Category: Education

Our education programs include technical assistance to property owners, heritage education around the Civil War Sequicentennial and the Bi-Centennial of the War of 1812, and our ongoing Race and Place in Baltimore Neighborhoods project.

July 30, 2014

Registration now open for Bmore Historic unconference and a game jam with THATCamp Games

Do you work at a museum or library? Volunteer for your neighborhood design review committee or preservation commission? Teach history at a local public school or college? Then we invite you to join us for Bmore Historic unconference at the Maryland Historical Society on Friday, October 10!

Bmore Historic is a unique opportunity to connect with students, scholars and professionals in public history and historic preservation for discussions, workshops and creative presentations on the issues that you care about.

How do we know you will like Bmore Historic? Because you set the agenda! Bmore Historic is an unconference where participants work together to propose the topics, set the schedule and facilitate the sessions throughout the day. An unconference is an alternative to a typical professional or academic conference where the schedule is set months in advance. Participants share session ideas online before the event and the schedule isn’t set until morning of October 10. Session leaders are encouraged to facilitate a conversation, not deliver a PowerPoint presentation! Registration is only $10 for students and $15 for professionals including breakfast and lunch.

Bmore Historic is also a great opportunity to build skills thanks to volunteer-led workshops running throughout the day. We are currently planning workshops on topics including managing digital archives and new approaches to engaged scholarship. Please let us know if there is a topic, skill or tool you want to see included.

This year, we’re especially excited to share a fun program for anyone interested in exploring the intersections of history, education, and games: the Bmore Historic Game Jam. The game jam will be a lively and experimental dive into the potential of games to bring history to life in new ways organized in partnership with THATCamp Games – an unconference on humanities, technology, games, and learning taking place at the Baltimore Harbor Hotel on October 11-12.

Learn more about Bmore Historic 2014 or get in touch with questions or suggestions. Registration for Bmore Historic and THATCamp Games is now open so sign up soon!

July 17, 2014

News: Baltimore Heritage, telling our stories

Baltimore Heritage, telling our stories, Humanities Connection, WYPR, July 17, 2014.

Eli Pousson, Director of Preservation and Outreach at Baltimore Heritage shares his perspective on heritage and preservation and tells us how digital platforms have expanded the number of stories they can tell about Charm City.

January 22, 2014

[Baltimore 1814: January 16-22] “this morning presents a most violent Snow Storm” and more familiar stories

1814 is much like the present in many ways. Women became mothers, men became grandparents, and others passed away leaving family behind. Here are two births and one death we’re remembering this week:

Wendell Bollman was born at his father’s bakery on Water Street. Bollman grew up to become the “Master of the Road” for the B&O Railroad, famed for his iron bridges.
With the birth of Ramsay McHenry, James McHenry, the namesake of Fort McHenry, became a grandfather. At the beginning of 1814, the elder McHenry suffered an attack of paralysis that left him home-bound in West Baltimore.
John Henry Fusselbaugh, a dealer in building materials and resident of Old Town on East Street, died. He was survived by his wife Barbara and his 13-year-old son.

Missed last week’s update? Don’t forget to check out our story on Robert Mills and his “book of designs” for Baltimore’s Washington Monument.

American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, January 17, 1814

January 15, 2014

[Baltimore 1814: January 8-15] “Cloudy morning,” a “book of designs” for the Washington Monument, and Baltimore at Sea

Courtesy Drew Peslar, Smithsonian.

This week’s Baltimore 1814 stories include much more than just news about the “cloudy morning” of January 15, 1814:

33-year-old architect Robert Mills submitted a “book of designs” to the Board of Managers of the Washington Monument with a dozen drawings and a letter staking his claim to the title of “first American architect.”
Nathan Levering and the Baltimore Manufactory Company advertised to hire a blacksmith, wood turner, weaver and a “complete Mule Spinner” to work at the Powhatan Cotton Works (built along the Gwynns Falls in 1811).
Joseph Sterett, commander of Maryland’s Fifth Regiment, lost a $2500 check made out by Thomas Tenant, a wealthy major in Maryland’s Sixth Regiment. What was the check for and how was it lost? Let us know if you have a theory!

Read on for a few items from one of our newest themes: Baltimore At Sea – featuring the stories of seamen, shipbuilders, privateers and the United States Navy. Thanks to volunteer Dennis Lilly for his help in launching this new series!

Missed last week? Check out last week’s update or go read the story of Jean Pierre Morel de Guiramand, a refugee from the Haitian Revolution, received a patent a new “power loom” on January 7, 1814.

January 8, 2014

[Baltimore 1814] “Frozen for a week” & more stories from January 1 to January 8, 1814

Brrr! Weathering the “polar vortex” this week certainly encouraged our interest in Captain Henry Thompson’s daily journal entries on Baltimore’s weather. On January 7, 1814, Thompson recorded:

“7th – Fine day, and having Frozen for a week past, commenc’d filling my Ice House, haul’d 21 loads today with two Carts from Herring Run Went to Town return’d to Dinner”

Over the past week of 1814, Baltimore has been hauling ice and more:

The Wardens of the Port of Baltimore called a public meeting for property owners around Oakum Bay: a “sink of putrefaction” where the Living Classroom Marina is located today.
Sheriff John Chalmers advertised an auction to sell off property confiscated from James Hamilton: “A negro Woman named Ledda, with 2 small female children, slaves for life.”
Jean Pierre Morel de Guiramand, one of many of former French colonists who fled Saint-Domingue for Baltimore at the beginning of the Haitian Revolution,received a patent a new “power loom.”

If you missed last week’s update, go back and check out the New Year’s Day reflections of Baltimore newspapermen William Pechin and Hezekiah Niles. Find more background on the history of the city in the early 1800s and our Baltimore 1814 project.

Knowles Light Fancy Power-Loom, ca. 1787