Maryland State Archives

The Maryland State Archives will be hosting a Community Preservation Day on July 17th from 10:00am to 2:00pm in Annapolis, MD. Through this program, we invite members of the local community to preserve their documents, photos, and letters through digital imaging. Archivists will work with community members to describe and scan their items, so that they may take home both their original materials in free archival storage containers and receive the resulting digital copies as well. We ask that the participants also share digital copies of their items with the...

Please join us in celebrating Women's History Month and the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment and Women's Suffrage! For our March Lunch and Learn, we are welcoming Dr. Ida E. Jones who will discuss her latest book, Baltimore Civil Rights Leader Victorine Q. Adams: The Power of the Ballot. Dr. Jones will examine the life of Victorine Adams through her archival collection and address the importance of the archival record in contextualizing the life of the person. Please join us for this engaging talk. Registration: Please email...

Speaker: Dr. Edward Papenfuse, Retired State Archivist of Maryland What do the first fugitive returned under the infamous 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the daughter of an English convict destined for Annapolis have in Common? Focusing on the lives of two under appreciated Maryland residents, one of 19th Century Baltimore and the other of 18th Century Annapolis, former State Archivist Ed Papenfuse will lead the lunch and learn audience on his journey through local and British archives in search of their stories. Registration: Please email or call Emily Oland Squires to RSVP to...

Speaker: Dr. Richard Bell, University of Maryland College Park Join us for the first brown bag Lunch of Learn program of the new year. Professor Richard Bell from the University of Maryland History Department will discuss his new book, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home, a 2017 NEH Public Scholar Award winning publication. This is a gripping, true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to...

Speaker: Michelle Fitzgerald, Assistant Curator at Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood Museum. Stories of shifting attitudes about nature and its material uses are archived today in the objects in Homewood Museum’s collection. High-style tables that resulted in mass deforestation of the mahogany tree in the Caribbean, early nineteenth-century soup tureens that remain empty from overfishing in the Chesapeake all speak to ways in which Marylanders’ consumption habits, including Homewood’s Carroll family, had lasting global environmental impacts. Examining the ways in which the decorative arts both contributed to both the destruction and...

Sign-up for the next in person Brick Wall Session!! Get your appointment before it fills up! Appointments are 1 on 1 only, no group appointments. There will be two 30 minute appointments per genealogist during the second half of the session. Please do not sign up for those appointments unless you expect your question to take longer than the normal 20 minute appointment to handle. Also, given the nature of research, we cannot guarantee your problem will be completely solved in one day, if at all. However, the professional genealogists...

Get into the Halloween spirit with an hour of ghost stories, strange science, dark demises, eerie art, and more. The mysterious especially intrigues us this time of year, so join us in exploring the stranger side of Maryland history through our unique collections of the Maryland State Archives. Join Reference Archivist and Search Room Coordinator, Rachel Frazier, as she shares spooky stories from the depths of the stacks. Registration: Please email or call Emily Oland Squires to RSVP to this free event at [email protected] or 410-260-6443. Please note: A valid photo ID is required to enter the...

Come hear Franklin Robinson, Jr. tell how a skull found in 1982 on Serenity Farm in Benedict led to the discovery of a previously unknown group enslaved burial ground dating 1780-1810. Feel free to bring your lunch and your questions to this free program! Please note: A valid photo ID is required to enter the Archives building.

Speaker: Dr. Robert W. Schoeberlein, Baltimore City Archivist Want to know more about the largely untold story of Maryland Women and the Civil War home front? In commemoration of the Women's Suffrage Centennial, please join us for an overview of the wartime roles of women. Dr. Schoeberlein, the Acting Archivist of Baltimore, will examine activities that range from nursing care and charitable work to smuggling and spying, with a few female soldiers stories as well. You may have heard of the Cary sisters of “Maryland, My Maryland” fame but what...

Speaker: Allen Hafner, Howard County Police Department, Historian Calling all amateur sleuths and gumshoes! Join Howard County Police Department Historian and Forensic Consultant Allen Hafner for a presentation on the various types of law enforcement during Maryland’s Colonial Era. Mr. Hafner will all discuss Maryland’s early court system and describe the transition of both the courts and law enforcement during the growth of the colony and through the American Revolution. Join us in testing out your colonial detective skills. Feel free to bring your lunch and your questions to this free...