While historians learn about the past in many ways, one of the most exciting can be reading letters that were penned long ago. You never know what these private communications from another age are going to reveal or where they’re going to come from. Sometimes these pieces of paper have been stashed away in a…
Category: War of 1812
“Often in the Dead of Night” — Untold Stories of Everyday People During the War of 1812
When war came to the shores of the Chesapeake, what was it like for everyday citizens and local militiamen, as well as slaves, freedmen, and women? That question was examined in a program on Feb 1st at Harford Community College, as I drew on original stories of underrepresented groups and the narratives of everyday people…
Reconstructing a Community’s Past as a Consulting Public Historian
For most of 2011, I’ve been doing fieldwork to document the public history of Havre de Grace around the time the British burned the town in May 1813. To aid in understanding this era, I just completed a study of the population and demographic characteristics of the community in the first third of the 19th…
Two New Programs on the War of 1812 as Part of the 200th Anniversary Speakers Bureau Series
In conjunction with the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the Maryland Humanities Council is offering a special speakers bureau series focusing on that conflict. I am pleased to be selected to serve as one of the presenting scholars. Here are the descriptions of my two programs: Spread the News: The War of 1812 on the…