna, cover, MdHS.

The women of the FHA recounted that they had distributed the items themselves and saw firsthand the children “literally raised in the streets in filthiness, rags, and vice.” The plight of poverty-stricken young girls alarmed them and they resolved to open a day school that they might “snatch the child from a fate similar to that of its mother . . . (and therefore) remedy the evil.” Rudimentary education, they believed, including reading, writing, ciphering, and training in domestic skills would equip these children with “habits of industry.” After several years in school they were bound out to work for local families and at the age of sixteen, able to take care of themselves, they went out on their own. On the surface, there is nothing unusual about this little school or the activities of the women who ran it. Like organizations existed in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Charleston, and the history of women’s benevolent work is well studied.(3)

A Brief Account of the Female Humane Association Charity School of the City of Baltimore, 1803, Warner and Hanna,p.20, MdHS.

The striking difference in the Female Humane Association Charity School is that Catholic women served as managers from its founding in 1799 through at least 1834. Their names appear on each report, consistently two or three of the total nine chosen to oversee the activities and business of the school. Anne Tiernan was not among the founders, but the first Catholic members were Harriet Ghequierre, wife of German-born merchant Charles Ghequierre, and Mrs. S. W. Williamson (about whom little is known). The Catholic presence is solidified in the language of the first report, articulated in an organizational imperative that does not use the words Roman Catholic yet protects denominational representation:

“The Trustees and Directors of the School are not nor ever have been selected from any society of Christians in preference to another, but an equal number impartially taken from each society that discovered a wish to favour the scheme. This conduct became essential to the prosperity of the institution, claiming as it did the whole brotherhood of Christians for their patrons and supporters.”(4)

Use of the term “the whole brotherhood of Christians” in such an inclusive fashion is unusual in reports of these organizations. Generally, groups referred to themselves as including “all denominations” or even all Christians, but actually meaning only white Protestants. Catholics could donate to the group if they wished, but were not chosen as officers.(5)

So why did this anomaly occur in the organization of a women’s benevolent group in Baltimore? The answer surfaces in 1801, the year the women turned legal control of the FHACS over to a group of male trustees. Archbishop John Carroll’s name appears on the articles of incorporation and on the 1803 trustee list as president of the board. Carroll, as head of the new nation’s first archdiocese had created and fostered a broad-reaching ecumenism and cooperation with the city’s other religious denominations, among them the “English Protestants” and the “German Protestants.” Carroll’s “Maryland” Catholics, heirs of the Calvert legacy of religious toleration, philosophically embraced those principles of religious freedom and ecumenism and moved fluidly among the Protestant upper class and the city’s few established and wealthy Jewish families. Baltimore’s “American” Catholics had more in common with their Protestant counterparts than with their coreligionists across the Atlantic and some, such as the Tiernans, Ghequierres, and Williamsons with the FHA charity school supported the archbishop’s philosophy of practicing a “warm” charity.(6)

Catholic influence in the FHACS did not reside solely at the top of the organization. Among the earliest directives was the statement that in order to “prove their entire impartiality on the score of religious distinctions,” they had included an appendix in which appeared the names of the “scholars,” their religion, to whom they had been bound, and the religion of the family for whom they worked. The women’s commitment to pan-denominational work is clear in the following resolution:

“That it be recommended to the Directors that in all cases where the children are dismissed from said school, capacitated to maintain themselves, that in all such cases where it can conveniently be done, they bind them to persons of the same religious persuasion of the children; provided it be consistent with the will of the parents or guardian of such children.”(7)

A Brief Account of the Female Humane Association Charity School of the City of Baltimore, 1803, Warner and Hanna, p.15, MdHS.

The 1803 report details enrollments from June 23, 1800, when the school opened, through November 1801. Of the total twenty-five children who had been bound out for service, the managers identified eight Catholics, three of whom had been placed in Catholic homes. Twenty-seven girls remained at school, more than one third of them Catholic.(8) The issue of worship requirements for those girls still in school was more ambiguous and in practice more of a guideline that a rule. Students were “compelled to attend public worship on the Sabbath, when practicable, at such places as the parents or guardian shall think proper,” indicating that when the children went home on Sunday that responsibility fell to the caregiver, be that person a parent or a guardian.(9)

This 1803 account of the FHACS’s activities is the only one that included specific information on the children, undoubtedly part of a fundraising strategy by which the leaders, both male and female, could demonstrate their good and worthy work and their careful stewardship of the children and resources in their care. Their demonstrated success prompted the appeal for a “proper school house.” Since their founding they had worked in a house in Tripolette Alley where Mrs. Margaret Harrod, the only paid employee of the school, cared for and educated the children.

Four years passed before the women of the FHACS published another account of their activities and this 1807 document is the first in which Anne Owen Tiernan is listed. When she became involved with the school is unknown, but from this point forward she served as a manager and later as president, in 1819 and in 1824. As of this writing, Tiernan is the only known Catholic president of the charity school. As stated earlier, Anne Owen had married Luke Tiernan in 1793 and the couple moved their family from Hagerstown in Western Maryland to Baltimore by 1795. Luke, son of an Irish immigrant and already wealthy, quickly established himself as an influential and respected citizen in the port city. He was among the first to negotiate trading agreements with Liverpool merchants, one of the original seven men elected to the Cathedral vestry, a generous donor to the building fund, contributing $1,300 in a campaign where the average donation was $500, and a Cathedral pew holder. Although the Tiernans had moved to Baltimore several years prior to the founding of the Female Humane Association, their names are not on the 1803 donor list.(10)

Luke Tiernan.
Portrait from Charles B. Tiernan, The Tiernan Family in Maryland, as Illustrated by Extracts from Works in the Public Libraries, and Original Letters and Memoranda in the Possession of Charles B. Tiernan (Baltimore: Gallery & McCann, 1898).

Other known Catholics listed in the 1807 report included Harriett Ghequierre and Mrs. S. M. Williamson who had worked with the group since its founding. The FHACS that Tiernan joined operated in the new building for which the women had solicited funds in 1803. Several four-digit bequests and yearly collections in city churches had filled their coffers beyond expectation. This more spacious school, located on Calvert Street south of the court house accommodated twenty-seven children, four of whom were boarders.(11)

This development in the care of the children also indicates the beginning of the facility’s transition to an orphanage. And it was this adjustment to their mission that prompted the appeal for additional funds to support more boarders, many who went home at night to “needy, dissolute mothers.” In addition to boarding these girls, the school also accepted girls placed by the Orphan’s Court—another reason to increase the number of live-in students. Later the same year, by an act of the legislature, the trustees and managers changed the institution’s name to the Orphaline Charity School of Baltimore.(12)

Twelve years passed before they published their third formal report and the intervening times had been turbulent for Baltimore and the new nation. The War of 1812, escalating growth and rising rates of immigration tapped the resources of municipal infrastructures and private coffers. The 1819 account, written during a panic year and one in which a Yellow Fever epidemic struck Baltimore, reflected the economic downturn. The women reported that with additional support, they could place “double” the number of girls in comfortable homes. “Most persons who wish for female assistants in their families prefer receiving them from an institution where they have been properly instructed for four or five years.” The number of boarding students had risen, among them one who “is the daughter of a man who fell in defense of the city.” Including this reference was obviously designed to appeal to donors’ patriotic impulses. Unchanged, however, is the directive that those bound out should go to “persons of the same religious persuasion.”(13)        

The number of Catholic managers remained high, however, in 1819, with three identified members once again among the nine who cared for the school and its children. In that group, Anne Tiernan served as president. It is unclear when she gained the position or if she held it continuously, but a Catholic president of a predominantly Protestant women’s group is significant. Also managing the school were her sister-in-law Agnes Owen, wife of her brother Kennedy, and Elizabeth Mary Lucas, wife of prominent Catholic book seller and publisher Fielding Lucas Jr., also a Cathedral pew holder. Harriett Ghequierre’s name is not on the list, nor did she make a donation to the school. Her withdrawal from the charity school may have been connected to changes in the leadership of the archdiocese of Baltimore.(14)

Carroll died in 1815 and the archbishop’s position went to James Neale. Neale, also a Marylander and descendant of a colonial family, brought changes to the position, but his death less than two years later brought a different-type of man to the job. French-born Ambrose Maréchal became the first non-Maryland archbishop of Baltimore. There is nothing in the records of the St. Mary’s Seminary archives specifically related to the FHASC, but it is interesting to note that in February 1818, less than one year after he accepted the position, Maréchal and Reverend Enoch Fenwick (also of the Cathedral parish) met with the ladies of the congregation, including Anne Tiernan, and organized the St. Mary’s Orphaline Female School.(15)

That same year, they created “a school for the maintenance and education of poor orphaned and other destitute female children and for instructing them in the Christian religion.” The school, Maréchal said, was for poor Catholic female children but any children of other denominations “willing to submit to the rules would be received.” The archbishop’s directive for instruction in the “Christian” religion strongly suggests that he believed there should be a Catholic school for girls that included instruction in the ancient faith. The role of religious instruction within the walls of the FHACS is not enumerated in any of the reports. The managers created a Christian environment and situated their responsibilities within a framework of civic republicanism from which they would train their girls as independent and useful citizens of the new nation and where they (unlike their parent/s) would not be “a charge on society.”(16)

The organizational structure of the St Mary’s Orphaline Female School (St. Mary’s) mirrored that of the charity school, nine male trustees and nine lady managers, but they implemented a different curriculum than the charity school, one that emphasized morality, religious instruction, and needlework skills. The children received “common education, including sewing, marking, knitting, prayers, catechism, and would be impressed with a very great regard for the truth, modesty in behavior and dress, and a profound respect for religion.” The woman leading the St. Mary’s school and overseeing its work was none other than Anne Owen Tiernan, who served as president during the same years she held the office for the charity school.(17)

As a wealthy member of the Cathedral congregation, wife of a vestryman, and one for whom Carroll had performed her children’s marriage ceremonies, Tiernan most certainly had audience with and influence on Maréchal and the mission and structure of the Catholic school. The fact that she continued to serve the charity school indicates her commitment to its mission and reflects, in this one woman’s work, the epitome of the Carroll legacy.

By the mid-1820s, the trustees and managers of the overcrowded charity school had built a larger facility, this one on Mulberry near Cathedral Street. Their staff had expanded to include the matron and a teacher and two of the twenty-three children in residence, “bound to us for household purposes.” On matters of religious policy, they continued to select girls “of every sect.”(18) Another nine years passed before the mangers of the charity school published another appeal for funds, this one for an addition to the building. The institution no longer bore the name of the Orphaline School but now operated as the Baltimore Female Orphan Asylum, its primary mission housing and educating girls without homes. Anne Tiernan still served as a manager but was no longer president and Elizabeth Mary Lucas remained as well.  A small note in the history of the St. Mary’s Female Asylum states that in January 1837 all of the Catholic children at the “General Asylum on Mulberry Street” were removed to Catholic Orphanage.(19) Anne Owen Tiernan died in 1841, in her sixty-sixth year and it is unclear as to whether she stayed with the Baltimore Orphan Asylum after the Catholic children were transferred to St. Mary’s.

These changes in the religious compositions of children at the Baltimore female orphanages and in other cities such as Boston reflected the larger issues of the 1830s. Nativist tensions simmered and burst into violence as increasing numbers of immigrants entered the country. Many settled in the port cities along the east coast in search of work on the railroads, canals, and transportation routes and their presence brought an increasing distrust of Catholics whose first allegiance appeared to be to Rome. These “new” Catholics bore no resemblance to those of the older generation and that remarkable Carroll “moment” in Baltimore’s history, when Catholic and Protestant women worked together for the benefit of the city’s impoverished girls had passed. (Patricia Dockman Anderson)

Dr. Patricia Dockman Anderson specializes in U.S and Maryland History, Nineteenth Century; Social and Cultural History; Catholic History; and Civil War Civilians. She has served as a member of the History Advisory Council for the Women’s Industrial Exchange, the Baltimore History Writers Group, and the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission. Dr. Anderson is the Director of Publications and Library Services for the Maryland Historical Society, editor of the Maryland Historical Magazine, and a professor at Towson University.

Footnotes:

Reese in the garden of Nancy’s Fancy, her friend Emily Spencer Hayden’s home in Waverly. Emily Spencer Hayden Collection, PP92.132, MdHS.

Lizette Woodworth Reese was one of the most beloved poets to live and write in Baltimore. Her crisp but lyrical poems captured the beauty of the city and her beloved Waverly neighborhood. Her work was deep and insightful but never overwrought or overly sentimental. It frequently drew comparison to the simple but elegant work of Emily Dickinson. She adored Maryland in springtime, and her anthologies are dominated by imagery of the countryside just outside the city coming into bloom.

Reese and her twin sister, Sophia, were born on January 9, 1856 to Louisa Gabler and David Reese in Waverly (then Huntingdon), which at the time stood on the outskirts of Baltimore. Huntington was still pastoral and open with lovely homes dotting the landscape. Reese and her family lived in a cottage that had beautiful gardens and apple trees. Reese’s childhood was a relatively happy and privileged one. She and her siblings were educated primarily in Baltimore’s public schools; Reese graduated from Western High School, where she later returned to teach English.

Her personality and poetry reflected traits of both her parents, who were very much opposites. Her father, David, was frequently away from the family for long stretches. He traveled far and wide, once roaming as far as Chile. He served in the Confederate army and worked as a builder. During these times, Reese and her family would often temporarily move in with her grandparents in their Huntington house. She, in her memoir, A Victorian Village, described her father as a quiet but caring man. In her words, he had “a kind of secret nobility, which resulted in his doing generous deeds that no one except by accident ever found out. For instance, he was always giving money—lending, he gently called it—to men worse off than himself, or hunting up jobs for some dilapidated cart-driver, or cellar-digger, or carrier of hods with whom he had a stray acquaintance.”(1) His gruff exterior sometimes led to disagreements with neighbors, but he was softer with his children. Reese took this same approach to teaching. She was always gentle but firm with her students.

Her mother, Louisa, on the other hand, was a more vivacious person. She loved the spring and passed that affection along to her daughter. Reese wrote of her mother, “There was always the twist and turn of spring weather about her, expectancy, eagerness, an airy moodiness; she moved in a mist of adventure.”(2) The hardships of losing children and fighting poverty did not destroy her spirit: “And some of these experiences would have trampled down to the clods a more trivial, less opulent creature. But her gayety survived, being bone of her bone and nothing else.”(3) Reese’s poetry often conveys similar sentiments. The subjects of her poems could be somber, but she could always tease out the beauty from them.

A portrait of Reese in usual uniform by Emily Spencer Hayden. Emily Spencer Hayden Collection, PP92.138, MdHS.

After completing high school, Reese remained in Waverly and began teaching at St. John’s Parish School in 1873, a school she had attended as a child. She spent two years working with the young children of the parish. Reese later reflected that she knew her inexperience would hinder her first years as a teacher, but her enthusiasm made up for it: “I was seventeen years of age, my frocks just lengthened, my blonde hair just put up, raw, eager, dreamy, fond of young people, and with the gift of authority. The last two were my chief and best assets, for, of the theory of teaching, or whether there were any, or the necessity of such a thing, I knew nothing at all.”(4) The following year, Southern Magazine published her poem “The Deserted House.” The poem was inspired by an empty looking house in her neighborhood on York Road that she would pass on her way to and from work. She continued to publish sporadically in various magazines until 1887, when she self-published her first anthology of poems, A Branch of May.

Reese’s poetry gained her acclaim, but it took a backseat to teaching. Her next book of poems would not be published until 1891. She truly enjoyed teaching. She left St. John’s to work at the Number Three School, a German-English school originally located on Trinity Street in Baltimore. The atmosphere there she found to be completely different. At St. John’s, Reese knew the students and their families. She had grown up with them, but her new school was a melting pot of cultures. During her tenure, the school moved to East Baltimore Street and the German component was dropped from the curriculum as the neighborhood changed. Immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia, many very poor, moved to Baltimore, and blended with the German-American families. This was not always an easy transition, but Reese had the fortitude to tackle the cultural divide. One of her students, a boy named Schneider, Baltimore born and raised, took to tormenting one of the freshly immigrated boys, Salzberg. Schneider would beat up Salzberg on the way out to the playground, kicking him on his way down the stairs. When Salzberg confided in Reese, she got the two boys together and suggested to Salzberg to allow Schneider to kick him. She then advised Salzberg to retaliate with a swift punch and that she would defend his actions to the principal or any other teachers. Her plan worked: “Schneider looked at Salzberg; he looked at me; and again at Salzberg. That was the end of the matter.”(5)

St. John’s Episcopal Chuch, where Reese began her teaching career. Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, MC9601-9, MdHS.

In 1897 Reese took a position teaching English literature at the city high school on Saratoga Street. The school was exclusively for African-American students. Reese taught at the school for four years and was continually surprised by the hardships her students faced. She recognized that their families often scraped by to keep their children in school, and appreciated the efforts that her own students put in to stay enrolled: girls took on seamstress work, boys worked as watchmen. In 1901, Reese was forced to leave the school after the city decided white teachers should no longer teach in black schools. She was transferred to her alma mater, Western High School, where she taught English literature and composition until her retirement in 1921.

At Western, she was well liked by the staff and students. Her students found her to be strict but fair. One of her pupils, Jan Mann, remembered her as “a good teacher. She had some humanity in her.”(6) Reese connected with her students, but they, including Mann, were amused by her peculiar dress. Her daily uniform consisted of prim and modest dark dresses with little to no adornment, and she always wore her hair pinned atop her head. Mann commented that, “she looked like something out of Dickens.”(7) Despite her basic dress, Reese was noted for her love of fashion and had strong opinions on the matter. She once suggested to her friend Emily Spencer Hayden’s daughter, Nan, that she purchase her mother a new hat, because Reese was tired of the “coal scuttle” that Emily always wore to their lunches together.(8) Reese had one fashionable indulgence: she regularly wore a dotted net veil with her hat even though it tended to tangle with her eyeglasses.

Reese’s alma mater and where she taught for 20 years., Western High School. Baltimore City Buildings Collection, PP236.1431A, MdHS.

During her time as a teacher, Reese continued to publish new work at irregular intervals. After publishing A Branch of May in 1887, she submitted individual pieces to various magazines, and in 1891, she released a book, A Handful of Lavender. This book expanded upon A Branch of May, including original poems and some new works, but this time around, Houghton Mifflin Company produced the volume and her 1896 follow-up A Quiet Road.

The years of 1896 to 1909 were quiet ones for Reese. She wrote infrequently, because, “[she] had nothing to say, except at long intervals, and therefore did not try to say it.”(9) She found writing to be a tremendously labored and difficult process. She carefully weighed every word and phrase in her works: “My thought was quick, the picture in my mind clear, but the expression slow in coming; it was always a hard process to make my words as vital and as distinct as my thoughts and my pictures were.”(10) This even carried over into her work as a teacher where writing reports filled her with dread, because, “I knew it would take me a day to do the work for which my comrades took only an hour or two.”(11)

Despite her struggles, her best known sonnet, “Tears,” came out of this period, which was published in Scribner’s Magazine in November, 1899. Her work garnered her high praise and was complimented by Baltimore’s tastemakers. H. L. Mencken pronounced her work “one of the imperishable glories of American literature” and was an ardent supporter throughout her career.(12) She was often surprised by the accolades she received. When positive reviews came in, she would “run with the notices to my mother, and read them aloud to her, and her cool acceptance of them did much to keep me from growing heady.”(13) Reese published fifteen volumes of her work in total, including two memoirs and one novel. In 1931 she was named poet laureate of Maryland by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.

“The Good Shepherd,” memorial to Lizette Woodworth Reese by Grace Turnbull on 33rd Street in Baltimore. (Not MdHS collection via MonumentCity.net)

Reese was also active in the city’s literary and arts scene. A quiet person by nature, the small, somewhat frail woman could cut an imposing figure,  when she wanted to. She captivated her audiences with her witty banter delivered “with a touch of staccato in her voice and sometimes a lively lisping lilt.”(14) She was honorary president of the Poetry Society of Maryland and was a co-founder of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore. She also called several of the city’s artists as friends. She spent considerable time with amateur photographer and fellow Western High School alumna and Waverly neighbor, Emily Spencer Hayden. Reese enjoyed passing her time in Hayden’s orchard at her home, Nancy’s Fancy, while Hayden documented their time together on film. Another such friend was sculptor Grace Turnbull, who was commissioned after Reese’s death to create a monument to her work. The hand-sculpted marble statue, entitled “The Good Shepherd,” stands on 33^rd Street. It depicts a shepherd tending to his flock referencing the shepherd metaphor often seen in her poems, as well as her role as a teacher. The statue also includes the inscription of her best known work, “Tears.”

Reese never gained international fame, but the town she loved does keep her memory alive. When she passed away in 1935, she was widely mourned in Waverly and Maryland at large. Her friends and admirers made great efforts to properly eulogize the woman whose life had impacted so many others. Along with the Turnbull sculpture, traces of Reese can be seen around the city. A memorial foundation donated a brass plague cast by Beatrice Fenton to the Enoch Pratt Free Library in 1944. It hangs in the central branch on the second floor. A tablet bearing the words of “Tears” was also placed by the main office of the new Western High School to honor her commitment to the school. Reese is buried at the St. John’s Episcopal Church in her beloved Waverly. (Lara Westwood)

The memorial plague by Beatrice Fenton which hangs in the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Subject Vertical File, MdHS.

“Tears” by Lizette Woodworth Reese from A Wayside Lute

When I consider Life and its few years—

A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;

A call to battle, and the battle done

Ere the last echo dies within our ears;

A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;

The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;

The burst of music down an unlistening street—

I wonder at the idleness of tears.

Ye old, old dead and ye of yesternight,

Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,

By every cup of sorrow that you had,

Loose me from tears, and make me aright

How each hath back what once he stayed to weep;

Homer his sight, David his little lad!

“April Weather” by Lizette Woodworth Reese

from A Handful of Lavender

Oh, hush, my heart, and take thine ease,

For here is April weather!

The daffodils beneath the trees

Are all a-row together.

The thrush is back with his old note;

The scarlet tulip is blowing;

And white – ay, white as my love’s throat –

The dogwood boughs are growing.

The lilac bush is sweet again;

Down every wind that passes,

Fly flakes from hedgerow and from lane;

The bees are in the grasses.

A Grief goes out, and Joy comes in,

And Care us but a feather;

And every lad his love can win,

For here is April weather.

Sources and Further Reading:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (9) (10) (11) (13): Reese, Lizette Woodworth. A Victorian Village, Reminiscences of Other Days. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1929.

(6) (7) Mann, Janet, OH 8258

(8) Agle, Nan. “I Remember…Lizette Woodworth Reese as a House Guest.” The Baltimore Sun, April 18, 1976.

(12) Kinsolving, Arthur B. “Great Poets and God: Lizette Woodworth Reese.” In The Lizette Woodworth Reese Memorial Association, City of Baltimore, State of Maryland, Inc.: Lizette Woodworth Reese, 1856-1935. Baltimore: Reese Association, 1939.

(14) Robinson, David M. “Address: Lizette Woodworth Reese, the Poet.” In Lizette Woodworth Reese, 1856-1935: A Tribute. Baltimore: Enoch Pratt Free Library, 1944.

Bain, Robert, and William Osbourne. “Lizette Woodworth Reese.” In Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. “The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project.” Lizette Woodworth Reese.

Bissell, Brooke. “The Enigma of Lizette Reese.” The Baltimore Sun, January 9, 1955.

“David Reese.” The Baltimore Sun, July 5, 1899.

Enoch Pratt Free Library. Lizette Woodworth Reese Collection.

James, Edward T. “Lizette Woodworth Reese.” In Notable American Women, 1607-1950; a Biographical Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Reese, Lizette Woodworth. A Handful of Lavender. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891.

Reese, Lizette Woodworth, and Richard Bennett. The York Road. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.

Reese, Lizette Woodworth, and Thomas Bird Mosher. A Wayside Lute. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher, 1909.

Shivers, Frank R. “‘Shallow, Kittenish Fellows’ and Other Traditionalists” In Maryland Wits & Baltimore Bards: A Literary History with Notes on Washington Writers. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Food inspector John F. Earnshaw inspecting oyster shucking operation, Baltimore, Maryland, c. 1914-1915. Arthur J. Olmstead Collection, PP133-5, MdHS.

As a Wing Fellow in Chesapeake Bay Maritime History at the Maryland Historical Society, I have spent the last year unearthing primary sources about the history and culture of women’s work and labor in the Chesapeake Bay area. My work focuses primarily on the crabbing and oystering communities of the lower Bay around Crisfield, Smith Island, and Deal Island. I began my research not really knowing where to start, as there is an abundance of information and books written about the Chesapeake Bay. However, early on in my research I became very interested in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to track changes in geographic landscapes. I was happily surprised to discover that the MdHS’s archives had a set of large maps specifically of the lower Bay area, and that these maps spanned a significant portion of the 20^th century.

The three maps that I found were a topography map of Somerset County from 1906, a hand-illustrated fishing map from 1959, and a general highway map from 1965. I also added a current Google satellite map of the area for present-day reference. Using these four maps, I did basic comparisons in location, shorelines, marsh grasses, and geographic reference points in order to see how the lower Bay has changed throughout the 20^th and 21^st century.

The Chesapeake Bay is flanked by a peninsula on its east shore known as “Delmarva” comprising the three states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Towards the southern portion of Delmarva, at the Virginia/Maryland border, resides the Tangier sound. This smaller body of water in the Bay extends from the state border to the south, Smith Island to the West, Bloodsworth and Hoopers Island to the North, Deal Island at its northeast corner, and Crisfield on its Eastern bank. This particular area is at the forefront of many of the central issues that plague the Bay in terms of cultural and environmental sustainability.

Once known as “the seafood capital of the world” Crisfield is now a sleepy crabbing town that is also the central docking point for ferries taking tourists and residents to the islands of Smith and Tangier. Crisfield was once the main area where commercial fishermen, (known as watermen), took their catches to be picked, packed, and shipped all over the country. The town had crab-picking factories lining its shores, and also was the home to many watermen families.

Crab Fishing, Crisfield, Maryland, c. 1953. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine. B990-1A, MdHS.

Smith Island, known as “the jewel of the Chesapeake” has been the focus of many different literary and historical studies of the Bay. This island contains three small towns – Ewell, Rhodes, and Tylerton – and is only accessible by ferry. The location of Tom Horner’s novel An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake is often seen as the quintessential non-fiction novel about this island, as it details the life of watermen and the environmental and cultural issues that they face.

Deal Island to the north, is also a watermen’s community, with the towns of Dames Quarter, Chance, and Wenona still predominantly subsisting on fishing. This island is also home to the skipjack fleet – large wooden boats that once were the main working model on the Bay for oystering and crabbing. Every year in Chance, the community hosts the annual skipjack race during Labor Day weekend.

Oyster tongers, James River. October 8, 1953. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine. B997-3, MdHS.

All three of these areas now cater to tourists in varying degrees – bed-and-breakfasts can be found in any of these locations, along with opportunities for charter fishing. However, these communities have also gone through drastic changes as the rise in water level has eviscerated miles of their beach shores, and environmental degradation has caused catastrophic loss in catch rates.

By looking at a small body of water in the Bay such as the Tangier Sound, one can get an idea on some of the many multi-faceted histories that this area contains. The issues of the Bay can actually vary greatly depending on which part of the Bay is being discussed, but by focusing on one particular section, some of the complexity and variety of issues that need to be addressed can be understood.

Shucking Oysters, Baltimore, MD. Date and photographer unknown. Z24.1344, MdHS.

Beginning to the north, Bloodsworth Island lies in the western corner of Tangier Sound. For much of the 20^th century, it was used as a naval gunnery range, including the detonation of live bombs. For this reason, Bloodsworth Island is off limits because of its extensive contamination of unexploded ordinance. Many watermen point to this as another source of contamination and pollution of the Bay, as these weapons rust and corrode in the water. When looking at the current Google satellite maps in comparison to the 1906 maps, one can see the corrosion of the banks and the disappearance of its smaller islands to its southwest.

Deal Island has also faced geographic change throughout the 20^th century.  Looking at the four maps, the change in Little Deal Island to the south is apparent, and today it is actually completely uninhabitable because it is below sea level. Perhaps the most drastic difference can be seen at the border between Deal Island and the mainland that is Dames Quarter. Looking at the 1906 map, it appears as a river to the north that becomes a larger harbor inlet. However, throughout the course of the 20^th century, one can see the transformation where the water level rises at the northern shore and starts to submerge the north east coast of Deal Island. The change in its beach shore can be observed daily. What was once a beach that extended two miles out, and was the site of a hotel and paddle boat business in the early 20^th century is now completely underwater. One can see remnants of the beach at low tide every day. By high tide, the beach is gone.

Detail of Map of Somerset County showing the Topography and Election Districts, 1906. MdHS.

To the southwest corner of Tangier Sound, Smith Island has changed dramatically because of rising water levels. Here the maps show drastic differences, as smaller inlet islands disappear, and the internal rivers of the set of islands start to grow wider and consume more land. Smith Island homes are also being bought by vacationers, and the towns that once were watermen communities are changing to sleepy vacation towns. Many residents of Smith Island have moved away or passed away, as opportunities for the younger generation are slim, because of the decline of the fishing industry.

However Smith Islanders still maintain their independence and connection to the island. In 2013, after Hurricane Sandy, the government offered Smith Island residents a buyout, which the islanders flatly refused, citing that what they needed was to work with the government in figuring out a solution, not to be pushed out.

In 100 years, the next map of Tangier Sound will look very different. These communities and islands are struggling, and they comprise the unique geography and cultural landscape of Tangier Sound. Local watermen communities continue to work and keep their heritage alive. Government and non-profit organizations also continue to try and find solutions to the depletion in crab populations and changes in geographic landscapes. Through cooperation and communication, the next map of Tangier Sound will hopefully reflect the efforts of local communities, government and non-profit agencies. (Paulina Guerrero)

Paulina Guerrero is a PhD candidate in Folklore from Indiana University. She studies the intersection between environmental issues and cultural sustainability in the lower Chesapeake Bay area of Tangier Sound. Her interests are also in women’s work and the unearthing of women’s history through primary sources.

Maryland Oyster Tonger Tilghmans. November 1946. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine. B2044, MdHS.