The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography
Kelbaugh, Jack. "Shipley's Choice: A Community Name with Historical Significance; Part I: The Shipley Clan." Anne Arundel County History Notes 20 (January 1989): 3-5.
Categories: African American, County and Local History, Family History and Genealogy, Geography and Cartography, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century, Anne Arundel County, Carroll County, Howard County
Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Fieldbook of the War of 1812. Reprint. Somersworth, NH: New Hampshire Publishing Co., 1976.
Categories: County and Local History, War of 1812
Marks, Lillian Bayly. Reister's Desire: The Origin of Reisterstown, Maryland, Founded 1758, With a Genealogical History of the Reister Family and Sketches of Allied Families. N.p.: Published by the author, 1975.
Notes: A history of the early development of today's Reisterstown as documented primarily through land records. The largest portion of this work is dedicated to the genealogy of the Reister, and allied, families.
Categories: County and Local History, Family History and Genealogy, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Carroll County
Sheads, Scott. Fort McHenry: A History. Baltimore: Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co., 1995.
Categories: County and Local History, Military, Baltimore City, War of 1812
Williams, T .J. C. The History of Washington County, Maryland, From the Earliest Settlements of the Present Time, Including A History of Hagerstown. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Co., 1968.
Categories: County and Local History, Family History and Genealogy, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Washington County
Wood, Gregory A. Early French Presence in Maryland 1524-1800. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1977.
Categories: County and Local History, Ethnic History, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century
Ashby, Wallace L. Fossils of Calvert Cliffs. Solomons, MD: Calvert Marine Museum Press, 1979.
Categories: Archaeology, Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD, Twentieth Century, Calvert County
Bernstein, L. R. Minerals of the Washington, D.C. area. Baltimore: Maryland Geological Survey, 1980.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD, Twentieth Century
Force, Peter. Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America: From the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1776. Washington, DC: Peter Force, 1836.
Notes: At least Volumes I, and IV contain material relevant to Chesapeake Environment. Force performed a valuable service codifying and publishing these in the early nineteenth century, before some of the sources were lost. Volume IV contains Colony founder Father Andrew White's "Relation" of Maryland to Lord Baltimore, and his "Narrative of a Voyage to Virginia". In the relation of events of 1642 the text records what is plausibly, the first and only lethal shark attack in Chesapeake history. p. 37 in Force's Vol. IV.
Categories: Environment, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century
Glaser, John D. Collecting Fossils in Maryland. Baltimore: State of Maryland, Dept. of Natural Resources, Maryland Geological Survey, 1995.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD, Twentieth Century
Hariot, Thomas. Narrative of the first English plantation of Virginia. 1588; reprint London: N.p., 1893).
Hulton, Paul. America, 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Notes: These are the first "pictures" of this region, accurately depicting marine, terrestrial and avian species, and both Native Americans and sundry of their crafts. They are widely applicable to the nearby Chesapeake Indians and some drawings may directly depict Bay life because John White explored there during his stay.
Categories: Agriculture, Environment, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD
Kent, Bretton W. Fossil Sharks of the Chesapeake Bay Region. Columbia, MD: Egan, Rees and Boyer, Inc., 1994.
Notes: An excellent manual and discussion about Maryland's most popular fossil, the shark's tooth.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD
Kent, Bretton W. Making Dead Oysters Talk. 1988; rev. ed. Crownsville, MD: Maryland Historical Trust, Historic St. Mary's City Commission and Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, 1992.
Notes: Kent's analyses of oysters from archaeological sites, tell a cautionary tale of overharvest which went unheeded for three centuries.
Categories: Archaeology, Environment, Science and Technology, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century
Kiger, Robert W., Galvin D. R. Bridson, and Donna M. Connelly, eds. Huntia. Vol 7. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 1987.
Notes: In this volume contributors James Reveal, George Frick, Melvin Brown and Rose Broome lay out a remarkable history of Maryland (and the Chesapeake's) earliest botanists, their personal stories, their observations and collections, which are still preserved at the British Museum in London. This is technical material, but salted in are the remarkable human stories and insights into a Chesapeake different from today.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century
Mackiernan, Gail B., ed. Dissolved Oxygen in Chesapeake Bay: Processes and Effects. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1988.
Notes: The summer loss of dissolved oxygen in deep waters of the Bay is one indicator of the estuary's serious environmental problems. Any student of the Bay should understand this phenomenon.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD, Twentieth Century
Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast. 1953; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Notes: Middleton, subsequently a retired Episcopal Canon, for years directed work at Colonial Williamsburg. This defining volume on Chesapeake Maritime History contains valuable environmental references coupled to the region's colonial economy.
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Chesapeake Region
Poag, C. Wylie. Chesapeake Invader: Discovering America's Giant Meteorite Crater. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Notes: Poag's recent book discusses the massive bolide impact which set up the geology beneath Chesapeake Bay. While the impact was centered beneath what is today the Virginia Eastern Shore, parts of the bolide struck in Maryland as well, and affected the entire drainage system.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD
Smith, David E., Merrill Leffler, and Gail Mackiernan, eds. Oxygen Dynamics in Chesapeake Bay: A Synthesis of Recent Research. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1992.
Notes: A follow-on to Mackiernan, 1988.
Categories: Environment, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD, Twentieth Century
Smith, John. The General Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles. 1624; reprint, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966.
Notes: Facsimile, also reissued by World Publishing, Cleveland, OH. This volume is as close to reading the original as most of us will get. John Smith was the first environmental observer of Bay and watershed, and his insights are sobering when one contemplates the changes we have wrought.
Categories: Environment, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century
Vokes, Harold E. Miocene Fossils of Maryland. 1957; reprint, Baltimore: Maryland Geological Survey, 1968.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD
Ward, Lauck W., and David S. Powars. Tertiary Stratigraphy and Paleontology, Chesapeake Bay Region, Virginia and Maryland. Washington, DC: 28th International Geological Congress, American Geophysical Union, 1989.
Notes: A thorough discussion of how layers of this region's fossils lie in our exposed cliffs. Not a popularly written text, but this is how to find and identify many of the region's marvelous fossils.
Categories: Environment, Science and Technology, Before 1600 AD, Twentieth Century
Michener, James. Chesapeake. New York: Random House, Inc., 1978.
Notes: Historical novel.
Categories: Intellectual Life, Literature, and Publishing, Before 1600 AD, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century
Cassell, Frank A. Merchant Congressman in the Young Republic: Samuel Smith of Maryland. Madison: The University Press of Wisconsin, 1971.
Notes: Samuel Smith epitomizes the history of Baltimore City during the early republic. An officer during the Revolution and the commander of the forces that defended the city against the British attack in 1813, a member of an important merchant family whose economic connections helped him establish a political power base that stretched almost five decades, and sometimes brought him to the brink of economic ruin, he was a major political figure from George Washington's presidency through Andrew Jackson's. His career also reveals the elusiveness of political labels. As a Republican leader in the 1790s, he opposed the policies of the Federalists and supported those of Thomas Jefferson, but he and his brother Robert Smith had a falling out with James Madison, and by the 1830s he was courted by the more democratic Jacksonians who refused to anoint his kin as party leaders.
Categories: Biography, Autobiography, and Reminiscences, Economic, Business, and Labor History, Politics and Law, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Baltimore City, War of 1812
Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
Notes: A comprehensive examination of the political background, military operations, and diplomatic closure of "Mr. Madison's War." It may have been forgotten in other areas, but for Maryland the War of 1812 was all too real. The Royal Navy roamed the Chesapeake with impunity, occupied Tangier Island, burned Frenchtown, attacked St. Michaels and Havre de Grace, sacked the nation's capitol after defeating the militia at Bladensburg, before meeting defeat after a combined sea-land attack on Baltimore City, which was immortalized in Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner." There is also a chapter on the infamous Baltimore riot of 1812.
Categories: Military, Politics and Law, Nineteenth Century, War of 1812