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This paper discusses the chemistry manuscript collection in an institution that does not readily come to mind when searching for unpublished matter on the history of chemistry, the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. This collection includes personal papers of some twentieth-century American chemists and biochemists, lecture notes of British and American chemistry courses of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries from a variety of institutional settings, and extended oral histories of some major figures in the history of modern chemistry and biochemistry. Among those represented in this collection are Joseph Black, Louis Pasteur, George B. Wood, Donald D. Van Slyke, and Albert Szent-Györgyi. In addition to illustrating the type of resources available, this paper also suggests some specific ways in which the collection can contribute to research in the history of chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illustrations of urban scenes naturally describe the physical characteristics of the places depicted. These representations also express implicitly broader beliefs which tie the spatial order of the surrounding world to local systems, institutions, and human actions. Images of a city embody, therefore, an ‘urban cosmography’, a concept inspired by early modern artisans' attempts to chart the contours of the world, both known and unknown. Seen from this perspective, historical graphics such as maps, posters, and birds-eye views document a city's position within a continually evolving universal order. This paper will review graphics drawn from the history of one city in particular: Baltimore, Maryland. Like other cities on the eastern seaboard of the US, Baltimore has been represented by diverse visual arts for more than two centuries. With the advent of digital and social media, Baltimore's development will depend even more upon the city's local and global interrelationships. ‘Urban cosmography’ is, therefore, a useful conceptual prism through which one may perceive the link between the city's historical legacy and contemporary urban challenges. One consequence is that visual tropes for traditional urban polarities – ‘growth’ versus ‘decay’, for instance – may be superseded by new symbols that incorporate both. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A large majority of slaves manumitted in post-Revolutionary Maryland were not freed individually, but were instead mentioned in manumissions that included other slaves. While the terms for these 'group' manumissions varied, slaves freed in such deeds potentially faced similar opportunities and challenges. They were often young children when manumitted, and while still relatively young when they actually achieved freedom, typically had to wait a decade or more to become legally free. Group manumissions show the ability of some African Americans to rescue multiple loved ones from bondage, but also serve as a reminder of the limits facing other Maryland slaves who sought to acquire their legal freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our Maryland research suggests that it might be possible to integrate the labour supply and planter preferences approach to the transition to slavery by thinking of it as a process that occurred in two stages. During the first stage a small number of 'Early Plungers' demonstrated by example that African slavery could be employed profitably. They also created the legal and institutional structures needed to guarantee property rights in slaves. Prominent among the early plungers was a group of Barbadians, perhaps recruited by Lord Calvert specifically for their expertise operating within that island's slave system. The activities of these early plungers brought a small but noticeable population of African descent to Maryland. During the second stage, late in the seventeenth century, when the labour shortage occurred, their activities helped to persuade a majority of planters to invest in Africans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]