Lunch & Learn: Maryland’s Jews & Military Service

One of Maryland few Jewish Revolutionary War veterans, Elias Pollock was a successful businessman in Baltimore during the early 1800s until his son-in-law bankrupted him. Over the course of his life, Pollock took great pains to identify himself as a Jew at a time when doing so was a political act.

The story of Jewish settlement in Baltimore in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is typically told through the lives of the city’s most prominent residents. This talk explores Pollock’s military career and the history of Jewish settlement in Maryland, examining new understandings of the composition of Baltimore’s small but influential Jewish community.

Owen Lourie is a Research Archivist at the Maryland State Archives specializing in Maryland government and military history during the colonial era and early republic. He holds an M.A. in history from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a B.A. from Kenyon College in American Studies. He is currently at work on a social history of the Maryland Line, chronicling the soldiers of the Maryland 400 during the Revolutionary War.

ASL interpretation will be available for attendees.