The Maryland History and Culture Bibliography
Sweig, Donald. "A Capital on the Potomac: A 1789 Broadside and Alexandria's Attempts to Capture the Cherished Prize." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 87 (January 1979): 74-104.
Categories: Maritime, Politics and Law, Eighteenth Century
Garitee, Jerome R. The Republic's Private Navy: The American Privateering Business as Practiced Baltimore during the War of 1812. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, Published for Mystic Seaport, Inc., 1977.
Notes: The British attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812 was motivated by a desire to punish the city for being a nest of republicans and privateers. This book traces in admirable detail the history of privateering - from the ships, outfitting, captains and crews, investors, their successes and failures, through the distribution of the prize money. While the pirates on the Spanish main may have been the dregs of the sea, Baltimore's privateers were underwritten by some of its leading mercantile and political leaders. The book includes useful appendices identifying the privateers, investors and proceeds.
Categories: Maritime, Politics and Law, Nineteenth Century, Baltimore City, War of 1812
Abribat, Beverly. "The Jefferson Island Club." Weather Gauge 24 (Fall 1988): 10-21; 25 (Fall 1989): 8-14.
Ellis, Carolyn. Fisher Folk: Two Communities on the Chesapeake Bay. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1986.
Notes: A sociological case study of two traditional water-economy Chesapeake Bay communities, one in tidewater Virginia and the other on the islands of Maryland, both assigned pseudonyms in social science convention. Ellis contends that these isolated settlements retain distinctive elements of traditional culture, even as they increasingly are drawn into contact with and impacted by outside forces. Based on extensive field research conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s, this study examines family and kin, work, social organization, the role of religion, and mechanisms of social control. Ellis concludes with consideration of the prospects for the future in terms of preservation or change for traditional Chesapeake area communities.
Categories: County and Local History, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Twentieth Century, Chesapeake Region
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
Horton, Tom. An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake. New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1996.
Notes: Horton's title suggests his principal themes in examining Smith Island life: that the islands represent a distinctive way of life rooted in another time whose preservation into the future may literally be running out of time. An environmental columnist for the Baltimore <em>Sun</em> who lived on Smith Island in the late 1980s as an environmental educator with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Horton examines the water-related economy, traditionally based on oystering and crabbing, and the unique way of life that evolved in the relative isolation of the island communities. His book profiles the personalities of Smith Island, the work of men and women, the pervasive role of religion in island life, and social, economic, and environmental changes threatening the island's future.
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century, Somerset County, Chesapeake Region, Eastern Shore
Klapthor, Margaret Brown. "Neighbor Washington." The Record 27 (February 1983): 1-4.
Notes: George Washington's association with Charles County.
Lesher, Pete. "Eastern Shore Summers: Waterfront Guest Houses and Hotels in the Age of Steam." Weather Gauge 35 (Fall 1999): 18-23.
Categories: County and Local History, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture
Mills, Eric. Chesapeake Rumrunners of the Roaring Twenties. Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 2000.
Categories: County and Local History, Maritime, Politics and Law, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Transportation and Communication, Twentieth Century, Chesapeake Region
Valliant, Joseph N., Jr. "Memories of Terrapin'in." Weather Gauge 35 (Spring 1999): 12-15, 25.
Categories: Biography, Autobiography, and Reminiscences, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture
Walsh, Lorena S. "The Historian as Census Taker: Individual Reconstitution and the Reconstruction of Censuses for a Colonial Chesapeake County." William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 38 (April 1981): 242-60.
Notes: Walsh uses methods drawn from community studies to reconstitute a census for adult white males in Charles County in 1705, based upon a provincial census and rent rolls from the period. She argues that such methods provide the researcher the opportunity to establish reasonable accurate profiles of Chesapeake society in the colonial period.
Categories: County and Local History, Family History and Genealogy, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Charles County, Chesapeake Region
Walsh, Lorena S. "Staying Put or Getting Out: Findings for Charles County, Maryland, 1650-1720." William and Mary Quarterly (3d. series), 44 (January 1987): 89-103.
Categories: County and Local History, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Charles County
Warner, William W. Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1976.
Notes: Naturalist writer Warner examines the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab-the "beautiful swimmer"--and the watermen whose distinctive economy and life-style have been based upon it. Warner uses the cycle of the seasons to trace the complex relationship between natural environment and human community, with attention both to the social patterns and economics of water-related societies. Traditional watermen communities of the Chesapeake Bay region receiving considerable attention are Deal Island, Smith Island, Kent Island, and Crisfield in Maryland, and Tangier Island in Virginia.
Categories: County and Local History, Environment, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Twentieth Century, Chesapeake Region
Brewington, M. V. Chesapeake Bay Log Canoes and Bugeyes. Cambridge, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, 1963.
Brown, Alexander Crosby. The Old Bay Line, 1840-1940. New York: Bonanza, 1940.
Categories: Economic, Business, and Labor History, Maritime, Transportation and Communication, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century
Burgess, Robert H. Chesapeake Circle. Cambridge, MD: Cornell, 1965.
Categories: Maritime, Transportation and Communication
Burgess, Robert H. Chesapeake Sailing Craft. Cambridge, MD: Tidewater, 1975.
Categories: Maritime, Transportation and Communication
Burgess, Robert H. This Was Chesapeake Bay. Centreville, MD: Tidewater, 1963.
Categories: Maritime, Transportation and Communication
Burgess, Robert H., and H. Graham Wood. Steamboats Out of Baltimore. Cambridge, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, 1965.
Categories: Economic, Business, and Labor History, Maritime, Society, Social Change, Folklife, and Popular Culture, Transportation and Communication
Carmer, Carl. The Susquehanna. New York: Rinehart, 1955.
Notes: One of the prestigious "Rivers of America" series, and for Marylanders a book-end volume to Frederick Gutheim's <em>The Potomac</em>. This is popular history at its best: powerfully-written, anecdotal--and what anecdotes! The story of Thomas Cresap is alone worth checking the book out of the library. Covers the downriver ark traffic and the attempts of steamboats to conquer the rocky and unruly Susquehanna.
Categories: County and Local History, Economic, Business, and Labor History, Maritime, Science and Technology, Transportation and Communication
Catton, William H. "How Rails Saved a Seaport." American Heritage 8 (1957): 26-31, 93-95.
Categories: Economic, Business, and Labor History, Maritime, Transportation and Communication, Nineteenth Century
Catton, William H. John W. Garrett of the Baltimore and Ohio: A Study in Seaport and Railroad Competition, 1820-1874. Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1959.
Categories: Biography, Autobiography, and Reminiscences, Economic, Business, and Labor History, Maritime, Transportation and Communication, Nineteenth Century
Chapelle, Howard I. The Baltimore Clipper. Hatboro, PA: Tradition Press, 1965.
Notes: First published in 1930, this is a classic treatment, with drawings and illustrations, of a famous ship developed on the Chesapeake Bay. The author, one of America's most distinguished naval historians, lived for many years on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Cudahy, Brian J. Twilight on the Bay: The Excursion Boat Empire of B. B. Wills. Centreville, MD: Tidewater, 1998.
Categories: County and Local History, Economic, Business, and Labor History, Maritime, Transportation and Communication
Dohan, Mary Helen. Mr. Roosevelt's Steamboat; the First Steamboat to Travel the Mississippi. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981.