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Home-Style History:
Learning Who We Are … from Who We Were

Family History Month is a good time to dig up the past

by M.L. Faunce

History seems to mean more when there's a personal connection. When, for example, you learn your great-grandmother marched to win women the vote or your mother marched for the Equal Rights Amendment, you understand more than where you come from. You learn, as well, a bit more about who you are.

Hundreds felt that kind of link when Dr. Emily Hammond Wilson came to the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society to sign her new biography. Dr. Wilson spent 53 years as a country doctor in southern Anne Arundel County, and among the former patients who came to see her were more than a few whom she had brought into this world. Learning about Dr. Wilson's life in this rural county from early to present days made friends a little more aware that they had lived history.

“I was married in 1944, when Doctor had just started practicing. She was my doctor for my first child in 1946 and took care of all four of my children. Any of us who had anything wrong with us would go to Dr. Wilson, and even now I see her nearly every week at church,” said Doris Phibbons of Harwood. “But the book made our everyday life seem like history.”

Newcomers, for their part, saw the world around them with deeper eyes. Dennis Williams, of Columbia Beach, read a life lesson into Dr. Wilson’s energy and easy ways. “She didn’t reinvent herself when she became a doctor, the way so many people do — and later wish they hadn’t — who don’t want the past to follow them around.”

Throughout Chesapeake Country, history is coming to life in lots of interesting ways. In Annapolis nowadays, you can walk through a chapter of the port town's history beyond ship captains and seafarers. An Historic Annapolis Foundation self-guided tour follows the footsteps of African Americans who struggled for success and standing in a community that has been about one-third black since the mid-1700s.

The first spot on the tour is the bronze plaque that marks the spot where the enslaved Kunte Kinte stepped ashore at the Annapolis City Dock in 1767. Alex Haley, author of the epic best-seller Roots, traced his family's beginnings in America to that arrival. Tour planners say they hope that by standing at the water's edge and looking into the past, we can better understand the long voyage from our roots to our times.

From lighthouses in the Bay to painted screen doors in Baltimore, Marylanders are banding together to protect and preserve symbols of our past that we often take for granted. They are standing guard over the great Wye Oak and other trees that watched as our forebearers lived and died, crumbling scenic highways and bridges, and reminding elected officials of their responsibility to help safeguard the icons of our past.

“People have rediscovered rediscovering themselves,” says Elaine Eff, cultural curator at the Maryland Historical Trust. “It started in 1976, in the Bicentennial and is now in a second wave. It could be the millennium, it could be a lot of communities having anniversaries, or it could be a continuum that’s not going to stop because people are realizing how quickly things are changing.”

Family and neighborhood stories are painstakingly gathered and preserved as oral histories; genealogies are compiled. Local historical societies are publishing books in record numbers. The forms of local history stretch beyond books to include reenactments of Civil War battles, patriotic plays and heritage trails following long-lost landmarks through cities.

The great American pastime of chronicling the history of an area or life of a local hero has become a multi-media affair. Nowadays, you can make your own book, or you can bypass print and still reach the audience who shares your interests by designing and posting a web page for less cost than publishing a book. Or you make a home video, like New York University history professor Paul Mattingly, a descendant of an Arc and Dove colonist, who came to St. Mary’s County recently to shoot a “small commentary for family usage.”

“The videotape,” he explains, “has a broader conceptual framework than just our family genealogy and uses ideas on colonial Chesapeake culture. We thought it might be of interest to many other families …”

School Children to Presidents …

Though today’s historians can choose from many media to recount their discoveries, written histories make up the largest part of this cultural safekeeping. Their authors are often, but not always, amateurs. The term "amateur" need not offend anybody who sets about the task of compiling local history. We are all in good company: Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt were both amateur local historians. FDR wrote a history of Hyde Park, N.Y., His older cousin, Teddy, perhaps our most colorful president, authored over 40 books on many subjects, including local history.

While "professional" historians have sometimes overlooked the history of America's hometowns, amateur historians have helped save the small records of life past from oblivion.

"Discovering our Community," a 1950s' school project in the Anne Arundel County schools, is just such a project. Fifth grade students, with the help school principals and teachers, gathered information about their communities, describing location, topography, soil, trees, wildlife, industry and economy, historical background, and special identifying characteristics.

Some reports examined in detail the boating industry that engaged nearly everyone one in their community, discussing boat yards, boat building techniques and even recording what farm supplied the wood. Transportation and the muddy condition of roads; tobacco and a short-lived attempt to cure it with fire in the barns were all detailed by students.

Every school throughout Anne Arundel County participated in the project. Today, nearly a half-century later, the two-volume community profiles are still available in the reference areas at the Anne Arundel branch libraries.

South County librarian Gwen Klein was one of those fifth-graders. “It was a wonderful project,” says Klein, “because we walked all over Shadyside with our Brownie cameras. And we interviewed older residents, some of whom are still living, like Miss Ethel who was my teacher and the principal. She also taught my dad.

“Now, we use them all the time,” says the librarian. “At first, we had little copies at each school. If we needed something from Owensville, we went over there. The county library finally put them together in notebook form. They’re used by kids, by people doing research papers; people who are curious about their new homes; visitors.”

Ethel Andrews, herself the subject of a book published by the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society, was principal of Shady Side Elementary School during the "Discovering our Community" project. Asked about the profiles, 107-year-old "Miss" Ethel remembers them vividly. “That project was so good for the children. They went out to interview older people in the community ... it was history they could feel," said "Miss" Ethel, who is legendary for her knack of bringing history to life.

Like county libraries, Library of Congress holdings reflect the popularity of local study. In its collections are over 100,000 U.S. local histories and about 40,000 compiled family histories. Most are privately published, many are written by first time authors, amateur historians, and genealogists. They are sponsored by historical societies, museums, universities, and senior centers to celebrate our bicentennials and tricentennials, our struggles and our triumphs. Some are unashamed boosterism, presenting their subject in the best possible light, and a few reflect our occasional clannishness. In all their sorts, local histories personalize our national and regional fabric, teaching us who we are.

Getting There Before Yesterday

"You should have been here yesterday." Those are words every historian dreads. To help us avoid that all-too-familiar refrain, Elaine Eff compiled You Should Have Been Here Yesterday; a Guide to Cultural Documentation in Maryland.

To teach people how to preserve their culture from loss and forgetfulness, the Trust staged a series of workshops that are the basis of the book. Through the workshops, amateur local historians throughout the state set out to record vanishing scenes disguised as everyday life. They captured the sounds of hucksters in Baltimore markets. They recorded Eastern shore watermen speaking in soft accents of that reflect the British Isles origins of Maryland's earliest settlers, sounds slipping away as isolation gives way to development. Tobacco barns of Calvert County were surveyed and documented. In an oral history project focused on women's lives in St. Mary's County, midwives, crab pickers, oyster shuckers and school teachers were interviewed.

Out of the workshops came Eff’s 1995 book, a lively guide to "guarding Maryland's culture and traditions."

“Our goal,” says the one-time Baltimore City folklorist now with the Maryland Historical Trust, “is to enable Marylanders to tell and share their own stories, to fashion and complete meaningful projects of a quality that will have lasting lessons for tomorrow."

For a copy of the Guide or help on your project, call the Cultrual Conservation program at Maryland Historical Trust: 410/514-7650.

Voices Added to History

Emily Peake, of Riva, retired three years ago from the Postal Service, is making her life-long dream come true. "I always wanted to write, and history of all kinds has been my life-long interest,” says Peake of her second career as a local historian.

Her personal quest is documenting the history of a place she treasures, St. Anne's Cemetery in Annapolis. Tombstone inscriptions especially fascinate her. The epitaphs aren't always original, she says, but they are moving. Her favorite: "Listen young man, as you pass by / As you are now, so once was I / As I am now, so will you be / Prepare yourself to follow me." Though its author is unknown, this message been seen on tombstones around the world. In a recent letter, Peake's Australian cousin reported seeing it again in a cemetery in northern Ireland.

As well as writing history herself, Peake teaches seniors how to write their own personal histories. Her popular, ongoing series at the South County Senior Center in Edgewater includes lectures, tours of local sites and speakers who recount from firsthand experience the stories of their life and time.

Like many local historians, Peake says she will have to probably "dig deep" to pay for having her book published. It's worth it, she says, because "people want to know about their own area, or the area they've adopted."

Whether begun as a lark or a love, local histories devour time, work and money with an appetite few professional historians or sponsors have anticipated.

That's what happened to Therese Magnotti, who's first effort became "Doc," the Life of Emily Hammond Wilson, the third book to be published by the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society. Magnotti, who spent three years researching and writing the biography of Dr. Wilson, described her experience with Dr. Wilson as "a pure delight." Still, the rigors of such a commitment while attending to family and other interests compel her to add that this is her "first, and probably last book."

If some are exhausted, other historians are exhilarated by their efforts.

Caroline Britt Mullins became an author, as she had dreamed, with her recently published The History of Mayo, Maryland, a significant addition to our knowledge of peaceful peninsula life between the South and Rhodes River (see sidebar). Mullins started this project after researching her family history. "It gave me a sense of belonging," she said. She hasn't skipped a beat before starting her second book, to be called In Her Own Words.

Exhausted or invigorated, all who undertake the focused study and writing of local history seem to be transformed by the experience. Ask Dr. Wilson’s old friend and patient Doris Phibbons. Soon after Phibbons retired, she and a friend took a course in oral history, much like the ones taught by Emily Peak, at the Eula Scott Center in Shady Side. “There were 10 of us with our teacher Ellen Sheets, talking about how things were as we grew up. We have stayed together and continue to meet. It’s a bond we made,” says Phibbons.

While preserving our collective spirit, we are also discovering ourselves and proving the old saying: "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."

Mayo Historian Caroline Mullins

What do you do when you're sidelined by a serious car accident?

If you're Caroline L. Britt Mullins of Mayo, you spend time researching your family history and learning a lot about yourself. And when you finish that, you write the definitive history of your community. Mullins’ 250-page The History of Mayo, Maryland, recently published by Gateway Press of Baltimore, is the product of one of that journey.

The book is one part genealogy, recording the lives of Mullins' own ancestors, who date back to the 1600s and the beginnings of Anne Arundel County.

It is another part local history, drawn from many primary and secondary sources, including census and land records. As well as Mayo, the book touches on the several communities that rest between the Chesapeake Bay and the South and Rhode Rivers — Selby Bay, Glebe Heights, Woodland Beach, Turkey Point, Loch Haven, Beverly and Triton Beaches, which have separate identities but shared interests. All form a part of that "land of pleasant living," shaped by fertile fields, the bounty of the Bay and a proximity to Annapolis, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Mostly, Mullins’ History of Mayo is a collection demonstrating its author’s love and knowledge of the Mayo Peninsula with its hard working people of proud spirit. Personal interviews and a section of vignettes entitled "Memories" give the history charm. Mullins says she "had a ball" talking to older Mayo residents, and wanted to give something back to them.

Mullins’ sister calls her a "late bloomer.” But Mullins herself says she’s "coming into her own," which just happens to be the title she’s chosen for her next book — now in progress.

Get your copy at the Mayo Food Center, Lou’s Stop Shop or your local library. Or order for $33.24 from Mullins at P.O. Box 23, Riva, MD 21140.

—MLF

A Fifth-Generation Washingtonian’s First-Person Encounter with History

When local and family history intersects, each enriches our understanding and appreciation of the other.

When I explored my own Washington, D.C. family

roots, I discovered several earlier generations of Irish and German ancestors largely unknown to my own parents. That these ancestors had walked the same Capitol Hill and Georgetown streets as I had struck me personally. Pouring through aging civil and church records, I not only discovered their existence but also reveled in the knowledge that we had prayed in the same churches, climbed the same city stairs, boated across the same river.

Researching my own family roots also revealed a small but fascinating footnote to local history. Advancing to what would become the First Battle of Bull Run, Federal troops crossed from D.C. into Virginia, yanked down the secessionist flag of the Confederacy at Fairfax Courthouse, and burned the nearby village of Jermantown to the ground. An "ordinary" or tavern operated there by my great, great grandfather, Hezekiah Jerman, was among the buildings burned.

I made that discovery reading old newspapers on microfilm to learn more about the Civil War in our area. The newspaper headline that proclaimed "Exciting War News" proved as exciting to me some 135 years later. From census records I learned that Hezekia's two sons fought on opposite sides in this bloody war between the states, each attaining rank and honor, each following their own conscience. Learning that my ancestors were part of local history gave me my own personal connection to history and made me thirsty to learn more.

—MLF

Doing It Yourself? How to Get Started

1. Choose a topic; keep it focused.

2. Research; explore resources: libraries, historical societies, public and church records, maps, memoirs, newspapers, photographs. Computers can link you on-line to other people who, sharing your interests, can further your search.

3. Conduct interviews: listen well, resist judgment, record carefully.

4. Write narrative: Determine your purpose. Devise and follow a structure. Use plenty of details, but keep them subordinated to the big picture. Be honest and impartial.

5. Get in print: Desk-top publishing means you can prepare your book for publication yourself, typesetting and designing it. Or pay to have a professional do it for you.

6. Seek support to defray expenses. Use your imagination: consider civil groups, churches, historical societies.

Weekend Sidetrips to Local History

Here are three ways to spend the weekend learning more:

• Black Life at London Town

Fri. Oct. 18-Black life in London Town — the daily lives of slaves, the role of free blacks, the entrepreneurial activities and the emergence of African-American craftspeople — comes to life in the words of Christy Matthews, director of African-American Interpretations and Presentations for Colonial Williamsburg. 7pm at London Town Visitors Center, Edgewater. All places may be taken, so Call Ahead: 410/222-1919.

• Tuskegee Airmen Book Signings

Sun. Oct. 20–Jacqueline Harris wrote the book that made these airmen famous. She and two other Tuskegee authors introduce and sign their books. Get your signed copies of Harris’ The Tuskegee Airmen plus Ruth Bates-Harris’ autobiography Harlem Princess and old friend LeRoy Battle’s autobiography, Easier Said. 2pm at the Officers’ Club at Bolling Airforce Base in Washington, D.C.: 703/777-1687.

• Historic African-American Sites in Annapolis

The Historic Annapolis Foundation's African-American Heritage Walking Tour tells about 15 African-American sites in historic Annapolis through the eyes and experiences of its black residents, including the first African-American elected to public office in the state; a founder of Anne Arundel General Hospital; the physician who performed the first successful surgery of the human heart; and the first man to reach the North Pole. Get cassettes and earphones at HAF's Welcome Center and Museum Store at 77 Main St.