March Virtual Lunch and Learn – A Maryland Mosaic for the U.S. 250th Anniversary: Finding the Historical Pieces to Create a Dynamic Picture of Maryland

Think of your personal firsts: first kiss, first car, first dress-up clothes. Maryland has plenty of firsts of its own. Our state has a unique geography, a special role as a border state, and a proximity to the nation’s capital, all of which has given it an outsized importance in American history.

The Maryland Four Centuries Project has curated a collection of the state’s firsts, creating the Maryland Mosaic, a picture capturing Maryland’s role in the American experiment. The Maryland Mosaic has collected more than 130 people, places, events, objects, documents and structures, representing all of the state’s 23 counties and Baltimore City, covering every decade from 1776 to the present.

In 2026, Maryland will join the other 49 states to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary. As it approaches, the Maryland Mosaic will explore and interpret a small state with a big history.

Burt Kummerow began his history career studying Rome and Greece at the University of Maryland, College Park, but moved on to early America when he discovered it was a more fertile field than ancient history. After his graduate work, he helped found the living history movement in the United States and was a writer and popular speaker, as well as a producer for Maryland Public Television. He has been director of three important Maryland museums: Historic St. Mary’s City, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick (Founding Director) and the Maryland Historical Society (now the Maryland Center for History and Culture). As the president of Historyworks, Inc., a Maryland-based historical consultancy, he was a multi-faceted public historian with a wide range of skills and experience to bring history to the general public. He is the author and co-author of five books and many articles. In 2018, he became the founding director of the Maryland’s Four Centuries Project, laying the groundwork for commemorations of the 250th anniversary of American independence and beyond.