Maryland Humanities Council History Matters! Interpretive Plan for the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway History Matters! A History of Maryland’s Lower Susquehanna Region The Lower Susquehanna region is the bold termination of the wide, powerful Susquehanna River and the gentle beginning of the great Chesapeake Bay. Water dominates and shapes the lives of the humans along the shores just as it dominates and shapes the contours of its land.1 The commanding river pulls people together; and at the same time, it divides them. Maryland’s Harford County to the south and Cecil County to the north, separated by the river, are pulled away from one another toward competing economic centers. Harford County easily connects with urban Baltimore, and Cecil County is lured away from Maryland’s influence by Philadelphia and Wilmington. The Lower Susquehanna is a borderland connected by the mighty waters that dominate its existence. When we began reviewing the history of the Lower Susquehanna region of Maryland, we read the existing volumes on Harford and Cecil Counties; and we talked to our heritage area partners in the region. What did they need? Excellent histories focusing on the important men and events of the region already exist.2 What could we add? We gathered together experts on Maryland’s history and culture to discuss how we might fill in what was missing in our existing knowledge of the state. We visited local historians in the Lower Susquehanna to learn what information they needed to better interpret their region. Most agreed that we needed to explore the lives of the everyday people who lived and worked and died near these great waters. They wanted to know more about Native cultures, women, African Americans, farmers, immigrants, and factory workers. Our historians and our local experts suggested that we look at the region from several perspectives, and that we connect the themes of Maryland’s past to this specific area by comparing and contrasting its change over time while exploring the tensions and conflicts arising from change. With our Susquehanna partners we decided to pay particular attention to the area’s: • Settlement patterns across the centuries • Changes in the landscape Natural Environment – Resources to sustain life & attract settlement Built Environment – Incidental reshaping through settlement Designed Environment – Human impact on the land __Shift from Natural to Agricultural to Urban to Suburban • Individual Communities and Cultures: Everyday lives of the common people __Especially women; Native Americans; African Americans; farm and factory workers; and immigrants • Waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay and the Susquehanna River • Transportation/Economics ii • Freedoms Won, Freedoms Lost __Religious, Political, and Intellectual • Adaptation and Ingenuity __Tools, Transportation, and Technology We decided to explore four stages of development within each theme: 1. Meeting basic necessities to sustain life 2. Bringing economic/strategic forces into play, including: politics, defense, trade, transportation, communication, borders/contact points, violence 3. Improving quality of life 4. Pursuing recreation, creative arts, aesthetics, and design This focused history of the Lower Susquehanna is written by a diverse group of scholars, each attempting to keep these factors in mind. Members of the History Matters! staff and advisory panel spent countless hours helping co-author and edit this history. At the Maryland Humanities Council, Stephen Hardy gathered together a basic history of the last 300 years, focusing on population and economic data, and wrote the colonial history. Members of the Advisory Panel wrote component chapters and advised on themes across the centuries: Michael Dixon, Historian of the Historical Society of Cecil County, shared his extensive knowledge of the historical resources of the Susquehanna region. His deep understanding of the development of commerce along the great Susquehanna River lent insights across the centuries. Sharon Harley, former Director of the Afro-American Studies Program and Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park, contributed her sharp insights on Maryland history in general and African American history in particular. Judy Leonard, President, Board of the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway, enthusiastically supported our work, opened many doors, and shared her experiences and perceptions about the region and the Greenway. Whitman Ridgway, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland College Park, authored the chapters related to the nineteenth century. His extensive political insights stretched across three centuries of Maryland’s past. John Seidel, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies, Washington College, contributed the prehistoric and Native American history of the region, the state of archaeological research in the area, and the maritime history of the Upper Chesapeake. He authored the chapters on the prehistoric and European contact periods and provided much of the text dealing with iii archaeological and maritime subjects in other chapters. Bruce Thompson, Coordinator of the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies and Associate Professor of History at Frederick Community College, used his keen sense of the subtleties of twentieth-century issues to write the chapters that concerned that century, plus the introduction to the individual site analysis. We learned from each person we met with as we toured the region. Special thanks are due to Ellsworth Shank, Curator of the Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace, for sharing his extensive expertise on the history of the region. We are grateful to Bob Chance, Executive Director of the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway, for his historical introduction and overview of the Greenway, its development, and its future plans. Hannah Byron, Director of Tourism Development for the State of Maryland, and Marci Ross, Manager of Destination Resources, Office of Tourism Development offered their perspectives and support to the project. Hannah served as the project’s link with the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority. We would like to thank the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority for authorizing this work as the pilot project of History Matters!, our heritage areas initiative, and to the Board of Directors and Steering Committee of the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway, Inc., for their generous participation as partners in this project. Special thanks go to Elizabeth Hughes, Chief of the Office of Heritage Planning and Outreach at the Maryland Historical Trust, and to Rodney Little, Director of the Division of Historical and Cultural Programs, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, for their support and encouragement. And we need to thank the Board of the Maryland Humanities Council for their vision in authorizing this project in the Spring of 2000. To enhance our understanding of each period, we drew from historical essays on Maryland in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries by Lois Green Carr, Jean Russo, Whitman Ridgway, and George Callcott, written for our Maryland History and Culture Bibliography project. Our thanks and respect go out to all of the site administrators and guides who gave so freely of their time and expertise, graciously hosted our panel during its tour, and welcomed our inquiries with courtesy and remarkable good will: Connie Beims, Berkley Crossroads and Hosanna School; Ellen Mencer, Chesapeake Heritage Conservancy and Skipjack MARTHA LEWIS; Ron Smith and Lou Kinney, Conowingo Dam; John Narvell, Friends of Concord Point Lighthouse, Inc.; Jennifer Jones, Havre de Grace Decoy Museum; William Putland, Havre de Grace Maritime Museum; Brenda Dorr Guldenzopf, Havre de Grace Maritime Museum and Havre de Grace Decoy Museum; Marlene Magness, Historical Society of Harford County; iv Erika Quesenbery, Paw Paw Museum; Barbara Brown and Sharon Weygand, Town of Perryville; Linda Noll, Steppingstone Museum Association Inc.; Robert Magee, Charles Hiner, Arthur Coates, and Kathryn Lince, Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace at the Lockhouse; Rick Smith and Clark Old, Susquehanna State Park; and Craig Lanphear, Swan Harbor Farm. We would like to thank those Maryland scholars who gathered together for a day to help lay the groundwork for exploring the history of the various regions of our state: Louise Akerson, Past President, Archaeology Society of Maryland; Mary Alexander, Director, Museum Assistance Program, Maryland Historical Trust; Robert Brugger, History Editor, The Johns Hopkins University Press; Hannah Byron, Director, Maryland State Office of Tourism Development; George Callcott, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Maryland College Park; Ric Cottom, Deputy Director Publications, Maryland Historical Society; Dennis Curry, Senior Archaeologist, Maryland Historical Trust; Nancy Davis, Deputy Director Museum, Maryland Historical Society; Nicole Diehlman, Administrator, Statewide Preservation Programs, Maryland Historical Trust; Rhoda Dorsey, President Emerita, Goucher College; Michael Dyson, President, Small Museum Association; Elaine Eff, Director, Cultural Conservation Program, Maryland Historical Trust; Cheryl Fox, Historical Programs Officer, African-American Initiative Program, Maryland Historical Trust; Jamie Hunt, Outreach and Public Relations Coordinator, Preservation Maryland, and Director, Baltimore Heritage; Catherine Gira, President, Frostburg State University; James Harris,