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In the article, the author discusses an instructional resource for high school students and preservice art educators that focuses on the emancipation history of Maryland. Other topics include how commemorative art influences historical memory and how visual and material culture both illuminated and obscured freedom narratives for African Americans by citing the works "Freedmen Memorial" by Thomas Ball and Joan Gaither's "Sesquicentennial 1864 Maryland Slave Emancipation Quilt."

After the death of their young daughter in 1841, the Griffith family of northern Maryland commissioned artist Sarah Miriam Peale to paint her portrait. Peale, academically trained and a member of a famous artistic family, was renowned for her paintings of the American elite. Peale's portrait of Mary "Molly" Griffith—along with a diary kept by the girl's mother, mourning jewelry, family papers, and a gravesite—makes the Griffith's grief tangible and highly visible, even today. However, these materials also reveal the experiences of people enslaved by the Griffiths that have been overlooked, including a bondswoman named Caroline whose own story is inextricably intertwined with that of Molly's. By examining these artifacts collectively and alongside the context of slavery, this article illustrates the complex relationship between labor, loss, and the material culture of mourning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-economic composition of the officer corps of the Continental Army has not received as much attention as that of the enlisted soldiers; the officers are generally assumed to have been members of America's colonial elite. The need for large numbers of men to ill leadership positions in the nation's first regular army presented an opportunity greater than at any time previous in America for the attainment of rank and status through an officer's commission. Based upon research on the Maryland Line, this article argues that a larger segment of the Continental Army's officer corps originated in a "middling" socio-economic range than currently thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the historical interpretation of the roles of U.S. Army of the Potomac brigadier general William H. French and U.S. Army major Edwin Vose Sumner at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, during the U.S. Civil War. It examines whether French made an error in commanding the Third Division of the Second Army Corps during the battle. It focuses upon the fight for the Confederate center, known as the Battle for the Sunken Road or Bloody Lane. The article also discusses the military movements of troops led by U.S. Army major general John Sedgwick during the battle and hearings concerning the battle conducted by the U.S. Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.

Archaeology from St. Mary's College of Maryland began looking for the former homestead of West Ashcom in the Spring of 2012. West Ashcom was established on the south bank of the Patuxent River in what is now St. Mary's County, MD by John Ashcom in 1651. At its height in the early eighteenth century it contained a manor house, kitchen, dairy, orchard, port, haberdashery, and various other barns and dependencies. Using traditional sources such as archives and methods like pedestrian surveys and surface collections, a late seventeenth/early eighteenth-century site was identified in a plowed field. Since then, archaeologists from SMCM have employed a range of sources, field methods, and mapping techniques to define the parameters of the site, past structures, and identify activity areas in a largely compromised area. This paper summarizes the results of more traditional uses of GIS mapping paired with experimental drone data to demonstrate the benefit of mixing old and new technologies when interpreting sites subject to continuous plowing and planting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early 20th century laid much of the basis for today's landscape of reproductive politics. This article evaluates the reproductive landscape of Easton, Maryland, in the early 20th century, where the appearance of a ca. 1903 advertising booklet for Chichester's English Pennyroyal Pills and children's toys on the site of a white middle-class home raises questions about the ways intersections of race, class, and gender constrained reproductive choices amid segregation and the rise of both the birth-control and eugenics movements. An intersectional lens facilitates the exploration of these intersections at the household, neighborhood, and national levels to compare the reproductive realities for white and African American women in this period and the particular local manifestations of these realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the conspiracy theory involving the Union high command during the 1862 Maryland campaign. It mentions that the victim of the conspiracy was Major General Ambrose E. Burnside with perpetrators Major General Fitz John Porter and Major General Joseph Hooker and the Potomac commander Major General George B. McClellan. The author contends that the Maryland campaign and the Battle of Antietam reveals that the assignment of command responsibilities and tasks at Antietam was dictated not by personality but by practical operational and tactical considerations.

Focuses on the association of the skirmish between the Confederate and Union cavalry on April 15, 1865 in Saint Mary's County in Maryland on President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Organization of a secret Confederate operation by assassin John Wilkes Booth to capture Lincoln as a hostage; Allies of Booth in the assassination of Lincoln; Role of Captain Thomas Nelson Conrad in the events of April, 1865.

The article reviews the Georgetown Slavery Archive, a online digital archive created by Georgetown University to allow public access to documents related to the college's ownership and sale of slaves, particularly the 1838 sale of 272 men, women, and children of Jesuit-owned slaved to owners in Louisiana.

A mid-19th-century deposit of circles and a wheel at Wye House on Maryland's Eastern Shore may link the West African cosmogram to conversion to Christianity through the Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal churches, which use the symbol of the wheel as representation of the movement to God. This interpretation would allow additional understanding of how enslaved and free Africans embraced new forms of Christianity. Creativity within slavery leads us to propose a way in which to write a new history of the Chesapeake region of Maryland. We also introduce M. I. Finley's and Orlando Patterson's ideas on the general conditions leading to and existing within slavery, so that we can consider how slavery appears, and dies in antiquity, and then reappears in North America. We propose a comparative definition of slavery that includes trafficking in human persons. We historical archaeologists can see a condition of society, that is part of our present, that recognizes the brutalizing dynamic within slavery and that can give way to creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reprint of the article "One Vast Graveyard: Doctor's Remarkable Anietam Letter" by John Banks which appeared in the Civil War blog is presented. The article explores the account of an 11th Connecticut veteran about their failed attack at Burnside Bridge during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862 and a letter by physician Augustin Biggs on the battle. It also profiles Biggs who specialized in obstetrics and passionate about the welfare of the community.

We compare the settings and architecture of a small, community based church in Maryland (US), to that of the Jesuit church in the colony's capital, St. Mary's City. The State of Maryland researches and interprets St. Mary's City, while the parish of St. Francis Xavier supports the search for its first sanctuary. We explore the differences between the sites and their institutions sponsoring the studies, and reflect on what these differences might mean for the relationship of church and state in twenty-first-century Maryland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To analyze the completeness of precipitating circumstance information recorded in the Maryland Violent Death Reporting System and identify limitations that could affect the system's utility. Methods: We reviewed all violent deaths among Maryland residents for the years 2003 through 2014 (n=19161). We assessed the presence of precipitating circumstance data (abstracted from medical examiner and police reports) by manner of death and demographic characteristics. We further evaluated homicide records with multivariable regression. Results: Demographic variation in circumstance reporting was most pronounced for homicide. Circumstances were known for 53.2% of homicide cases, and this percentage was lower among non-Latino Blacks (48.2%), males (50.7%), those aged 18 to 25 years (47.9%), those residing in jurisdictions with higher-than-average homicide rates (46.1%), and those who died outside in a public place (43.4%) or in a correctional facility (48.9%). With the exception of male gender, these factors were significantly associated with circumstance reporting when we controlled for demographic and situational variables. Conclusions: Circumstance reporting was least likely among groups most at risk for homicide in Maryland. Collection of circumstance data for the most affected groups should be strengthened to help develop better prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blame it on H.L. Mencken. His unsupported account of how Maryland adopted the nation's first shield law in 1896 has been repeated in books and articles for seventy-five years, but it was a fabrication based on shoddy reporting. This article will show the law was not prompted, as Mencken claimed, by the jailing of Baltimore Sun reporter John T. Morris but by the criminal indictments of reporters John S. Shriver and Elisha J. Edwards in 1894. Passage of the law was not connected to local events but was sparked by a scandal unfolding in Washington. The drive for a shield law was not isolated to Maryland but was part of a national lobbying campaign that included talk of a federal shield law. Finally, that campaign did not emanate from The Baltimore Sun but from The Baltimore American. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The historical scholarship on black-on-white rape has focused mainly on the oppression of black men and firmly cast white women only as false accusers. While radically politicized groups like communists in the 1930s and civil rights activists in the 1950s deployed the trope of the lying white woman to defend black men accused of rape, by the mid-twentieth century the mainstream culture began to embrace this rhetoric. I am interested in how a new consensus was, formed around this rhetoric and what that meant for movements that organized for justice around sexual violence. In this article, I use the Giles-Johnson case, an instance of alleged black-on-white sexual violence, to examine how white mainstream America embraced the trope of the lying white woman at this time. This article challenges the assumptions of the false claim and begins to examine the complex interplay of racialized and sexualized constructions in cases of black-on-white rape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the First Polish Evangelical Congregation of Christ the Lord, located in Dundalk, Maryland, in the eastern section of Baltimore County that was then known as Colgate. It notes that members of this Lutheran congregation, which formally formed in 1904, emigrated from Suwalki, part of the Mazurian province of Russian Poland. The author comments on the construction of the church building and its expansion. Pastors who served the congregation are discussed, including Ferdinand Sattelmeier, William Tober, and Joseph Dawidowski.

The article discusses the social conditions within Maryland's state hospitals for the mentally ill, including in Spring Grove State Hospital in Catonsville, Maryland, during the 1940s. Particular focus is given to the exposé articles on the hospitals, which were compiled into the book "Maryland's Shame: The Worst Story Ever Published by the Sun-papers—The Results of a Detailed Investigation of Five Tax-Supported Mental Hospitals, with a Pictorial Record of the Findings," by Howard Melvin Norton. The role that the Spring Grove Hospital physician and author's father Isadore Tuerk played in Norton's documentation of the hospital's abuses is discussed.

The article reviews the web site "Pathways to Freedom: Maryland & the Underground Railroad," created and maintained by Maryland Public Television and located at http://pathways.thinkport.org/flash_home.cfm.

Graves lined with brick and covered with a brick arch are common in 18th- and 19th-century cemeteries. At yet, they have received scant archaeological attention. During a cemetery restoration project, 38 examples of this type of grave were examined, with half having dated ledger stones (1736-1884) above them. Analysis of the characteristics of these burials provides significant temporal markers. Using these, the burials arc grouped into four periods based on date and presence of certain features, providing a model of change in these structures. The validity of the model is then tested by comparison to published descriptions of similar features in the region and over a wide area. This model can be used for the relative dating of brick-lined graves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the history of American loyalism in Maryland during the American Revolution, exploring the importance of the coastal region of Maryland to American efforts. It describes grain, vegetable, and fruit farming and their supply routes to the Continental Army, the formation of the independent state government in Maryland, and the tension between aristocratic landowners who supported the revolution and Loyalist landowners. Other subjects under discussion include the refusal of the poor to join state militias in the revolution, the work of governor Robert Eden, and the work of the Committee of Observation in Dorchester County.

The article presents a list of the gallery of presidents of the Maryland Historical Society. The position is considered to be the most prestigious civic position in the city and this article gives a tribute to the men who once held the position. Included in the list are Brantz Mayer, John Spear Smith, Severn Teackle Wallis, John H.B. Latrobe, and the rest of the past leaders.

The article describes the tercentenary celebration of Maryland (1634 - 1934). The festivities reflected tradition and generosity at a gathering which was well attended by more than 2,000 people in St.Mary's County on March 25, 1934. The Tercentenary Commission served and protected all public records of the Province and State of Maryland.

The article focuses on the actions of Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks in relation to the secession crisis of the state. This highlights the issues regarding the decline of the ordinance of secession, the refusal to convene a citizen's convention and the failure to pass the Public Safety Bill. In particular, actions undertaken by Hicks concerning the civil unrest in the state like his delayed decision to convene the General Assembly are taken into consideration.

A list of articles related to Maryland history were published in several journals is presented. The articles include "The New World Mediterranean," by Neil H. Swason, "Plantation Slavery and Economic Development in the Antebellum Southern United States." by Charles Post, and "Lithic Technology in the Middle Potomac River Valley of Maryland and Virginia," by Beverly A. Chiarulli.

Discusses how Colonel Samuel E. Pittman, General A.S. Williams adjutant-general, validated the genuineness of the marching orders of General Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia for the Maryland campaign, which was found on the morning of September 13, 1862, prior to Antietam. Coincidences surrounding Lee's "Lost Orders" during the American Civil War; Pittman's postwar recollection; Critical information that emerges from a postwar exchange of correspondence between Pittman and Ezra A. Carman, a Union army veteran of the battle at Antietam who served as the "Historical Expert" of the Antietam Battlefield Board in the 1890s.

Examines Richard Lewis' translation of Edward Holdsworth's mock epic, 'Muscipula,' which is considered the first 'belles lettres' of Maryland. Indication of the tensions of a Chesapeake society in the midst of social transformation; Persona created by Lewis in Muscipula's preface; Social and political implications of the distinction between the high and low kinds of satire.