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The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography

Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of the Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Middleton, Authur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of the Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Newport News, VA: Mariners Museum, 1953.

Sarudy, Barbara Wells. "Eighteenth-Century Gardens of the Chesapeake." A special issue of the Journal of Garden History: An International Quarterly 9 (July-Sept. 1989): 103-59.

Walsh, Lorena S. "Land, Landlord, and Leaseholder: Estate Management and Tenant Fortunes in Southern Maryland, 1642-1820." Agricultural History 59 (July 1985): 373-396.
Notes: Based on the astonishing records of a Jesuit-owned estate in Charles County that lasted for 175 years, Walsh examined 233 tenants, and the effect of their short term vs. long term leases on resource waste or conservation. The story explains how owners used leasing as a means for plantation development and as an alternative to slave labor.

Byron, Gilbert. Gilbert Byron's Chesapeake Seasons: A Cove Journal. Wye Mills, MD: Chesapeake College Press, 1987.
Notes: Poet and chronicler Gilbert Byron's columns were a popular feature in several Eastern Shore newspapers. This collection of observations and reminiscences culled from his newspaper writings are both biographical and lyrical in quality. Byron captures both an appreciation for a nostalgic past and an awareness of the social and economic changes occurring on his beloved shore.

Charbeneau, Jim. Shouts and Whispers: Stories from the Southern Chesapeake Bay. White Stone, VA: Brandylane Publishers, 1997.

Clague, Cristin D. "The Calverts: Migration in History." Calvert Historian 13 (Fall 1998): 19-24.

Foster, James W., and Susan R. Falk. George Calvert: The Early Years. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1983.

Hoffman, Ronald. Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500 - 1782. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press/Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, 2000.
Notes: Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Maryland's Charles Carroll of Carrollton was conspicuously different from most of his colleagues. Fabulously wealthy and Roman Catholic, Carroll was very aware of his family's origins as traditional leaders in their former Irish homeland. Ronald Hoffman skillfully recounts the story of this family's successful struggle to maintain its status in the face of official religious intolerance. In surveying the path that led from Ely O'Carroll in Ireland to the shores of the Chesapeake, Hoffman helps explain why a very conservative family would embrace the cause of revolution.

Kester, John G. "Charles Polke: Indian Trader of the Potomac." Maryland Historical Magazine 90 (Winter 1995): 446-65.

Parker, Willie J. Game Warden: Chesapeake Assignment. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1983.

Turner, William H. Chesapeake Boyhood: Memoirs of a Farm Boy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Zseleczky, James Waters. "Anne Mynne of Hertingfordbury, Wife of George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore (1579-1622)." Chronicles of St. Mary's 22 (September 1974): 397-99.

Abingbade, Harrison Ola. "The Settler-African Conflicts: The Case of the Maryland Colonists and the Grebo 1840-1900." Journal of Negro History 66 (Summer 1981): 93-109.

Alpert, Jonathan L. "The Origin of Slavery in the United States: The Maryland Precedent." American Journal of Legal History 14 (1970): 189-222.
Notes: Maryland was the "first province in English North America to recognize slavery as a matter of law" (189). Therefore, the study of Maryland is useful for historians studying how American slavery was a product of the law. Early legislation recognized the existence of slavery, for while indentured servitude and slavery co-existed, and the terms were used interchangeably, the law still distinguished between the two. "All slaves were servants but not all servants were slaves" (193). However, it wasn't until 1664 when a statue was created which established slavery as hereditary. This statute was the first law in English North American to thus establish this type of slavery, legalizing what had been de facto since 1639. The author concludes that laws reflect the attitudes of a society and the manner in which societal problems are resolved. In the case of Maryland, servant problems could be avoided by replacing indentured servitude with perpetual slavery.

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Cornelison, Alice, Silas E. Craft, Sr., and Lillie Price. History of Blacks in Howard County, Maryland: Oral History, Schooling and Contemporary Issues. Columbia, MD: Howard County, Maryland NAACP, 1986.

Craven, Wesley Frank. White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth-Century Virginian. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1971.
Notes: Remains the standard multi-cultural work for the 17th century.

David, Jonathan. "The Sermon and the Shout: A History of the Singing and Praying Bands of Maryland and Delaware." Southern Folklore Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1994): 241-63.

Eltis, David, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Fields, Barbara Jeanne. Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
Notes: The author explores how free populations in Maryland - both black and white - challenged the notion of a slave society. The free black population, very much interconnected with the slave population in terms of kinship ties, also provided a threat to the underpinnings of the system. Once freedom arrived, social relationships also had to be redefined. The author writes that "free blacks did not occupy a unique or legitimate place within Maryland society, but instead formed an anomalous adjunct to the slave population" (3). By 1840, free blacks in Maryland composed 41% of the total black population of the state, or the largest free black population of any state in the nation.

Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware: From the Colonial Period to 1810. Baltimore: Clearfield, 2000.

Johansen, Mary Carroll. "'Intelligence, Though Overlooked:' Education for Black Women in the Upper South, 1800-1840." Maryland Historical Magazine 93 (Winter 1998): 443-65.
Notes: Black and white educators established forty-six schools for free black children in the early nineteenth century. These educators supported education for black women believing that women transmitted knowledge and morals, thus shaping a generation of virtuous citizens. In addition, educators looked to education as a means by which to form self-sufficient and industrious free black communities.

Jordan, Winthrop. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.

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