The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography
"Charles County, Maryland: The Best Kept Secret This Side of the Potomac." Maryland 26 (July/August 1994): 34-35.
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Maritime, Twentieth Century, Charles County
"Charles County, MD..It's Wild and Waterful." Maryland 27 (July/August 1995): [25-35].
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Maritime, Twentieth Century, Charles County
Compton, Amy. "Ferreting Out History in Charles County: A Mini-Tour for Cars or Bikes." Maryland 6 (Spring 1974): 6-9.
Categories: County and Local History, Charles County
Cronin, William B. "Cobb Island." Chesapeake Bay Magazine 19 (July 1989): 72-74.
Categories: County and Local History, Charles County, Chesapeake Region
Dessaint, A. Y. Southern Maryland Yesterday and Today: Crab Pots and Sotweed Fields. Prince Frederick, MD: Calvert County Historical Society, 1984.
Notes: Historic photographs and excerpts from 60 of the "best" works on Southern Maryland. Arranged predominately by theme, the chapters include working the land, working the water, life in the home, and life in the community. A ten page introduction gives a brief chronological history of the area.
Categories: African American, Agriculture, County and Local History, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Transportation and Communication, Women, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century, Charles County, Calvert County, Prince George's County, St. Mary's County
Earle, Swepson. The Chesapeake Bay Country. Baltimore: Thomsen-Ellis Company, 1923.
Notes: Divided into three regions -- southeastern Maryland, Upper Bay, and the Eastern Shore, this work includes a history for each, written by five noted authors, followed by a description of the counties in each, along with places of interest and the people of these places. The histories of the areas places special emphasis on major houses and genealogy of the owners. It is nicely illustrated with contemporary photographs, which nearly 80 years later serve as historic images. There are four pages of interesting photos of African Americans.
Categories: African American, Architecture, Historic Preservation, and Town Planning, County and Local History, Education, Family History and Genealogy, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Caroline County, Cecil County, Charles County, Calvert County, Dorchester County, Harford County, Kent County, Prince George's County, Queen Anne's County, St. Mary's County, Somerset County, Talbot County, Wicomico County, Worcester County, Chesapeake Region, Southern Maryland, Eastern Shore
Kihl, Kim R. Port Tobacco: A Transformed Community. Baltimore: Maclay and Associates, 1982.
Categories: County and Local History, Charles County
"La Plata: Where There's Smoke, There's Fire." Maryland 27 (July/August 1995): [37].
Categories: Architecture, Historic Preservation, and Town Planning, County and Local History, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century, Charles County
Lee, Jean B. The Social Order of a Revolutionary People: Charles County, Maryland, 1733-86. Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1984.
Categories: County and Local History, Eighteenth Century, Charles County
Praising the Bridge that Brought them Over: One Hundred Years at Indian Head. Indian Head, MD: Naval Ordnance Station, 1990.
Notes: The history of the military base, and its surrounding community, as told through photographs and excerpts with interviews from twenty-six individuals. A ten page time line charts events of importance among the Navy at Indian Head, in the town of Indian Head, and national and internationally.
Categories: African American, Biography, Autobiography, and Reminiscences, County and Local History, Military, Science and Technology, Women, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century, Charles County
Reps, John. Tidewater Towns: City Planning in Colonial Virginia and Maryland. Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1972.
Notes: Early towns did not generally spring out of nowhere. Town planning was common and an important part of Chesapeake Maryland's colonial history. The government played an active role in the founding and formation of towns. Annapolis and the District of Columbia were unique in that their plans did not resemble those common amongst other English colonies.
Categories: Architecture, Historic Preservation, and Town Planning, County and Local History, Geography and Cartography, Politics and Law, Seventeenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Caroline County, Cecil County, Charles County, Calvert County, Dorchester County, Harford County, Kent County, Prince George's County, Queen Anne's County, St. Mary's County, Somerset County, Talbot County, Wicomico County, Worcester County, Chesapeake Region, Southern Maryland, Eastern Shore
Richardson, Hester Dorsey. "Colors of the Counties." Calvert Historian 8 (Fall 1993): 50-52.
Categories: County and Local History, Military, Seventeenth Century, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Cecil County, Charles County, Calvert County, Dorchester County, Kent County, St. Mary's County, Somerset County, Talbot County, Southern Maryland, Eastern Shore
Tidwell, William A. "Charles County: Confederate Cauldron." Maryland Historical Magazine 91 (Spring 1996): 16-27.
Notes: Although largely rural and poorly populated, Charles County played an important role during the Civil War. A very large number of its citizens were actively involved in Confederate activities to the point where Charles County could be seen as a Confederate underground. The most well known related event was John Wilkes Booth's escape attempt through the County.
Categories: County and Local History, Military, Nineteenth Century, Charles County
Wearmouth, John M. Charles County Helps Shape the Nation. LaPlata, MD: Charles County Board of Education, 1986.
Categories: County and Local History, Charles County
Wearmouth, John M. LaPlata, Maryland, 1888-1988: One Hundred Years the Heart of Charles County. LaPlata, MD: Town of LaPlata, 1988.
Categories: County and Local History, Charles County
Wilstach, Paul. Tidewater Maryland. Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1931.
Notes: A narrative history of those Maryland counties, all but seven of the twenty-three, touched by saltwater, arranged by theme and locale. There is a great deal of emphasis on the founding of towns and important personages, a wide variety of subjects are covered.
Categories: Architecture, Historic Preservation, and Town Planning, County and Local History, Environment, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Caroline County, Cecil County, Charles County, Calvert County, Dorchester County, Harford County, Kent County, Prince George's County, Queen Anne's County, St. Mary's County, Somerset County, Talbot County, Wicomico County, Worcester County, Chesapeake Region, Southern Maryland, Eastern Shore
Fales, John H. "Occurrence in Southern Maryland of the Carolina Satyr (Satyridae: Satyrinae)." Maryland Naturalist 39 (January-June 1995): 5-7.
Categories: Environment, Charles County, Calvert County, St. Mary's County
Johnson, Paula J. Working the Water: The Commercial Fisheries of Maryland's Patuxent River. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1988.
Notes: Johnson's book covers many of the fishing techniques and inventions which have so strongly impacted Chesapeake Bay's natural resources.
Categories: County and Local History, Economic, Business, and Labor History, Environment, Science and Technology, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century, Anne Arundel County, Charles County
Sharrer, G. Terry. "The Patuxent: Maryland's Heartland River." Maryland 21 (Spring 1989): 6-23.
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Maritime, Transportation and Communication, Anne Arundel County, Charles County
Vogt, Peter R. "Southern Maryland in Deep Time; A Brief History of our Geology, Part II: The Post-Breakup Sediment Wedge." Bugeye Times 23 (Spring 1998): 1, 6-7.
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Science and Technology, Charles County, Calvert County, St. Mary's County, Chesapeake Region
A Guide to Maryland State Archives Holdings of Charles County Records on Microfilm. Annapolis: Maryland State Archives, 1989.
Categories: Historical Organizations, Libraries, Reference Works, Politics and Law, Twentieth Century, Anne Arundel County, Charles County
The Southern Maryland Collections. Section 1, June 1979 edition: The Book Collections. LaPlata, MD: Charles County Community College, 1979.
Categories: County and Local History, Historical Organizations, Libraries, Reference Works, Twentieth Century, Charles County, Calvert County, St. Mary's County
Lee, J. B. "Lessons in Humility: The Revolutionary Transformation of the Governing Elite of Charles County, Maryland." In The Transforming Hand of Revolution. Charlottesville: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia, 1996.
Categories: Politics and Law, Charles County
Lee, Jean B. The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994.
Notes: This intensive and insightful study of a single county offers insight into several large themes in Maryland history - "the American Revolution as a transforming, ongoing phenomenon, civilian's responses to the War for Independence, the tenor of the nation's formative years, and the nature of Chesapeake society." During this period Charles Country changed from prosperous economy, securely connected to the outside world through overseas trade, into a stagnant backwater, whose forward looking population searched for opportunity elsewhere. Unlike other areas of Maryland, where the Revolutionary years were tumultuous, there were few challenges to the status quo. Cut off from the empire, entrepreneurial whites left the county in search of wealth and opportunity, often as close as Washington, DC, and the population became overwhelmingly unfree.
Categories: County and Local History, Military, Politics and Law, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Charles County
Harte, Thomas J. "Social Origins of the Brandywine Population." Phylon 24 (1963): 369-378.
Notes: Harte seeks to establish the eighteenth-century origins of a distinctive mixed race "Brandywine" population in Charles County, though he fails to explain this social identity for the general reader. He points to Maryland laws against miscegenation and cross-racial sexual relationships as indirect evidence that both had occurred in the colony and cites Charles County records for violations of those laws. The article provides less direct support for his contention that Native American ancestry may also have been involved in the mixed race unions. Harte concludes that isolated family groupings in the eighteenth century served as the basis of the identifiable Brandywine population in the county in the nineteenth century.
Categories: African American, Native American, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Eighteenth Century, Charles County