Maryland’s most famous witch: The Blair Witch… on VHS. The Blair Witch Project & The Curse of the Blair Witch, Moving Image Collection, MdHS.

The perilous waters of the Atlantic Ocean condemned Maryland’s first witch. The Charity of London set sail for the New World in 1654 from England with her crew and small group of passengers looking to settle the new colony. Mary Lee was one such passenger, but she never set foot on Maryland’s shores.

Travelers knew that the trip across the ocean was a dangerous endeavor, but this crossing proved particularly hazardous. Choppy seas and violent winds plagued the Charity of London’s journey from the start. An attempt to make land in Bermuda had failed due to crosswinds, “and the Ship grew daily more leaky almost to desperation and the Chiefe Seamen often declared their Resolution of Leaving her if an opportunity offered it Self….”(1) The passengers and crew grew more agitated as the ship weakened and the weather refused to yield. Rumor took hold amongst the crew that a witch had conjured the storms. Father Francis Fitzherbert, a Jesuit traveling to Maryland aboard the Charity, recalled the sailors reasoning that the foul weather “was not on account of the violence of the ship or atmosphere, but the malevolence of witches.”(2)

The sailors decided that Mary Lee was that witch and petitioned the captain to put the woman on trial. The storms delayed the proceedings, so two seamen decided to take matters into their own hands. They seized Lee and searched her body for the Devil’s markings. They found a damning mark—a protruding teat from which the Devil and his familiars could supposedly feed—a well-known sign of witchcraft at the time. She was subsequently hanged and her corpse and belongings dumped overboard. The Charity landed in St. Mary’s City, Maryland worse for wear but in one piece and without a witch.

Accounts of witchcraft, such as the story of Mary Lee, were common in the 17th century. An anti-witch hysteria had recently swept across Europe, and the English crown enacted several statutes criminalizing sorcery. The Devil and black magic were real and present dangers in everyday life, and witches could summon that dark power with the mere mumbling of a curse.

These old world superstitions and religious convictions immigrated with the colonists. Witchcraft left an indelible mark on Maryland’s early court cases and became embedded in local folklore. Maryland never saw witch hunts on the scale of Salem, Massachusetts, but men and women alike were accused and convicted of witchcraft. Sources vary on the exact number of prosecutions, but only about 12 people were brought to trial over a hundred year period, compared to 19 executed in Salem in 1692 alone.

Text from Violl’s trial documents. Notice that she was “seduced by the devill wickedly & diabolically….” “Witchcraft, trials for, in Maryland. [manuscript] : Document, 1702/3 1712,” MS 2018, MdHS. (Click to enlarge.)

Accusations of witchcraft often arose from town disputes. These cases typically unfolded in the same manner. An argument would erupt between neighbors, and shortly thereafter one of the begrudged would fall mysteriously ill or his or her chickens would be suspiciously killed one night. Such is the story of the last witch ever tried in Maryland—Virtue Violl of Talbot County. Violl found herself on trial in 1715 in Annapolis after a quarrel with a fellow spinster, Elinor Moore. Moore accused Violl of cursing her tongue, which rendered her unable to speak. The jury however was not convinced of her guilt and acquitted her of all charges. Falsely accused witches were not without recompense. They could sue for defamation of character, and a few were awarded damages, which was often a few hundred pounds of tobacco.

Moll Dyer Rock, not dated. (not part of MdHS collection)

While few witches met their untimely end in Maryland, local folklore is rife with legends of evil sorceresses and superstitious antidotes for bewitchments. Glass bottles containing sharp objects, such as pins, and urine were buried under the entrance of a home to prevent a witch from entering the property or cursing its inhabitants. These so-called witch bottles have been unearthed in archaeological digs across the state. The urine “was the most important ingredient in witch bottles, as it is the agent with which the spell is turned back upon the witch.”(4) They were also buried upside down to reverse the black magic. Another trick to keep witches at bay was to place a broomstick across the threshold of a home’s entrance. A witch supposedly could not exit the dwelling without counting the broom’s bristles, thus revealing his or her identity.

Many tales of witches have surfaced over the years. Each county seems to have its own wicked woman who tortured the innocent townspeople and met a gruesome death for it. The legend of Moll Dyer out of Leonardtown in St. Mary’s County has endured the centuries. The details of Dyer’s story have changed and been embellished over time, but all accounts agree that in February of 1697 she was chased from her home by torch-bearing townsfolk. She fled into the woods where she froze to death after cursing the town. Dyer died kneeling upon a rock, which still bears the imprint of her hands and knees and can be viewed in front of Leondardtown’s circuit courthouse.

The dreaded book on display at MdHS. “The Blair Witch Cult,” blairwitch.com

No story about witchcraft in Maryland would be complete without mentioning the Blair Witch. The Blair Witch, Elly Kedward, terrorized the town of Blair, now Burkittsville, during the late 1700’s and was executed for her crimes. The following year, her accusers as well as many of the town’s children disappeared without explanation, and as a result the town was abandoned. Other weird happenings continue to plague the area and are attributed to the restless spirit of Kedward. The frightening occurrences culminated with the disappearance of three student filmmakers who visited the town to investigate the haunting. The footage found from their exploit was released as the film, The Blair Witch Project.

The legend of Kedward and the associated murders was, of course, pure fabrication. The Blair Witch Project holds a special place in our hearts here at the library, because of a connection, albeit false, to our collection. The film claimed that The Blair Witch Cult, a book published in 1809 which recounted the tale of the town doomed by Kedward’s curse, was held at MdHS and even featured in a exhibit. The movie’s website points out that the book was returned to private hands before the film was released but that didn’t stop curious moviegoers from inquiring about the dreaded book. Our wonderful reference librarian, Francis O’Neill,  fielded phone calls about the fictitious tome from all over the country and even from as far away as Belarus for many years after the movie came out. Each time, he would kindly and dutifully explain that book was entirely made up for the movie and never resided in our library. The movie itself is now a part of our growing Maryland-related film collection, along the films of John Waters and other local filmmakers. But please for Mr. O’Neill’s sanity, please don’t call about the Blair Witch! (Lara Westwood)

 Sources and Further Reading:

(1):Alison Games, Witchcraft in Early North America (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) 133.

(2): William H. Cooke, “The Maryland Witch Trials.”

(3): Francis Neal Parke, “Witchcraft in Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 31 (1936):283.

(4):Rebecca Morehouse, “Witch Bottle.”

“Witchcraft, trials for, in Maryland. [manuscript] : Document, 1702/3 1712,”  MS 2018, MdHS.

THEN: Flag seamstresses circa 1964. PP5 Women making replica of Star-Spangled Banner for New York World’s Fair, Box 2, MdHS.

NOW: Flag seamstresses circa today. Star-Spangled Banner Project, July 2013.

For the past few weeks, the MdHS campus has been teaming with dedicated volunteers working diligently on the Star-Spangled Banner Project. The project seeks to recreate Mary Pickersgill’s efforts to sew the 30 x 42 foot flag for Fort McHenry in a mere six weeks–all by hand. The replica will be flown at Fort McHenry during the Defenders Day celebration before visiting various locations around the state.

Little did we in the library realize that a similar endeavor was undertaken 50 years ago. In February 1964, over 100 stitchers and seamstresses began work making a replica flag to be displayed at the Maryland Pavilion of the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.  The exposition was scheduled to run April through October in 1964 and ’65, respectively. This flag project, overseen by the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House Association, was plagued with difficulties and soon became a PR nightmare. First, it was discovered that the Maryland Pavilion at the fair had no room for such a large banner. Officials worried that there might be no place large enough to display it. The commission appealed to the United States Pavilion at the fair who, after learning of the embarrassing publicity, agreed to take it without knowing whether its space could accommodate the flag either. The Maryland seamstresses began to doubt their flag would ever make the trip to New York.

But, Maryland officials truly wanted to fly their own flag at their own pavilion. The decision was made to erect a 75-foot pole in front of their pavilion and move the flag indoors—folded and encased—in the event of bad weather. A June 6 piece in The Baltimore Sun explained how the commission decided to decline the federal bail out “with appreciation.” The following day, which happened to be Flag Day and Maryland Day the the fair, Governor Tawes dedicated the replica at a brief ceremony. The ’64 flag currently resides at the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House at 844 East Pratt Street.

The Hutzer Photograph Collection, as with many of our collections, is chock full of such strange or incongruent, but delightful, discoveries. We expected to find pictures of the Hutzler family, the department store’s many locations, window and product displays—of which there are many. We did not expect to find this little time warp. But it’s not completely surprising that Hutzler’s would be involved in this type of project given their history of fabric and textile offerings. We must admit we can’t quite connect Hutzler’s with the project, so any information would much appreciated.

What’s stranger still is that we made this find at this moment in time. We’re happy to announce that the 2013 Star-Spangled Banner Project has run far more smoothly and seamlessly than its predecessor, so far. The project completed it Kickstarter campaign yesterday, raising over $10,000 in four weeks. Underbelly congratulates the 2013 stitchers and everyone involved.

THEN: These ladies didn’t know from Kickstarter. PP5 Replica of Star-Spangled Banner for New York World’s Fair, M.E. Warren Photograpy, ca. 1964, MdHS.

Now: Placing the stars. Star-Spangled Banner Project, July 2013.

*The Hutzler Photograph Collection is currently being reprocessed. The finding aid currently online, created in 2000, reflects only a small portion of the collection. Please check back in the coming months for a more accurate inventory list.

Sources

The Baltimore Sun, February 18, 1964: 6; April 30, 1964: 48; and June 6, 1964: 13.

Robert Kniesche at work.
Baltimore Colts vs Detroit Lions, October 2, 1961, Associated Press, PP79.2376, MdHS.(reference photo – copyright owned by the Associated Press)

When longtime Baltimore Sun photographer Robert Kniesche died in 1976, a colleague praised him as “one of the best cameramen The Baltimore Sun ever knew.”(1) Although far more obscure than his famous contemporary at The Sun, Aubrey Bodine, Kniesche left behind a body of photographic work that stands among the best produced by a Marylander photographer.

Born in Baltimore in 1906, Kniesche recognized his calling early on, and he left Baltimore Polytechnic Institute without graduating to pursue a career as a photographer. In the mid 1920s, The Baltimore Sun hired Kniesche on as a news photographer, his first stint with the newspaper. Kniesche joined the staff a few years after Bodine, who at the time was a commercial photographer for the paper.

Kniesche and Bodine became fast friends and often traveled around Baltimore together on picture-taking excursions. Together, they snapped photographs of many of the same subjects that would bring both of them acclaim later in their careers: images of the city at night, the harbor, and Baltimore industry. They were also drinking buddies. The pair, joined by Raleigh Carroll, a Sun reporter and Bodine’s housemate at the time, and another Sun photographer Leigh Sanders, lived “high and well on their $40 and $50-a-week salaries”(2) In the prohibition years of the 1920s, they frequented the various speakeasies in the area around Park Avenue where Bodine lived. Every year they would attend the annual Bal des Arts, a wild, costume themed party held by Charcoal Club, Baltimore’s historic art club established in 1885. According to one Bodine biographer, “a day or two before the ball they would get a supply of gin from the busy bootleggers. Bodine and Kniesche carried their gin and juice in two suitcases. They would meet in the basement of the Charcoal Club on Preston street to apply their makeup and start ‘to get a package on,’ an expression in those days for getting drunk.”(3) Over the course of their long careers, the two often found themselves in friendly competition in local and national photograph competitions.

Kniesche left The Baltimore Sun for a brief period in the late 1920s to work for the Chicago Tribune. He returned though in 1930, and aside from four years spent in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a pilot and flying instructor, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander, Kniesche remained with the Baltimore paper for the next 40 years. In 1947 Kniesche organized the photographic department of the Sun owned WMAR-TV, the first television station in Maryland, and shot the first local films shown on the station. When he retired in 1971, he had been the chief of photography for The Sun’s morning, evening, and Sunday staffs for over two decades.

In 1957, the Press Photographer’s Association of Baltimore awarded Kniesche “Best in Show” for this photograph of the Ruxton train station. It was his second win in a row. The organization praised Kniesche in it’s annual publication: “Bob has always been known for his excellent aerial pictures but we’ll guarantee he rates tops in making Pictorial pictures as well.”
“Ruxton Station” (Whistle Stop, U.S.A.), 1957, Robert Kniesche, pp79.1466, z24-00611, MdHS.

As a photojournalist for Maryland’s leading newspaper, Kniesche documented virtually everything newsworthy, from presidential inaugurations, National Football League games, and aerial shows, to the opening of the oyster dredging season and city architecture. One of his early assignments after returning to Baltimore from Chicago in 1930 was to photograph the aftermath of Maryland’s first lynching since 1911.  On December 4, 1931, Matthew Williams, an African-American man accused of murdering his white employer, was lynched on the front lawn of the Salisbury courthouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Kniesche was with a group of reporters and photographers sent by The Sun to cover the event. In his memoirs, H.L. Mencken, Kniesche’s co-worker at the newspaper, wrote that, “all the reporters who were sent to Salisbury from the home office were threatened with violence and one of the photographers, Robert F. Kniesche, was saved from rough handling, and maybe even murder, only by escaping in an airship.”(4) Kniesche would go on to photograph the famed journalist on many occasions over the following decades.

Like Bodine, Kniesche was an artist and master craftsman. One reviewer noted that he seemed “to have made a fetish of focus, [delighting] in knife-edge precision.”(5) Both photographers had an affinity for certain subject matter and many photos that Kniesche took could be easily be mistaken for Bodine’s and vice versa: duck hunters silhouetted against an early morning sky; blast furnaces spewing out flames at Bethlehem steel; oyster tongers on the Chesapeake. Kniesche was particularly renowned for his aerial photographs and photographic essays. One award winning series of his photographs that accompanied a 1949 series of Sun articles entitled “Maryland’s Shame the Worst Story the Sunpapers ever told” helped expose the deplorable conditions then rampant in Maryland’s state mental health facilities to the general public.

Kniesche was also very fond of animals and images of baboons, tigers, monkeys, and especially house cats, can be found throughout the collection of his photographs at the Maryland Historical Society. In his obituary, The Sun noted that Kniesche’s images of animals were executed “with an often sensitive and humorous approach to their expressions, habits postures and activities.”(6) He often posed his subjects in amusing positions accompanied by a humorous caption.

Kittens…in jars.
Kittens in Jars, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79(unprocessed), MdHS.

His photographs won many awards and were exhibited both nationally and abroad as far away as Helsinki, Finland. His work was shown in cultural institutions throughout Maryland, including the Peale Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Kniesche rarely sold any of his prints, preferring to give them away to friends

The Maryland Historical Society has over 7,000 negatives and prints that Kniesche took over the course of his career. Most of these are part of  PP79, the Robert Kniesche Photograph Collection. At this point, 5,000 of the film and glass plate negatives are available to the public. The remaining 2,000 prints  are currently being processed and should be available by the fall of 2013.(Damon Talbot)

Click on the slideshow below to see more of Robert Kniesche’s photographs.

Packed house at Memorial Stadium for the 1958 All-Star Game.

All star game, Memorial Stadium, July 8, 1958, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1314, MdHS.

Kniesche took a number of photographs of “the Block,” the stretch of Baltimore Street which has served as the city’s adult entertainment center for over a century, documenting the various strip clubs, burlesque shows, penny arcades, and tattoo parlors.

Tattoo parlor on the Block, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP567.2, MdHS.

Musical entertainment on the Block.

Band in a club on the Block, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.567.3, MdHS.

The Crown Cork and Seal Company was founded in 1892 by William Painter soon after he patented the ‘crown cork,’ the first bottle cap. Located on the corner of Eastern Ave and Kresson Street in Canton, the company was producing half the world’s supply of bottle caps by the 1930s. Kniesche captured this image of a fire that began when two storage sheds containing 3000 bales of raw cork ignited.

Fire at Crown Cork and Seal, Baltimore, November 8, 1930, Robert Kniesche, PP79.17, MdHS

“Water Ballet on Ann Street” - Kniesche won 1st Honor award in the Peale Museum’s 19th Annual Photo show for this 1960 photograph.

“Water Ballet on Ann Street,” Robert Kniesche, 1960, MC4028, MdHS.

Bethlehem Sparrows Point Shipyard in 1940.

Bethlehem shipbuilding, Sparrows Point, April 7, 1940, Robert Kniesche, PP79.324, MdHS.

In May of 1956 Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus’ last outdoor show in Baltimore under canvas tent was held at Herring Run Park. The show featured such performers as Glenn Pulley, the “Thin Man,” who weighed 62 pounds; Ella Mills, the 586-pound "Fat Lady" from Wisconsin; Harry Doll, a 30-inch, 38-pound 44-year-old who was known as the "World's Smallest Man.", a “Human Corkscrew,” and of course, clowns.

Clown, Barnum & Bailey Circus, last outdoor show in Baltimore, May 1956, Robert Kniesche, PP79.390.1, MdHS.

"Night Brakeman," 1957.

Brakeman, 1957, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1186, MdHS.

Alongside his pictorial and journalistic work, Kniesche produced a large number of abstract images, often marked by high contrast, such as this 1970 shot of a ship’s gangway taken through a fish-eye lens.

Fisheye on ship gangway, April 13, 1970, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1398, MdHS

Kniesche titled this image of an unusual piggyback ride, "Don't you hit him."

"Don't You Hit Him," undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.2419, MdHS.

H. L. Mencken having his bust done.

H.L. Mencken, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79-1828, Negative#32, MdHS.

Like his fellow Baltimore Sun photographer Aubrey Bodine, one of Kniesche’s favorite photographic subjects was the sea, and he produced some of his most picturesque work when he turned his camera to the water. One admirer described a Kniesche photograph of log canoes on the Chesapeake as “one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen – and much more beautiful than anything in the Louvre in Paris.”

Oyster Boats, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.2583, MdHS.

Footnotes:

(1) “Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976.

(2) Williams, Harold A., Bodine: A Legend in His Time (Baltimore: Bodine & Associates, Inc., 1971) p. 29.

(3) Ibid., p. 28.

(4) Mencken, H.L., edited by Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, Bradford Jacobs, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: a memoir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1994) p. 212.

(5) Johnson, Lincoln F., “Weekend by day: Kniesche photo exhibit at historical society,” The Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1978.

(6) “Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976

Sources and Further Reading:

An American Tragedy, Underbelly

Charcoal Club Records, MS 1792

Crown History

Crown Cork and Seal Photograph Collection, PP33

Darkroom – Robert Kniesche: A Life Devoted to Baltimore and Photography

Johnson, Lincoln F., “Weekend by day: Kniesche photo exhibit at historical society,” The Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1978.

“Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976.

Matt Williams, Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series)

Mencken, H.L., edited by Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, Bradford Jacobs, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: a memoir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1994)

Rasmussen, Fred, “Remember when circus shows took place under canvas Finale: the last time the big top was raised was in Baltimore was May 22, 1956 in Herring Run Park,” The Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1998.

Robert Kniesche Photograph Collection, PP79

Schoberlein, Robert W., “Maryland’s Shame”: Photojournalism and Mental Health Reform, 1935-1949,” Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 98, Spring 2003.

Williams, Harold A., Bodine: A Legend in His Time (Baltimore: Bodine & Associates, Inc., 1971)

One of Maryland’s most famous ice cream brands: Hendlers Creamery. Moses Advertising: Hendlers sign, Hughes Studio, 1955, PP30-225F-55, MdHS.

July in Maryland can be truly miserable. The temperature sizzles at over 100 degrees for days on end. Humidity weighs down the most ardent of breezes. Luckily for the sweaty masses, July is also National Ice Cream Month. So in honor of the vaunted occasion, here’s the scoop on the history of the frosty treat in Maryland.

Ice cream has always been a favorite summertime treat for Marylanders. Ice cream companies grew out of dairy businesses located across the state, and the country’s first ice cream factory was opened in Baltimore in 1851 by Jacob Fussell.

Fussell peddled dairy products in the city, but often found himself left with a surplus of cream.  Instead of letting the leftovers go to waste, he decided to make ice cream with it. He began to sell ice cream for 25 cents per quart, and Baltimoreans gobbled up his decadent yet inexpensive product. Ever the enterprising businessman, Fussell’s success inspired him to produce the sweet stuff on a commercial level. He founded the very first production facility at the intersection of Hillen and Exeter Streets in Baltimore and Maryland’s ice cream industry was born.*

One of Maryland’s most famous ice cream scions, Lionel Manuel Hendler, seized upon a similar opportunity when he founded Hendler Creamery Company in Baltimore. Hendler learned the dairy business from his father Isaac by working at the family-owned dairy store in East Baltimore, where he saw firsthand the popularity of ice cream. In 1905, at the young age of twenty, he decided to go into the ice cream business on his own and teamed with Louis Miller. The partners made the ice cream in the basement of Miller’s home and sold it to local stores. The product was a hit, and they soon moved production out of Miller’s house to a larger facility on Lloyd Street in East Baltimore. The business relationship between Hendler and Miller eventually fizzled, and in 1907, Hendler bought out Miller.

Hendler Creamery Co. building at 1100 East Baltimore Street. American Sugar Refinery, Domino Sugar tank truck, Hughes Company, 1955, PP30-144-51, MdHS.

Under Hendler’s tutelage, the ice cream company quickly outgrew the production capability at the Lloyd Street plant. In 1912, Hendler purchased a grand brick building at 1100 East Baltimore Street to serve as the company’s new headquarters. The Richardsonian Romanesque building, built in 1891, located near Baltimore’s Shot Tower, had many other lives before being converted into an ice cream factory. It had first been home to a powerhouse for the Baltimore City Passenger Railway Company, the oldest streetcar system in the city. When the streetcar company joined with the United Railways and Electric Company, it continued to operate as a powerhouse and trouble station.

The streetcar company eventually sold the building to the American Amusement Company, when the cable and pulley system that operated the streetcars was replaced with electricity. Architect Jackson C. Gott transformed the building into a lavish theater that could seat 2,000 people. The Convention Hall, as it came to be called, ran a variety of entertainments, including exhibitions, vaudeville acts, and theatrical performances. Carl Hagenbeck’s circus performed for a period of time at the Hall, spurring his rival Frank Bostock to bring his own show to the city as well.

The building changed hands several times over the next few years, though it remained a theater, operating under the names the Bijou Theatre, Baltimore Theatre, and the Princess Theatre. Vaudeville, operas, theatrical plays, silent films were all played and performed at the location. Its years as a Yiddish language theater, appealing to East Baltimore’s significant and growing Jewish population, proved the most successful, but even that was short lived. Only the Hendlers Creamery would stay in the building for more than just a few years. In fact, it served as an ice cream production plant until the 1980’s.

From its new headquarters on Baltimore Street, Hendlers ice cream grew into an iconic brand. Horse-drawn wagons delivered the frosty confection for many years until they were replaced by a fleet of trucks. After the switch, some of the horses remained loyal employees. Hendler’s son, Albert, recalled the return of one such horse, “We had sold some of our horses to Western Maryland Dairy. One afternoon in comes one of them pulling a wagon loaded with milk. It had come home. (1)”

Ice cream truck drawn by horse–Hendler Creamery, Hughes Company, 1941, PP30-54226, MdHS

Refrigerated delivery trucks further expanded the business. The trucks could be spotted crisscrossing the state, delivering ice cream to more and more stores. They were emblazoned with the slogans: “The Velvet Kind” and “Take home a brick.” The angelic, little kewpie became the symbol of the brand, and advertisements featured the chubby cherub enjoying a bowl of Hendler’s ice cream. The ice cream was virtually everywhere in Maryland, as it was distributed to over 400 stores at the company’s peak, which kept the production lines humming. The factory ran six days a week with vanilla ice cream being made almost everyday.

Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry were production mainstays, but the creamery dabbled in more exotic flavors as well. Hutzler’s department store sold several varieties, including ginger and peppermint. For the Southern Hotel, Hendlers supplied a tomato sorbet which was served as a side dish rather than dessert. The eggnog ice cream produced each year at Christmastime, which  Hendler made with real rum, was a major hit. The factory also cranked out other holiday-themed products, such as an Independence Day treat made with vanilla, strawberry, and blueberry ice creams and a Mother’s Day cake topped with a silk screen of James McNeill Whistler’s portrait of his mother.

With all of the inventive flavors being churned out at his company, one would have expected Hendler himself to be a great lover of ice cream. But, this wasn’t the case, as his son Albert recounted: “As a child I remember Dad bringing home each day a couple of pints of ice cream of different flavors….Since he wasn’t a big ice cream eater, we’d do the tasting for him, and if a flavor wasn’t up to par we’d let him know in no uncertain terms. Someone was sure to catch hell the next day.(2)”

Hendler’s true passion lay in innovating and improving sanitation in the food production industry. The factory at Baltimore Street was fully automated. He invented and patented several machines that limited human contact with the product and developed one of the first air conditioning systems to keep the building cool. The delivery horses and their stable brought unwanted pests into the factory which forced him to close off the building. This caused the plant to be too hot in the summer, so he devised a system that cooled the place by pushing air through ducts, thus creating rudimentary air conditioning. He also used only tuberculosis-free or pasteurized milk from the earliest days of the business to prevent the passage of bovine tuberculosis through his product, which at the time was an uncommon practice.

Hendler discovered that success has a price when he and his family became a target of criminals. Several extortion attempts were made to scare Hendler out of some of his fortune. On one occasion he received a note which threatened, “We will not try to kidnap you or your son; a few bullets from a passing automobile into your or your son’s car is one way of paying our unsatisfactory business debts. It will also serve as an example in our remaining business matters with our clients in Baltimore and Washington….(3)”

Most of these attempts were thwarted, but in 1932 three men succeeded in kidnapping young Albert. The kidnappers planned to extort $30,000 for his safe return. Hyman Goldfinger, Samuel Max Lipsizt, and Harry Surasky snatched Albert after a school dance at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a junior. Albert was blindfolded and driven to a house in Anne Arundel County, where the kidnappers questioned him about the possibility of securing a ransom for his release. Albert’s noncommittal answers gave the men cause for worry that they would not get any money after all. They began to argue about their next move. Goldfinger suggested that they kill the young man, convinced that their identities had been compromised, but the others didn’t want to escalate the situation. Surasky recalled the event at his trial: “[Goldfinger] insisted at first on choking him and then he took out his gun and wanted to blow his brains out. He already had his gun right near Hendler’s temple.”(4) They eventually decided to free Albert, so they dropped him off at the Hanover Street bridge. They took all the money he had in his pockets, but then reconsidered and gave him back a dollar for cab fare to get home.

Albert returned home shaken but relatively unharmed. He decided against reporting the incident to the police or his family. The kidnappers could have stopped there, but they decided to push their luck once again. Lipstiz sent a note demanding that Hendler send $7,500 to an address in New York City. Hendler agreed to do so but could not wire the cash, because of the Good Friday holiday. A second letter arrived with same stipulation, but the police were already on the case. He was apprehended, which led to arrest of his cohorts, all of which were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.

These events did not derail the Hendler family or the ice cream business. The Hendler Creamery Company continued to grow, and in 1929, the Borden Company purchased the company. It continued to operate under the Hendlers Creamery name until the late 1960′s. Hendlers, and later Borden’s, ice cream became household staples, known for its thick and creamy texture and wide variety of flavors.

*Some suggest that Fussell actually founded the first ice cream factory in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania. This does not appear to be true, because the York County town did not yet exist when Fussell began his business. He purchased milk from the local dairy farmers, which he had shipped to Baltimore via railroad. Fussell did own some land in the area, but he never built on the site.

Sources and Further Reading:

(1), (2): Albert Hendler and Amalie Ascher, “Ice Cream Days: Even Before Albert Hendler Started Working at the Plant, He Got a Taste of the Business at Home,” Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1981.

(3): Frederick M. Rasmussen, “Exhibit recalls Hendler kidnapping of 1933: Hopkins student and son of Baltimore creamery owner was freed unharmed after a day,” Baltimore Sun, June 20, 2013.

(4): “Suraksy Found Guilty in Hendler Plot,” Baltimore Sun, May 23, 1933.

Mary Bellis, “The History of Streetcars-Cable Cars.”

Edward N. Dodge, ed., “Hendler, L. Manuel,” in Encyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. XXXIII (New York: The American Historical Company, Inc., 1965), 403-405.

Charles Glatfelter, “Seven Valleys ice cream claims melt under scrutiny,” York Daily Record/York Sunday News, August 17, 2012.

Robert K. Headley, Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2006), 247-248.

Brennan Jensen, “I Scream, You Scream,” City Paper, April 29, 1998.

Jewish Museum of Maryland, Hendler’s Creamery Collection, MS 147.

Maryland Historical Trust, Hendler Creamery.

Gilbert Sandler, “Hendler’s: The Man, the Legend, the Ice Cream,” in Jewish Baltimore (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 87-89.

Since the film discovery came late, we didn’t have enough time to digitize it and add it to the previous post. This week it gets our full attention. The chilling footage captures the destruction and offers a view of the city most living Marylanders have never seen.

We initially suspected the footage was somehow affiliated with Stark Films, a bygone local production house. The addition of title cards to the homemade footage suggested a professional touch and, since MdHS holds a number of the company’s reels, it seemed a reasonable guess. We have since learned from newly found provenance records that the film was shot by S. Watts Smyth of St. Louis, Missouri, who may have had editing experience or at least access to a production house.

According to Bunny Connell, daughter of S. Watts Smyth, the family “spent each summer in Ocean City from 1926-’33.” Until 1933, the family made the more than 900-mile journey by train from St. Louis. However that August, they made the 15-hour drive in their new Cadillac LaSalle. This was the Smyth’s last summer spent in Ocean City before moving to Wyoming. Connell entrusted the film to MdHS in 1987.

This clip has been edited down to two minutes from the 11-minute original. To view the complete film or for more information about using or licensing it, please contact  specialcollections@mdhs.org

If you’d like to read some background about the storm check out the references in our previous post or read the following article from the Baltimore Sun. Enjoy! (Eben Dennis and Joe Tropea)

Temperance song written by Brother J. E. Snodgrass, M. D., tavern owner. Broadside, July 4, 1845, MdHS.

The American Temperance Society, organized in 1828, counted ten thousand groups within four years and reported upwards of 500,000 members. The Baltimore Temperance Society – the first in Maryland – organized in late 1829, and by the eve of the Civil War dozens of groups and thousands of people supported the promise of a sober republic, most visibly in Fourth of July activities such as parades and picnics.

Songs, stories, and poems in male-centered temperance literature salute the brotherly camaraderie, sobriety, and cold water—and uniformly condemn intemperance. Longtime temperance gadfly, Joseph Snodgrass* wrote a song for the Sons of Temperance “to be sung at their great jubilee in Baltimore, July 4, 1845.” This stanza from the Pledge Glee illustrates the austere character of the songs:

Temperance men, particularly the Sons, expressed a vibrantly patriotic identity, rich in the symbolism and rhetoric of American independence, one that they felt logically included freedom from alcohol. Many had rejected the habits and examples of the hard drinking Revolutionary generation, who sought companionship and exchanged radical ideas in taverns. Many in this younger generation declared independence from the tyranny of “King Alcohol” and from a masculine identity linked with drinking “ardent spirits” and wanted to create a patriotic identity of their own.

Are you ready to take the Pledge for genuine sobriety? Detail of Brother J.E. Snodgrass’s Temperance song.

Sons of Temperance officers and members, adorned themselves with patriotic regalia, “for a subordinate division, a white linen collar, with a rosette of red, white, and blue, with two white tassels suspended from the rosette.” Patriotism in antebellum America served as a civic religion for those who idealized the Founding Fathers and the still-new United States. “Residents of the young republic consecrated the state’s origin and made a fetish of the union that resulted.” This era saw the rise of the country’s state historical societies, a plethora of romantic paintings of the heroes, battles, and monuments of the Revolution, and a distinct American identity. Yet the meaning of patriotism varied between political and religious groups, all of whom incorporated their agendas and positions into grand public displays, particularly on the Fourth of July.

Liberation from the liquid tyrant made good copy in print and oratory, “Our fathers on that day threw off the shackles of British tyranny—their sons should scorn to permit themselves to be bound by the servile chains of intemperance.” Red, white, and blue regalia adorned proud breasts at public gatherings such as Fourth of July celebrations. On July 8, 1843, one older commentator noted that the “singularly striking” difference in recent Fourth of July celebrations and those of a “few years past [is] drinking.” In those bygone years, only those hearty enough to endure the “fatigue of a march and the danger of a carouse” participated in the honors paid to the day. “Now,” he noted, “children by the thousands, male and female, take the lead and learn . . . the lessons of sobriety and patriotism.” Yet in the not-so-distant-past, he recalled, only men who drank were considered patriotic. And this reflectively smug observer took care to mention the men who might drink throughout the year yet “take care not to disgrace the 4th.” In these few short sentences, the writer clearly articulated a changing expression of masculinity and pointedly mocked those who claimed genuine sobriety. Regardless of critics such as this one, the Fourth of July remained a popular public holiday for members of Maryland’s temperance societies.

King Alcohol and his Prime Minister by John Warner Barber, engraver. Date unknown, Library of Congress.

In Baltimore, Members of the Asbury Total Abstinence Society, the Old Wesley Temperance Sabbath School Society, and other “Temperance societies of Color” met at Mechanic’s Hall in Old Town and proceeded to Moschach’s Woods on the Bel Air Road, about three miles from the city. They spent the day singing with a choir, made up of singers from “different colored churches,” they prayed under the leadership of their president, Reverend Thomas Watkins, listened to addresses on the merits of total abstinence, and enjoyed a “delightful” dinner. There is no mention of patriotic rhetoric or pageantry as Baltimore’s free black community did not acknowledge white America’s liberty, choosing instead to commemorate Haitian independence on January 1st. This Fourth of July picnic spoke clearly of the group’s declaration of independence from alcohol.

In 1849, Sons across Maryland celebrated Independence Day. In addition to the Baltimore divisions gathering at Ryder’s Grove, where members sang a temperance song to the tune of “Oh Susannah!,” Sons gathered in Westminster, Carroll County, and processed to the Union Church where they opened the day’s festivities with a prayer, read the Declaration of Independence, and sang the “Ode to the Order.” Elkton Sons attracted 3,000 people to their parade, including members of the Northeast, Principio, and Susquehanna divisions. They too began the day with a prayer and a reading of the great document.

And 1862, the second summer of the Civil War, went by in much the same way as the previous year. Federal troops stationed in and around the city maintained control of a relatively quiet population, yet Baltimoreans celebrated the Fourth of July much as they had in the past, with picnics, excursions to the Eastern Shore, speeches, and fireworks. Thousands gathered at the Washington Monument, an “orderly” crowd, for a speech and a blessing. The largest number of people picnicked at “the great resort of the day,” Druid Hill Park, and “enjoyed plenty of pure water from its numerous springs.” Another group of families, “principally Germans,” had a picnic near Bel Air Road where “some were intoxicated, but with no disturbing results.” The reporter of this story linked drunkenness with ethnicity as had temperance reformers, and the majority of native-born citizens, from the earliest days of the reform’s activity. Those native-born picnickers, at Druid Hill Park this Fourth of July, drank only water, of course. (Dr. Patricia Dockman Anderson)

*In an ironic twist, Snodgrass owned and operated a tavern for about ten years. He inherited the business from his father but refused to continue to sell alcohol at the establishment. The business inevitably suffered, and he eventually sold the tavern. (http://www.eapoe.org/people/snodgrje.htm)

Dr. Patricia Dockman Anderson specializes in U.S and Maryland History, Nineteenth Century; Social and Cultural History; Catholic History; and Civil War Civilians. She has served as a member of the History Advisory Council for the Women’s Industrial Exchange, the Baltimore History Writers Group, and the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission. Dr. Anderson is the Director of Publications and Library Services for the Maryland Historical Society, editor of the Maryland Historical Magazine, and a professor at Towson University.

These people were having more fun than you are right now.
(click to enlarge)
Beach Scene, Ocean City, Md, Robert Kniesche, not dated, PP79.754, MdHS

How does the small underbelly editorial team cope with colleagues traveling to the beach, mountains, and parts unknown while we’re stuck here running the blog and tending to our many other duties? We travel vicariously through photographs and post cards! While real beach-goers are dealing with staggering crowds, the oppressive sun, crawling traffic, and marching through a sea of sticky popsicle wrappers on the way to the boardwalk, we’ll stay here in the air-conditioned library and take a little trip back in time…we really need a vacation.

For this week’s post we’ve decided to write the definitive history of Maryland’s favorite vacation spot, Ocean City. Not really…but please enjoy the slideshow of postcards below and a brief tale of the storm that altered the course of the city that, during the summer months, becomes Maryland’s second most populated town. (For those interested in Ocean City’s rich history,  please visit here or here. For further research, readers can check out Ocean City (volumes 1 and 2) by Nan Devincent-Hayes and John E. Jacob or City on the Sand by Mary Corddry.)

Greetings from Ocean City, Md, 1943, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

The Atlantic Hotel. The first Atlantic Hotel opened on July 4, 1875, regarded as the founding day of Ocean City. Located on Wicomico Street, it was destroyed by fire in 1925. The hotel was rebuilt in 1927 and still stands today. The New Atlantic Hotel, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Board Walk showing Atlantic Hotel and Pier, Ocean City, Md., ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Boardwalk and Beach and Cottage Line, Ocean City, Md, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Ocean City Pier and Boardwalk, Ocean City, Md, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Bathing hour on the beach, Ocean City, Md, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Originally called the Ocean City Life-Saving Station, the United States Coast Guard Station was built in 1891 by the U.S. Treasury Department for “the saving of vessels in distress and lives in peril upon the water.” In 1915 the U.S. Coast Guard took over the operations of the building until moving to a new facility in 1964. The building was relocated to its present location at 813 South Boardwalk in 1978 and converted to a museum. United States Coast Guard Station, ca 1940s, Ocean City, MD. Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Air View of Ocean City, Md., looking north from Inlet, 1947, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Greetings from Ocean City, Md, 1947, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Greetings from Ocean City, Maryland, 1944, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

One of the defining events in the history of the self-proclaimed “White Marlin Capital of the World” is the great storm of 1933, captured by A. Aubrey Bodine in the images below. On August 22 after four days of saturating rain, heavy winds picked up, battering the boardwalk, pummeling the city with large waves, and destroying the town’s railroad bridge and fishing camps. The storm’s greatest and most lasting impact was a 50-foot wide, 8-foot deep  inlet, that was carved through the barrier island by a  continuous four day ebb tide, flowing from the bay out to the ocean. Three entire streets were submerged at the south end of the town.

Ironically, the resulting scar connecting the ocean to the sheltered bay was exactly what turned Ocean City into the ideal port for fisherman and caused it to flourish as a vacation spot. In fact, for several years prior to the storm, Senator Millard E. Tydings had been fighting to get funding for a man-made canal five miles south of Ocean City. His hope was that the bay side would provide a calm harbor for up to 1,000 fishing boats which could easily access the Atlantic, and from there the markets of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Though the storm caused approximately $850,000 of damage, the main discussion in the immediate aftermath revolved around appropriations for constructing seawalls to make the canal permanent. Within two years $781,000 was spent on concrete to stabilize the inlet. Not only did these seawalls keep sand from the channel, but they diverted it towards the beaches, greatly expanding their size and making the boardwalk even with ground level.

This inlet made Ocean City the state’s only Atlantic port. The resulting commercial and sport fishing boom greatly shaped the character of the Ocean City we know today, as vacationers content with more modest accommodations flocked in large numbers to crab and fish, and dozens of hotels and restaurants sprang up to meet their needs. (Eben Dennis and Damon Talbot)

Ocean City, MD. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A. Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-A, MdHS.

Ocean City, MD. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-E, MdHS.

Ocean City, Md. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A. Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-C, MdHS.

Ocean City, Md. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A. Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-D, MdHS.

Sources and further reading:

Corddry, Mary, City on the Sand: Ocean City Maryland and the People Who Built It (Centerville, MD: Tidewater, 1991)

DeVincent-Hayes, Nan & Jacob, John E., Ocean City- Volumes 1 and 2  (Charleston: Arcadia, 1999)

Ocean City Life-Saving Museum

There are two stories behind the creation of John Moale’s drawing of Baltimore Town. One version is that sometime in the late eighteenth century, Moale (ca. 1731-1798) sat down and sketched from memory the Baltimore of his youth. The other account has the amateur artist sitting on the future Federal Hill and sketching the town from life in 1752.
Baltimore Town in 1752, by John Moale, MdHS museum collection, 1845.1.1.

Sitting down in a field or on a city bench, pulling out a sketch pad, and drawing a building or cityscape is today a lost practice, largely left to artists. In an era when you can access a digital map of the entire world, and then zoom in on practically any building on earth, a sketch of a house, or even a printed map of city, may seem almost primitive. The watercolor to the right, which could easily be mistaken for a child’s drawing, is actually the earliest existing depiction of Baltimore when it was still just a tiny backwater town. Merchant and land developer John Moale’s unfinished sketch is a document of 1752 Baltimore, then known as Baltimore Town, that although rendered in “shocking disregard…of the laws of perspective,” gives a sense of the architecture of eighteenth century Baltimore now almost entirely lost. While there are surviving examples of houses from the mid to late 1700s still standing in the city (and photographic examples of many now gone), none of the structures depicted in Moale’s “original and homely draft” remain.(1)

In 1752, Baltimore Town was a “small, straggling village,” of roughly 200 inhabitants who lived, worshiped, and drank in 25 houses, one church, two taverns, and a brewery.(2) The drawing captures the young town just prior to a boom period marking the beginning of 200 years of uninterrupted population growth that wouldn’t come to an end until 1950. In the 1750s the town’s commercial and residential possibilities began to attract a diverse group of immigrants. German and Scotch-Irish businessmen from Pennsylvania, French-Acadians exiled from Nova Scotia in 1755, and other immigrant groups traveled to the waterfront community in the hopes of starting a new life. By 1760 there were over 1200 inhabitants. Fourteen years later, on the eve of the Revolution, the population consisted of nearly 6,000 people living in some 560 residences.

Most of these dwellings were simple wooden structures, between one and two stories in height. The most common homes found in eighteenth century Baltimore were three or four bay-wide structures with gambrel roofs and dormers. Only four of the 25 houses pictured in John Moale’s original sketch were brick; in 1741, Irish immigrant Edwin Fottrell, using bricks imported from England, began construction on the first. The Fottrell house – the largest residence in 1752 Baltimore Town – was erected at what is today the northwest corner of Fayette and Calvert Streets.(3) Fottrell returned to his homeland sometime before 1755, leaving the residence unfinished and in a state of disrepair.

Edwin Fottrell house. Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16.

St. Peter the Apostle Church, constructed 1843, 11-13 South Poppleton Street, June 2013

The deserted home lay vacant for only a short time as it was soon occupied by a group of newly arrived French-Acadian refugees whose ship had appeared unexpectedly in the harbor. The refugees – part of a larger group of 900 that had arrived in Annapolis following their expulsion from Nova Scotia by British authorities – were soon being called on by Reverend John Ashton, the resident Catholic priest of Carroll Manor. Ashton visited Baltimore Town once a month to provide church services for the few Catholics living there. The Reverend and his congregation, consisting of some 40 members -  including a few of the Acadians – took for their place of worship one of the lower rooms of the Fottrell house; one of their first tasks consisted of “expelling the hogs which had habitually nested there.”(4)

From these squalid beginnings emerged Baltimore’s first Catholic Church. In 1770 the congregation began construction on St. Peter’s Church, at the corner of Saratoga and Charles Streets. Although the original building was torn down in 1841, a new church was built two years later that still stands at the corner of Hollins and Poppleton Street in West Baltimore. Edward Fottrell’s house, on the other hand,  had a much shorter life span. In 1780 the State of Maryland seized the residence and property, which was then in the possession of Fottrell’s heirs, divided up the land into six lots and sold them off at auction.

John Moale’s sketch of Baltimore Town provided the basis for a number of prints in the first half of the nineteenth century that proved to be very popular. Moale provided no identifications of the structures that he sketched out – the later reproductions have filled in many of the details left out by the amateur artist. Probably the most widely known as well as the most artistically rendered is an 1817 engraving by architect William Strickland. Some notable additions are the two ships visible in the harbor. The larger vessel is the “Phillip and Charles,” owned by William Rogers who also operated of one of the town’s two taverns. Docked on the left side of the harbor is the Sloop “Baltimore,” built in 1746 and owned by Captain Darby Lux, a two-time commissioner of Baltimore Town. The ship was the first Baltimore owned vessel to be sailed from the port. Lux’s house on Light Street is also identified in the print. The main thoroughfare, visible in the center of the engraving, is Calvert Street. Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16.

The first and fourth St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church.
(top) The first, built 1739, razed in 1786; Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16, (detail)
(bottom) The fourth, built in 1854, 233 N. Charles Street, June 2013.

The most prominent structure in Moales’ original sketch, although it appears unfinished, is St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Baltimore’s first church of any denomination. Completed in 1739, it was built atop Saratoga Street Hill, the highest point in town. By 1780, the building had become too small to accommodate its rapidly growing congregation, and a new church was built on another section of the large parcel of land bound by Lexington, Saratoga, Charles and St. Paul Streets, purchased by the church when the town was first established in 1729. The original church was put to use as a school until being demolished in 1786.

One feature of the early town that does not appear in either Moale’s sketch or the later reproductions was a wooden fence erected around the town in 1750. According to historian Thomas Scharf, the fence was built to protect the town from hostile tribes of Native Americans. Many sources have repeated this tale, although it appears the townsfolk had a far more mundane reason for erecting the fence that encircled the town “as completely as the walls enclosed a medieval fortress.”(5) It was instead devised as a barrier against the herds of swine, flocks of sheep, and gaggles of geese that roamed freely throughout the town. The hogs did serve some purpose, acting as an early sanitation department, as well as providing a source of food for the poorer members of the community. But these benefits were apparently soon outweighed by their penchant for destroying property, creating ruts in the roads, endangering children and causing general mayhem.

The fence however had a brief existence – residents soon began removing sections of it for firewood. One of the persons accused of pilfering timber was Thomas Chase, the rector of St. Paul’s Church. By November of 1752 most of the fence was gone. Whether John Moale intended to add the fence to his unfinished drawing or whether he sought to keep the image of the dilapidated enclosure from the historical record when he sat down to put pen to paper will probably never be known.

In 1796, Baltimore Town – which in 1773 had merged with Jones Town and Fell’s Point – incorporated to form the City of Baltimore. Only a handful of the buildings that existed prior to the merger of the three neighboring communities survived into the late nineteenth century. The last building visible in John Moale’s sketch to fall by the wayside was apparently Kaminsky’s inn, located at 106-110 Mercer Street, at the northwest corner of Mercer and Grant Streets. An 1885 Baltimore Sun article described the tavern as being:

“built in 1750 of wood, two stories and an attic, with dormer windows. The first story was plastered outside and the upper part weather-boarded. A lone flight of stairs from the outside led up to the second story. The building presented the appearance of an old-fashioned German hostelry. It was the grand hotel of the city. Washington, Lafayette and other revolutionary heroes stopped there.”(6)

Baltimore Town’s last remaining building finally met its demise in the early 1870s when it was razed to make way for three iron-front buildings at 101-105 East Redwood Street. These buildings were in turn destroyed some 30 years later when the Great Fire of 1904 swept through downtown Baltimore. A dozen years passed before another edifice, the Sun Life Insurance Company Building, was erected.(7)

In 2000, the site of one of Baltimore’s first two inns made a return to its roots when the Sun Life Building and its companion on the block – the former headquarters of the Merchant and Miners Transportation Company – were demolished to make way for a Residence Inn Marriott. While it lacks the charms of its predecessor, with laundry dangling from its windows (see photo below), it does make up for it in girth, rooming capacity, and general unattractiveness. (Damon Talbot)

Progression of a city block.
(Top left) Kaminsky’s Inn. Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16, (detail)
(Top right) Kaminsky’s Inn, ca 1875, MdHS, CC 2821. The Tavern was originally two stories; a third story was added at some point in the nineteenth century to adjust to alterations in the street level.
(Bottom right) Sun Life Insurance Building, 109 East Redwood Street, about to be demolished, ca 2000; the building next to it is the partially demolished former Headquarters of the Merchant and Miners Company.(photograph not from MdHS’s collection)
(Bottom left) Marriott Residence Inn, 17 Light Street, June 2013.

Footnotes:

(1) Scharf, J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of “Baltimore Town” and Baltimore City (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874), 48; Mayer, Brantz, Baltimore: Past and present with biographical sketches of its most prominent men (Baltimore: Richardson and Bennett: 1871)

(2) Scharf, Thomas J., History of Baltimore City and County (Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1971), 58.

(3) Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16.

(4) Scharf, J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore, 66.

(5) Stockett, Letitia, Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History (Baltimore: Grace Gore Norman, 1936), 45.

(6) “A Leaf from the Past,” The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1885

(7) The Sun Life Insurance Company building was designed by Louis Levi, the first Jewish member of the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Sources and further reading:

Beirne, Francis F., St. Paul’s Parish, Baltimore: A Chronicle of the MotherChurch (Baltimore: Horn-Shafer Company, 1967)

Clark, Dennis Rankin, Baltimore, 1729-1829: The Genesis of a Community (Washington D.C., 1976)

Griffith, Thomas W., Annals of Baltimore (Baltimore: Printed by William Wooddy, 1824)

Gunts, Edward “Residents may rise at Redwood and Light,” The Baltimore Sun, November 29, 2004.

Gunts, Edward “Turning Point for Downtown,” The Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2000.

Hall, Clayton Colman, ed., Baltimore: Its History and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1912)

Hayward, Mary Ellen & Frank R. Shivers Jr., ed., The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History (Baltimore: JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 2004)

Jones, Carleton, Lost Baltimore: A Portfolio of Vanished Buildings (Baltimore: Maclay & Associates., 1982)

Kelly, Jacques, “Redwood Street preservation move grows”, The Baltimore Sun, September 30, 2000.

Kelly, Jacques, The Voice of this Calling: St. Paul’s Parish – Baltimore, Maryland, 1692-1992 (Baltimore: The Vestry of St. Paul’s Parish, 1993)

“A Leaf from the Past,” The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1885

MarylandState Archives, Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series) John Moale

Mayer, Brantz, Baltimore: Past and present with biographical sketches of its most prominent men (Baltimore: Richardson and Bennett: 1871)

The Passano-O’Neill Files: Light Street (7-11); Mercer Street (106-110); Charles Street (231 North); Calvert Street (100-102 North)

Rice, Laura, Maryland History in Prints, 1743-1900 (Baltimore: The Press at the Maryland Historical Society, 2002)

Scharf, J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of “Baltimore Town” and Baltimore City (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874)

Scharf, J. Thomas, History of Baltimore City and County (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881)

Stockett, Letitia, Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History (Baltimore: Grace Gore Norman, 1936)

On Sunday April 7, 2013, more than 120 long-time Baltimore residents, many dressed in their Sunday best, filled the auditorium of the Maryland Historical Society to help rediscover Baltimore’s African-American history. The event, Revisiting Our Past: Identifying Paul Henderson’s Photographs of the African-American Community in Maryland, ca. 1935-1965, was co-hosted by MdHS and the Pierians Baltimore Chapter. The two groups collaborated to identify the scores of unnamed people and events in photographs taken by Paul Henderson who worked for the Baltimore Afro-American. I was lucky enough to be there as a volunteer.

Attendee Anne C. Taylor identified A. Jack Thomas who was the director of the music department at Morgan College. He was reportedly one of the first African-American bandleaders in the Army and the first to conduct the BSO. HEN.08.06-034, Paul Henderson, MdHS.

Members of the Pierians, an organization “dedicated to the purpose of promoting and encouraging the study and enjoyment of the fine arts,” took the lead in the preservation of their community’s history. Last summer, they approached Jennifer Ferretti, former curator of photographs at MdHS, who had curated an exhibition of Henderson’s Civil Rights Era photographs and in doing so, drew much deserved attention to the collection. The Pierians told Ferretti they were sure they could identify people and places in the photos. The photographs had long languished at MdHS and their previous home in the Baltimore City Life Museum. But even before the Pierians’ offer, Ferretti had invested significant time into organizing, printing, and compiling the 6,000 negatives and prints so they could be presented to the community in an accessible manner. The project was well worth it. Scores of volunteers, staff members, and community members turned out to put names to faces and stories to still images, investing the photographs with deeper meaning.

Though the exact number of identifications has not been calculated, the number of people, places, and events that were recognized is upwards of a few dozen. Participants found and identified a host of lesser known faces alongside the more famous entertainers, politicians, and civil rights activists that Henderson captured with his camera. Concise descriptions abound: “Graduation class from Apex Beauty School,”  “Thurgood Marshall,” “A. Jack Thomas, First African Amer. Conductor of Baltimore Symphony Orch.,” “Dr. Frederick Dedmond, Language Professor at Morgan State,” “Mrs. Ada K. Jenkins—My former Piano teacher.” The experience was exhilarating for participants as they found photographs of themselves, their loved ones, and role models from decades ago. Most were seeing the photographs for the first time in a long while; many for the first time ever. Yvonne Lansey let out a joyous cry when she found herself and her sister in a photograph of their class at the Garnett School #103. In the photo, taken on Halloween, the two girls were dressed in costumes made by their mother.

A Halloween costume party at the Garnett School #103 as identified by Yvonne Lansey. HEN.00.A2.221, Paul Henderson, MdHS.

Participants also identified (and described) places that held memories and meaning for the community as a whole, including The Little School, “a private school for African-American children in West Baltimore,” and many now closed businesses on Pennsylvania Avenue. They also named sites we might prefer to forget, like the Druid Hill Park Black Tennis Courts and the Black Swimming Pool.

The value of this research is profound, for historians as well as for community members. Participants shared personal anecdotes about the photos that will provide researchers with otherwise hard-to-get historical insight. For example, some informants could list the present-day names of institutions alongside their historical names. Further, personal anecdotes are rare in official historical archives, but they provide a sense of community attachment that cannot easily be identified in images or formal documents. On one identification form, Betty Williams identified the members of a wedding party and noted,  “I was her only bridesmaid.” Finally, and perhaps more importantly, community participation empowers historical communities to participate in the process interpreting their own past.

Professor Frederick Dedmond was identified by attendees of the April 7 event as well as his former students who saw this photo at City Hall. HEN.03.02-053, Paul Henderson, MdHS.

The visual record is important, but often overlooked by historians of the twentieth-century. Having photographs to accompany written documents can bring readers closer to the topic at hand. But even more importantly, as some scholars have noted, the visual record also carries the potential to revise established histories in significant ways. Activist and scholar Kathleen Neal Cleaver wrote about the Civil Rights Movement:

“The visual record always documents the presence of women, but in the printed record, texts of academic accounts women’s participation tends to fade.”

Henderson’s photographic documentation of the world-famous as well as the unknown suggests that he was attuned to the importance of the visual record for capturing multiple stories. For social movement histories as well as for cultural, community, and political histories, visual records tell an important story that can corroborate written histories, but also tell new stories. Thanks to the dedication of MdHS employees and volunteers, and the experiences, memories, and interest of those who have taken part (and will continue to take part) in the identification of Henderson’s photos, we can look forward to a future filled with new stories about Baltimore’s past. (Amy Zanoni)

Amy Zanoni completed an MA in History from UMBC in May 2013. Her MA thesis, a place-based history of Baltimore’s second-wave feminist movement, investigated the ideas and political activism of feminists and other social movement actors in Baltimore in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Amy will continue her historical research as she pursues a PhD at Rutgers University starting in the fall of 2013. 

Sources:

Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Racism, Civil Rights, and Feminism,” in Adrien Katherine Wing, ed., Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 36, in Williams, “Black Women and Black Power,” OAH Magazine of History (July 2008): 22.

For more information and to see more work by Paul Henderson please visit the Paul Henderson Photograph blog. To browse MdHS’s inventory lists of Henderson’s photographs please click here.

An image of the remaining batches of Soper Papers from the sub-basement, and the caption reading “Don’t catalog until 3/88.” The 48E number was added during my preliminary survey.

After conducting a quick search of our website I figured out where I had seen the name before. Judge Morris Soper was identified by Baltimore lawyer, author, and professor Larry Gibson when he was helping us identify individuals from photographs of Morgan State University found in the Paul Henderson Collection in 2011. Soper had served as Chairman of Morgan’s Board of Directors for many years, so it was not surprising to find him captured in the photo below.(1) This got me even more curious. Who exactly was Soper? Why was this collection here? Why had it been gathering dust for so many years?

Morgan State’s Board of Trustees meeting with Governor McKeldin ca. 1950. Morris Soper is standing to the right of McKeldin next to Carl Murphy, the owner/editor of The Afro newspaper. Paul Henderson Photo Collection, MdHS, HEN.00.B1-073.

Who Was Morris A. Soper?

Morris Ames Soper’s (1873-1963) judicial service spanned more than a half-century. After being educated in the city schools of Baltimore in the late 19th century, he attended Johns Hopkins University and then went on to law school at the University of Maryland. He was admitted to the Maryland State Bar in 1895 and began practicing law in Baltimore. In 1898 Soper was appointed Assistant State’s Attorney for Baltimore City and was promoted to Assistant United States Attorney for the State of Maryland in 1900.

In 1912 Soper briefly served as president of the Baltimore City Police Board before leaving in an unsuccessful  election bid as a GOP candidate for Attorney General of Maryland. He quickly rebounded from his defeat and was appointed Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City. In 1923 President Harding appointed Soper to the Federal bench where he served as a District Judge, and by 1931 President Hoover had elevated him to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals representing Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland in the Fourth Circuit. Though he was based in Richmond, Soper kept an office  in Baltimore. Judge Soper held this position for 24 years until he entered pseudo-retirement in 1955.(2)

In his many years as a judge, Soper dealt with an enormous number of cases involving the Eighteenth Amendment, which established prohibition. During the Prohibition Era he padlocked over 165 Maryland buildings for violations of the Volstead Act. This came as little surprise as Soper had previously served as attorney for the Baltimore Reform League and was counsel for the Society for the Suppression of Vice earlier in the decade.(3) While serving on the Fourth Circuit, Soper made many rulings on tax cases, labor relations disputes, interstate commerce cases, and cases originating from the Federal Trade Commission and the Security Exchange Commission.

A pencil sketch of Morris A. Soper (1873-1963) by Stirling Hill. Morris A. Soper Papers (MS3121),Box 93E, Maryland Historical Society.

Most notably, Soper worked towards full equality for African-Americans. He viewed equality as “not only a matter of law, but a matter of conscience.” As early as 1937, Soper—from his position as Chairman of the State Commission on Higher Education for Negroes—was urging the Maryland legislature to admit African-Americans to the University of Maryland graduate departments. National attention was focused on Soper when he decided many of the early school desegregation cases that reached the Federal Courts in the wake of Brown vs the Board of Education in 1954. In 1955 Soper handed down the decision that required the University of North Carolina to admit three African-American students into its undergraduate college. The following year he wrote majority opinions on racial integration in Virginia public schools. Judge Soper served for over 30 years on the Board of Trustees at Morgan State College, and was chairman for much of the latter half of his tenure. He is credited as being instrumental in transforming the institution from a private college to a state supported institution.

His last act from the bench was striking down the barriers preventing a young African-American named Henry Gantt from attending the school of architecture at Clemson University. Less than two months later, two days after his 90th birthday, Judge Soper passed away after undergoing minor surgery at Union Memorial Hospital. Among the group of distinguished honorary pallbearers were Governor McKeldin and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Where did this Collection Come From?

As Judge Soper’s prominence became apparent to me, I quickly made the decision to put this collection at the top of the processing queue. I found some answers about the collections provenance in A Guide to the Preservation of Federal Judges’ Papers published by the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center in 2009. I was surprised to read that:

“Neither federal statute nor the policies of the Judicial Conference of the United States make any provision for the preservation of federal judges’ papers. Judges’ staffs or the clerks of court cannot determine where the papers go, and the National Archives cannot accept the collections as part of the records of the courts. Nor are court funds available for the preservation of judges’ papers, and the federal records centers do not provide temporary storage of judges’ chambers papers…”

Basically, as is the case with the Soper Papers, the judge’s heirs often end up with the collection of papers, and if the collection isn’t thrown out (yes, this often happens), they often come to local libraries or historical societies.

When the Soper Papers were deeded to MdHS, they came with a 25-year restriction (from the date of his passing), hence the “do not catalog until 1988.” A quarter of a century is a long time for a collection to be forgotten about in a basement. Once it had already sat around for 25 years (1963-1988), it made it easy for it to sit another 25 years on top of that.  A combination of the restriction, the location where it was stored, the enormous physical size of the collection, and staff turnover, most likely dissuaded previous archivists from placing the task of processing the papers high on their queues. Being attracted to the bigger, dirtier jobs, and seeing the obvious importance of the subject matter, I was thrilled.

The Pre-processing Survey

The first step was literally schlepping the collection up a treacherous flight of stairs from the basement, and then to the library workroom on the second floor. Because sweaty librarians tend to gross patrons out, I was lucky to have volunteer Tom Pineo to help with the task.

MdHS volunteer Tom Pineo taking a breather in front of the Soper Papers. Photo by Damon Talbot

Due to the enormity of the collection and limited workroom space, we’re forced to work in batches, bringing up a few dozen boxes at a time. The next step in getting a handle on a collection of this magnitude is to conduct a pre-processing survey. This is an essential step in establishing the physical and intellectual scope of the collection before you can begin the processing, or arrangement of the papers. The more thorough and complete this survey is, the easier the collection is to process.

Because staff hours are precious (we have 6,000 patron requests a year!), and we have competing responsibilities, I needed to come up with the most efficient way to make this collection available to the public. In archival lingo, the method I have applied is “More Product, Less Process,” or MPLP for short. Though I would love to disappear with this collection into the library’s underbelly for ten years, and emerge triumphantly with an item-level description of 300 perfectly preserved boxes, it isn’t reality. I needed a common sense approach and a little bit of help. So my plan is to go through the collection somewhat quickly, box by box, resisting temptation to process, while I inventory. This inventory consists of detailed notes about subjects, date ranges, notable individuals, and court case files in each box. At the same time it includes  preservation notes for the processors, supply estimates, and the intellectual arrangement as  each box gets grouped into its appropriate  series.(4)

Once I get the approximately 300 boxes described, the processing plan can be implemented. At that point, the help of three graduate interns (pursuing library, archive, or history careers) will be enlisted. These interns will then use the survey and some guidance to give the collection some TLC. They will rehouse the papers in acid free folders, consistently label all the folders and boxes, and comb through the collection in finer detail than my initial survey. In the meantime, I will use my survey as a box level inventory which will  be placed in our catalog and made accessible to researchers. Though they may not be able to easily request the exact document they want, they can probably narrow it down to three or four boxes. This way the collection will be quickly accessible, while being processed to the folder level in the meantime. The main logistical problem with this method is that overstuffed boxes may expand into several boxes. Though physical rearrangement of the papers will be kept to a minimum, there are already several instances where material from one box needs to be separated.(5)

At this point I have surveyed the first 120 boxes and many interesting threads and subjects have already emerged. Below I have listed some of the people and subjects that have already made appearances in the collection. (Quick teaser- notable correspondence with Thurgood Marshall, H.L. Mencken, and my favorite Charles Ponzi!) In the coming months stay tuned for more intriguing stories brought to life by this collection. A box level inventory  to the Morris Ames Soper Papers (MS 3121), should be available to the public by late summer. (Eben Dennis)

Subjects

People -W. Calvin Chestnutt, August Chissell, Harry S. Cummings, Samuel K. Dennis, Der Doo, Armistead M. Dobie, Leroy Benjamin Frasier Jr, Phillips Lee Goldsborough, Clement Haynesworth, Louise Kerr Hines, Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes, Howard Jackson, Robert F. Kennedy, Linwood Koger, William Preston Lane, Theodore McKeldin, Thurgood Marshall, H.L. Mencken, Clarence W. Miles, Carl Murphy, Donald Gaines Murray, Harry W. Nice, Emory Niles, Elliott Northcott, Sidney Nyburg, Herbert R. O’Conor, John J. Parker, Orie L. Phillips, Charles Ponzi, James H. Preston, George L. Radcliffe, Albert Ritchie, Simon E. Sobeloff, John O. Spencer, Roszel Thomsen, Millard E. Tydings, Arthur T. Vanderbilt.

Corporate names- American Bar Association, American Sugar Refining Corporation, Baltimore Bar Association, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Baltimore Police Department, Baltimore Trust Company, Commission on Higher Education of Negroes in the State of Maryland, Druid Ridge Cemetery Company, Goucher College, Loudon Park Cemetary, Maryland State Bar Association, Morgan State University, Pennsylvania Railroad, Provident Hospital, State Commission on Higher Education for Negroes, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Wheeling Steel Corporation.

Topics- Civil Rights, Criminal Law, Criminal justice, Interstate Commerce, NAACP vs Harrison, Prohibition, School Desegregation, Steamship accidents, Volstead Act.

Footnotes:

(1) Morgan State even named their library in his honor in 1939.

(2) President Eisenhower allowed Soper to remain serving the courts “from time to time,” which he did until two months from his death at the age of 90 in 1963.

(3) Stay tuned for a future post about this very subject centering around some fascinating correspondence between Soper and H.L. Mencken

(4) A series basically divides the collection into large chunks or groups, similar to the chapters in a book. In the case of the Soper collection there will probably be 3 or 4 series including correspondence (chronological), chamber papers or case files, and subject files (A-Z).

(5) An important principle of archival theory is original order. The collection should reflect the order it was kept in before it came to an archive. In the case of the Soper papers, the material within boxes will be kept in order, but boxes next to each other on the shelf had no rhyme or reason. Occassionally boxes appear to have been arbitrarily combined, in which case effort will be made to place them back in their original context.

]]> http://www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/06/06/morris-a-soper-papers-coming-soon-or-25-years-late/feed/ 1