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The Dream of the ‘90s is Alive: Pre-processing the Joseph Kohl Collection
This post originally appeared on December 12, 2013. Whatever you do, don’t mistake the title of this post as a diss. Kevin Keelty of Monkeyspank, date unknown. PP284, MdHS. REFERENCE PHOTO The...
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Happy Halloween
Happy Halloween from the Underbelly staff! Enjoy these scary photos from the bowels of the Maryland Historical Society’s archives. Halloween at the White House in 1971. President Nixon is in the dog...
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Green Mount Cemetery, John Pendleton Kennedy, and Elizabeth Kennedy’s Unusual...
Green Mount Cemetery, dedicated in 1839, is a paradigm of the rural cemetery movement which transformed American burial practice. Like other mid nineteenth-century reform efforts such as temperance,...
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The Case of Kevin Archer
In 1986 Anti-Apartheid demonstrations spread across the nation’s college and university campuses. Shantytown protests sprang up at Dartmouth, Georgetown, George Washington, Johns Hopkins (JHU), Penn...
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The Rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore and the...
In December 1845, Reverend Darius Stokes and congregants of Bethel A.M.E. gave Robert Jefferson Breckenridge, a Presbyterian minister, a gold snuff box for his work to prevent legislation that would...
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Frederick Douglass: Significant Moments in His Life in Maryland in His Words
Frederick Douglass.Frontispiece from “Life an Times of Frederick Douglass,” 1884. Two hundred years ago this month, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born at Holmes Hill Farm in Talbot County,...
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Miss Szold: A Jewish Idealist in the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore
Henrietta Szold in 1940. (Credit: National Library of Israel, Schwadron Collection) This summer, under the direction of Loyola University Maryland English Professor Jean Lee Cole, I was part of a group...
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Through the Lens: Early Photography and the Cased Photograph Collection at...
Henry H. Clark took a series of daguerreotypes of Baltimore scenes. These are the earliest known photographs of the city. View of Baltimore, ca. 1845-1850, Henry H. Clark, Baltimore City Life Museum...
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Leonora Jackson: “A Name that Will Live in Musical History”
Leonora Jackson, ca 1900, PP306.023, MdHS (reference photo) Although largely forgotten today, violinist Leonora Jackson was among a group of pioneering female classical musicians who broke down a...
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Curtis W. Jacobs’ Diary and Account Book, 1854–1866
Shortly past noon today, April 19, 2018, the niggling “we are forgetting something” hovering on the edges of our brains suddenly took shape. It is 157 years since Union troops on their way to...
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“This curious Art”: Shorthand record of George Washington’s First Inaugural...
Extract from President Washington’s speech to the First Congress, April 30, 1789, p1, MS 1236, MdHS (reference photo) (CLICK TO ENLARGE) “This curious Art will teach you to take down, the great Affairs...
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The History of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library
A view of the library which was housed in the Keyser building. Library Reading Room Facing East, n.d., Subject Vertical File, MdHS. 1844 – Alarmed by the disgraceful condition of the state’s historical...
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Cathy McDermott: A Remembrance
Cathy McDermott, July 4, 2016 Last July 14, longtime MdHS volunteer and member of the library committee Cathy M. McDermott passed away. On April 14, 2018 the Special Collections Department was named in...
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“Happy play in grassy places:” Baltimore’s Playgrounds in Photographs, 1911-1936
Children at Patterson Park, August 1916, Harry B. Leopold, Bureau of Recreation Photograph Collection, BCLM Collection,1966.3.786, MdHS. Happy play in grassy places; That was how in ancient ages...
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Carlin’s Park: “Baltimore’s Million Dollar Playground”
Large pagoda-like structures welcomed visitors to the park. Carlin’s Park Entrance, undated, Lydia Livingston Keys, MC8813-8, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, Maryland Historical Society. On...
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Photo Mystery: A Stumped Sleuth
Baltimore, Md [?] – Houses – Unidentified House, ca 1870s-1880s, SVF, MdHS.One of the best parts about working in the Special Collections Department is trying to identify subjects in old photographs....
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Photo Mystery: The Investigation
Baltimore, Md [?] – Houses – Unidentified House, ca 1870s-1880s, SVF, MdHS.A few weeks ago, we shared a photograph of an unidentified building which had long stumped the Library staff. We are grateful...
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The Tale of John Brown’s Letter Book
John Brown’s Letter Book, 1859, MS 155, MdHS (reference photo) The Maryland Historical Society has in its collection a small, tattered letter book written in the hand of famed abolitionist John Brown....
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Scattered across the Globe and the Political Spectrum: The Tilghman Family in...
Tench Tilghman can be seen with George Washington in this Charles Willson Peale painting. George Washington and his generals at Yorktown. Oil on canvas by Charles Willson Peale, ca. 1781. 1845.3.1....
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Researching Curious Revolutionaries at MdHS
The Lord Baltimore Fellowship was a wonderful way to expand my own research on the history of fossil display in museums, and curatorial research on the Peale family for the American Philosophical...
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