Love, romance, jealousy… Mt. Vernon is the home not only of great architecture but also of great love stories. After a six-year hiatus, historian Jamie Hunt is back with a tour of historic romance in Mt. Vernon this Sunday. What better way to gear up for Valentine’s Day? We hope you can join us!

Tour Information

Sunday, February 10, 2013
1:00 pm to 2:30 pm or 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm (tours are the same, choose just one)
Meet at 14 West Mt. Vernon Place (Agora / Marburg Mansion), Baltimore, MD 21201
RSVP today! $10 per person for Baltimore Heritage members / $20 for non-members

For two centuries, Mt. Vernon has seen spectacular love stories, bitter feuds, and more than a few juicy trysts. The neighborhood’s earliest days inlclude the patriot and Mt. Vernon landowner John Eager Howard marrying a charming young Philadelphian, Harriet Chew, after her first love was hanged for treason in a plot that involved Benedict Arnold. Fast forward 200 years and Mt. Vernon saw a 20th century gradutate of its Baltimore School for the Arts, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, fall in love with and marry another noted Philadelphian, actor Will Smith.

In between these two sets of lovers are the royal tales of Betsy Patterson Bonaparte, who died wealthy but bitter in Mt. Vernon years after an annulled marriage to Napoleon’s brother Jerome, and Bessie Wallis Warfield, who was christened in a neighborhood church (just across the street from where Betsy died) and grew up to become the Duchess of Windsor. Not to be outdone by royalty, some of Baltimore’s most storied authors have ties to Mt. Vernon along with their beautful, sad marriages, including Edgar Allan Poe, H.L. Mencken, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. And of course the rich and famous of Baltimore’s Gilded Age include more than a few with offbeat love lives. Please join us and historian Jamie Hunt as we uncover historic loves won and lost in Baltimore’s great Mt. Vernon neighborhood.