On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
Plantations, Slavery and Freedom on Maryland's Eastern Shore by
The riveting, heart wrenching story of slave traders and abolitionists, kidnappers and freedmen, cruelty and courage on Maryland's eastern shore. African Americans, both enslaved and free, were vital to the economy of the Eastern Shore of Maryland before the Civil War. Maryland became a slave society in colonial days when tobacco ruled. Some enslaved people, like Anthony Johnson, earned their freedom and became successful farmers. After the Revolutionary War, others were freed by masters disturbed by the contradiction between liberty and slavery. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman ran from masters on the Eastern Shore and devoted their lives to helping other enslaved people with their words and deeds. Jacqueline Simmons Hedberg uses local records, including those of her ancestors, to tell a tale of slave traders and abolitionists, kidnappers and freedmen, cruelty and courage.
Call Number: E445.M3 H43 2019
Indians of Southern Maryland by
Here at last is the story of Southern Maryland's Native people, from the end of the Ice Age to the present. Intended for a general audience, it explains how they have been adapting to changing conditions--both climatic and human--for all of that time in a way that is jargon-free and readable. The authors, cultural anthropologists with long experience of modern Indian people, convincingly demonstrate that all through their history, Native people have behaved like rational adults, contrary to the common stereotype of Indians. Moreover, in the very early Contact Period at least, some English settlers respected them accordingly. Unfortunately, although they never went to war against the English, they were driven nearly out of existence. Yet some of them refused to leave, and, adapting yet again to a changing world, their descendants are living successfully in Indian communities today.
Call Number: E99.C873 S45 2014
John Smith's Chesapeake voyages, 1607-1609 by Call Number: F187.C5 R675 2008
Voices from Colonial America: Maryland 1634-1776 by
First-person accounts, archival illustrations, and historic maps reveal Maryland's rich history. Discover how the colony was founded by Catholics yet largely settled by Protestants; how it was uniquely ruled by a single proprietor; why a ton of tea was burned in Annapolis; how tobacco and wheat were often used as money; and why the American Revolution ended here.National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources.Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.
Call Number: F184 .D63 2007
Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland by
Mixing chronological narrative with a full ecological portrait, anthropologists Rountree and Davidson have reconstructed the culture and history of Virginia's and Maryland's Eastern Shore Indians from a.d. 800 until the last tribes disbanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Call Number: E78.V7 R68 1997
Baltimore County Families, 1659-1759 by
Baltimore County originally embraced all or parts of present-day Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford, and Cecil counties, and here for the first time is a book that provides comprehensive genealogical data on the hundreds of families and thousands of individuals who settled in the parent county during the first hundred years of its existence. Because of the vast number of families included in the work--most of them were either migrants from Southern Maryland, Virginia's Eastern Shore, and Pennsylvania or immigrants from the British Isles whose ranks included servants, convicts, and Jacobite rebels--it was not possible to carry any family much later than 1759. Parish registers, administration bonds and accounts, wills, and inventories were abstracted and used as the nucleus for each family group, while court records and deeds were combed for supplementary data. In addition, family histories have been constructed from a series of family groups starting with the earliest known progenitor, followed by his children, his grandchildren, and, in some cases, his great-grandchildren. All in all, this is a stellar work on Baltimore County families prepared by the leading authority on the subject.
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Streaming Videos
- Chesapeake PlanterA tour through the world of the colonial farmer in the year 1777, when most of the 13 original colonies were still one vast forest. Farms consisted of small, rough clearings cultivated by hand or with primitive tools. Farm animals were smaller, wilder, and tougher than they are today. There were few roads of any kind. Historian Burt Kummerow shares his extensive and enthusiastic knowledge of the time in a stroll through an authentic recreation of a Chesapeake farm of the period, and the people who worked it.
Databases
- Arts & Humanities Database
Articles on arts including visual arts, architecture, design, music, literature, and theatre,
and humanities including history, philosophy, and cultural studies. - History Research This link opens in a new window
Primary documents as well as essays about historical topics and people.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Journals, books, images, and primary sources about many subjects.
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Articles and scholarly essays, historical newspaper articles, primary sources, and timelines you can use for African American topics.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Baltimore Sun This link opens in a new window
Primary source articles covering the politics, society and events of the time period 1837 - 1992.
- U.S. History This link opens in a new window
Articles, essays, and primary sources on the history of the United States.
Online from CCBC Libraries
Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists by
Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists analyzes the vibrant and often violent political culture of seventeenth-century America, exploring the relationship between early American and early modern British politics through a detailed study of colonial Maryland. Seventeenth-century Maryland was repeatedly wracked by disputes over the legitimacy of the colony's Catholic proprietorship. The proprietors' strange policy of religious liberty was part of the controversy, but colonists also voiced fears of proprietary conspiracies with Native Americans and claimed the colony's ruling circle aimed to crush their liberties as English subjects. Conflicts like these became wrapped up in disputes less obviously political, such as disagreements over how to manage the tobacco trade, without which Maryland's economy would falter. Antoinette Sutto argues that the best way to understand this strange mix of religious, economic, and political controversies is to view it with regard to the disputes over the role of the English church, the power of the state, and the ideal relationship between the two--disputes that tore apart the English-speaking world twice over in the 1600s. Sutto contends that the turbulent political history of early Maryland makes most sense when seen in an imperial as well as an American context. Such an understanding of political culture and conflict in this colony offers a window not only into the processes of seventeenth-century American politics but also into the construction of the early modern state. Examining the dramatic rise and fall of Maryland's Catholic proprietorship through this lens, Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists offers a unique glimpse into the ambiguities and possibilities of the early English colonial world.
Publication Date: 2015-11-30
Enslaved Women in America by
More than a century after Emancipation, no comprehensive overview of the history of the female American slave exists. In this book, historian Emily West offers the first comprehensive overview of the lives of enslaved women in America by placing their stories within the broader context of slavery in this country from the colonial era through to the end of the Civil War. She compares the lives of enslaved women with the lives of enslaved men from the same period, and with the white men and women who unjustly held them in bondage. West's thorough research and eye for detail construct a narrative of the enslaved woman's life, giving voice to and revealing the significance of a singularly strong but largely overlooked member of early American society.
Publication Date: 2014-12-05
Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women by
In Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women, Edith M. Ziegler recounts the history of British convict women involuntarily transported to Maryland in the eighteenth century. Great Britain's forced transportation of convicts to colonial Australia is well known. Less widely known is Britain's earlier program of sending convicts--including women--to North America. Many of these women were assigned as servants in Maryland. Titled using epithets that their colonial masters applied to the convicts, Edith M. Ziegler's Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women examines the lives of this intriguing subset of American immigrants. Basing much of her powerful narrative on the experiences of actual women, Ziegler restores individual faces to women stripped of their basic freedoms. She begins by vividly invoking the social conditions of eighteenth-century Britain, which suffered high levels of criminal activity, frequently petty thievery. Contemporary readers and scholars will be fascinated by Ziegler's explanation of how gender-influenced punishments were meted out to women and often ensnared them in Britain's system of convict labor. Ziegler depicts the methods and operation of the convict trade and sale procedures in colonial markets. She describes the places where convict servants were deployed and highlights the roles these women played in colonial Maryland and their contributions to the region's society and economy. Ziegler's research also sheds light on escape attempts and the lives that awaited those who survived servitude. Mostly illiterate, convict women left few primary sources such as diaries or letters in their own words. Ziegler has masterfully researched the penumbra of associated documents and accounts to reconstruct the worlds of eighteenth-century Britain and colonial Maryland and the lives of these unwilling American settlers. In illuminating this little-known episode in American history, Ziegler also discusses not just the fact that these women have been largely forgotten, but why. Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women makes a valuable contribution to American history, women's studies, and labor history.
Publication Date: 2014-04-14
Historic Events of Colonial Days by
Early American history is brought to life in this thrilling collection of tales from the period surrounding the tumultuous birth of the nation. It's a must-read for history buffs, or for students seeking a much more enthralling take on topics like Puritanism, pirates, witchcraft, and slave revolts that are often recounted in a dry, musty manner in textbooks.
Publication Date: 2013-08-01
James Mchenry, Forgotten Federalist by
A Scots-Irish immigrant, James McHenry determined to make something of his life. Trained as a physician, he joined the American Revolution when war broke out. He then switched to a more military role, serving on the staffs of George Washington and Lafayette. He entered government after the war and served in the Maryland Senate and in the Continental Congress. As Maryland's representative at the Constitutional Convention, McHenry helped to add the ex post facto clause to the Constitution and worked to increase free trade among the states. As secretary of war, McHenry remained loyal to Washington, under whom he established a regimental framework for the army that lasted well into the nineteenth century. Upon becoming president, John Adams retained McHenry; however, Adams began to believe McHenry was in league with other Hamiltonian Federalists who wished to undermine his policies. Thus, when the military buildup for the Quasi-War with France became unpopular, Adams used it as a pretext to request McHenry's resignation. Yet as Karen Robbins demonstrates in the first modern biography of McHenry, Adams was mistaken; the friendship between McHenry and Hamilton that Adams feared had grown sensitive and there was a brief falling out. Moreover, McHenry had asked Hamilton to withdraw his application for second-in-command of the New Army being raised. Nonetheless, Adams's misperception ended McHenry's career, and he has remained an obscure historical figure ever since--until now. James McHenry, Forgotten Federalist reveals a man surrounded by important events who reflected the larger themes of his time.
Publication Date: 2013-11-15
