In 1856 P. S. Duval & Co., Philadelphia, published this view of Baltimore as of 1752 drawn by J. Backman. John Reps in his Views and Viewmakers (1984), 1291, p. 321, links him to John Bachmann who Nat Case writes about in Imprint, volume 33, no. 11, p. 19ff (2008). Does anyone know who this ‘J. Backman’ is? Is this just a misspelling of his name or is it someone other than the more famous lithographer/viewmaker John Bachmann?
Probably the greatest challenge facing any Archives is acquiring the resources necessary to properly store and make accessible its holdings whether on paper or electronic. The Maryland State Archives is no exception. Recently the Baltimore Sun featured our efforts to find space for the Baltimore City Archives to salvage a much neglected collection that reached back to the days of the founding of the city in the first decades of the 18th century, and included such much damaged treasures as all the details that went into the defense against the assault of the British in 1814.
One such detail was the moldy, water stained, and vermin eaten letter of the then Governor Winder, writing to Baltimore City Mayor Edward Johnson delegating his military authority to the General on the spot, Samuel Smith, as well as the assurance that he was doing everything within his power to supply the defenses of the town. We saved the letter just in time before it disappeared altogether.
In our efforts to save Baltimore City’s records, we were fortunate in getting a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to catalog on line what had survived and indeed images of this letter are also on line along with all the records we are finding that relate to the War of 1812 in which Baltimore played a key role in defining the future of America as we know it, as well as providing us with the inspiration for our National Anthem.
With the help of the city we also got some breathing room with regard to absorbing the annual demand for transferring permanent state records (about 6,000 cubic feet of records a year) and the pending state backlog (24,000 cubic feet). The storage space is not ideal for archival records, nor are the other three warehouses where together we store over half of the archival heritage of the State. As of this writing, we are out of space altogether and cannot take on anything more than a few more small transfers. In terms of future efforts to understand the origins and development of public policy and the search for community and family roots, we are in crisis. A democracy cannot survive without a transparency in government that extends to the historical record and the ability to reflect on how to effectively build upon past successes while avoiding past mistakes.
At this point the question might arise as to why, instead of saving so much paper, why we do not just scan and destroy to save space. While we do scan and deliver images of our paper holdings as the research needs arise, the cost to scan wholesale and destroy the paper is vastly more expensive than properly storing them in an archival facility, not to mention that an image of a paper record cannot economically address all the issues of authenticity such as watermarks and the traces of intentional forgery. It is true that one day we may be a truly paperless government and our archives of the future all born digital records, but we seem to have a long ways to go before that happens.
To date we have proposed two plans for the storage and access to our archival heritage which I will call Plan A and Plan B. Plan A, carefully researched and documented, called for the extension of our present facilities, largely underground, with public park above. I still think it the best approach and the best idea, but in these tough economic times it is simply unaffordable. Plan B is to build or purchase and renovate a remote facility. It is an idea we broached several years ago with the Hall of Records Commission, modeled on the well-designed facility built by Johns Hopkins in Howard County as remote storage for their library system.
We returned to it with careful attention to what the private sector may have to offer, especially in a soft commercial real estate market, for lease and/or purchase. Our conclusions and detailed recommendations are now lodged with the Department of Budget and Planning. Our hope is that they will be released very soon in response to the requirement of last year’s Joint Chairman’s report. Our argument there is that for approximately $15,000,000 the State should purchase and renovate to archival standards a commercially built warehouse large enough to accommodate our projections of the accumulation of permanent archival records through the next 15 years, including consolidation from our current warehousing, and not renewing our expensive leases for non-archival commercial warehouse space as they expire. In making this recommendation, we recognize that, given a robust records management program in all State and Local agencies, the private sector can more efficiently and cost effectively store and destroy temporary records. Our recommendation for State owned and operated space extends only to the permanent historical records of the state so that, for example, the proceedings of the legislature and the governor’s correspondence of the future (both paper and electronic), do not suffer as Governor Winder’s letter did.
We also need to do better by the employees who are critical to the operations of the Archives. At present approximately half are contractual, of whom a large number have worked hard and well for us for many years. We have proposed a plan of contractual conversion and have every hope that this year it will be adopted, especially because it is funded, not by general funds, but by special fund income derived from the archival services we provide at a reasonable cost to assist in the creation and maintenance of permanent records. For example, special fund income supported our creating one of the most successful cost effective electronic archives in the country, and is sufficient to fund contractual conversions.
While the basic infra structure of housing and caring for the Archival Heritage of Maryland is a cost most effectively and least expensively met by a State owned and operated facility, much of the value added work of the Archives can be and is supported through grants and the generous donations of private individuals. Most recently our efforts to utilize the archival resources of the State to document the lives of slaves and those who claimed them as property have been supported by two significant grants from the U. S. Department of Education. This has resulted not only in a remarkable research web site, but also a traveling exhibit that has excited public interest in, and additional support for, research and writing (http://www.mdslavery.net/exhibit/html/index.html).
Because of the down turn in the economy, however, there will be far less federal grant money, if any, available to help continue the work of http://mdslavery.net. We are redoubling our efforts to find other sources of funding from the private and non-profit sector.
We do continue to receive gifts of manuscripts and funds for the restoration of a very small portion of our art and artifact collections. Take for example the portrait of Governor Winder which is typical of the need for care and maintenance of all the artwork for which we are accountable. With the assistance of the Senate the portrait was conserved and is now on display in the State House.
We are also grateful for the support for public exhibits such as the funding that came last year for restoration of the Old Senate Chamber and exhibits in the restored Old House of Delegates Chamber. To compliment that funding, we have raised $200,000 in private funds for the building of an exhibit for the State House featuring Washington’s draft of his resignation speech as commander in chief, and recently have been given a $20,000 manuscript letter that details the British reaction to all the effort that Governor Winder, General Samuel Smith, Mayor Edward Johnson, and the citizens of Baltimore put into defeating the superior naval and ground forces that attacked Baltimore in September of 1814. In part Sir Pulteney Malcolm, Vice Admiral, writes his wife Clementia from aboard the British Frigate Royal Oak, just after the battle and his good friend General Ross has been killed by sniper fire:
The Friends of the Maryland State Archives are actively working on behalf of the Archival program and are directly funding projects that get the word out about the importance and value of the State’s Archival Heritage. Apart from raising the funds for the exhibit case for the Washington document and a member of the board giving the funds to acquire the British reaction to their Baltimore defeat, the Friends are funding a number of publications, one of which goes to the theme that if we want to learn anything new and possibly instructive about ourselves and our past, we need to pay close attention to the preservation and close examination of the details contained within our collections.
Indeed, as with all of the story of public policy and of history generally, the delight can be found in the archival details that are often overlooked and too often subject to neglect, such as once was the case with Governor Winder’s 1814 letter. For example, reams have been written about the U. S. Constellation and the controversy still rages in some quarters as to whether the current interpretation of that Baltimore City harbor attraction is correct. In writing the narrative for a new Friends of the Maryland State Archives publication entitled “Views of Baltimore and Beyond” I found that one of the maps from a private collection that was loaned to illustrate the book, had never been examined closely enough. It was drawn ca. 1796 by a French expatriate engineer, and is the very first true topographical map of the city, a detail that currently is of great interest to those who are trying to recreate virtually what Baltimore was like during the War of 1812 to parallel their widely acclaimed reconstruction of Washington at the time the British burned the White House and the Capitol. Imagine the surprise and delight to find that the engraver had added another detail over looked by the Constellation scholars: the very first known image of the U. S. Constellation, apparently firing a salute to the City just off Federal Hill.
Saving the details of the past in a reasonable program of appraisal and retention, providing a safe and secure housing for their care and retrieval, must be the primary publicly funded priority of any Archives. Just how important those details can be was just recently the subject of another front page article in the Sun entitled “Laying Claim,” that was published on February 1, 2012.
Because the Maryland State Archives has saved and cared for all of the surviving detailed records relating to the ownership of land in Maryland (the largest single component of our archival holdings), the Boy Scouts of Maryland may well be able to acquire and preserve a hitherto unowned tract of land in the midst of their Harford County campground, assuming they have mastered the details to win their argument before the Commissioner of Land Patents who happens to also be the State Archivist, an additional title that traces its origins back to the very first systematic keeper of the detailed public records of Maryland, the Second Lord Baltimore’s chancellor for Maryland, Philip Calvert, his younger brother.
The old saying that “the devil is in the details” means that it is hard work and not without expense to extract answers from the historical record, but if we fail to even save the record, not only will we be without answers, we will lack the wisdom necessary to even ask the right questions.
Our archival heritage is at risk. We need your help both vocally and financially.
If you have found our on line and in person services at http://mdsa.net of use and important to you, you can make a donation in any amount on line to the Friends of the Maryland State Archives: https://shop1.mdsa.net/Donation/donate.cfm
You can also be vocal by writing directly to the governor, the comptroller and to the Maryland legislature, including the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. You will find their email addresses on our http://mdelect.net web site.
Who was E. S. Lloyd?
This print was based upon a drawing by a Corporal E.S. Lloyd. According to the official compilation of men from Massachusetts who served in the Civil War, an Edward S. Lloyd was a corporal in the 3rd Battalion of Rifles, Massachusetts Volunteers, who arrived for garrison duty at Fort McHenry on May 15, 1861, as part of Company D and remained there until the 3rd Battalion departed for Boston on July 30, where they were mustered out.
Our archival heritage is at risk. We need your help both vocally and financially.
If you have found our on line and in person services at http://mdsa.net of use and important to you, you can make a donation in any amount on line to the Friends of the Maryland State Archives: https://shop1.mdsa.net/Donation/donate.cfm
You can also be vocal by writing directly to the governor, the comptroller and to the Maryland legislature, including the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. You will find their email addresses on our http://mdelect.net web site.
Much of the caution and concern I raised about the future fate of the Archival Program last year, remains the same as two years ago. In order to avoid repeating myself, I take the liberty of referring you to those remarks which are available on line at http://marylandarchivist.blogspot.com/2010/02/future-of-archives.html.
The principal responsibility and legally mandated mission of the Maryland State Archives is to be the safe, reliable, and accountable repository of the State’s public memory, accessible to all at as little cost for access as possible. It should be at the Archives where you can reflect on and build upon the lessons learned about what ought to be government’s role in protecting the lives and livelihoods of it citizens, and to sharpen our personal understanding of our origins and obligations, both as citizens and as family members in search of our roots. As President Lincoln wisely pointed out, we need to reach to those the mystic chords of memory that touch the better angels of our nature. Those who remain ignorant of their past, be it personal or public, will wander lost through life, susceptible to the mob rule of others as ignorant and self-destructive as they are to themselves. Yet if we do not now provide the professional care and archival storage for our public memory we will be left with only candlesticks and no candles to light our way.
We can and do find some resources to restore some artifacts, such as this restored Garrett County sponsored candlestick from the State’s Artistic property inventory. It, which along with the rest of the silver that the citizens of Maryland including countless school children with their pennies, purchased, was given to the Cruiser Maryland in a gala ceremony at the Annapolis dock in 1906. Money can always be found to polish silver, but apparently not to hold on to the memories of those who lovingly bought it, and gave it for the use of the officers and crew of first the Cruiser and then the Battleship Maryland.
My favorite photograph of the U. S. S. Maryland, is of her, injured, but steaming forth out of the chaos of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 to do her duty.
Photo #: 80-G-19949 Pearl Harbor Attack, 7 December 1941
USS Maryland (BB-46) alongside the capsized USS Oklahoma (BB-37).
USS West Virginia (BB-48) is burning in the background.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives collection
In many ways as State Archivist, in charge of keeping the public memory, I feel like a member of the crew on that valiant ship on that fateful day, not knowing how we will navigate our way out of the troubles we are in, but certain that we must and we can.
Records and Artifact Storage. While the Archives has suitable storage capacity for paper records totaling 168,680 cubic feet, in its custody are 359,633 cubic feet of record material. Of these, some 190,963 cubic feet are stored in spaces ill-suited and even detrimental to their long-term preservation. Indeed, problems relating to records management in general and the Archives in particular have only gotten worse with time. The same is true for our extensive art collection which is ill housed and for which we have limited special fund resources for restoration of only a few of the treasures in our charge.
Since 2005, when the Archives first requested a capital allowance for records storage, the amount of space suitable to house permanent records has remained the same. The Archives’ main facility in Annapolis – the only suitable facility available – was filled to capacity (168,680 cubic feet) in the year 2000. Since that time, the Archives has taken on an additional 190,953 cubic feet of records. Thus, nearly 200,000 cubic feet of records - - well over half of the State’s total permanent holdings - - are housed in rented facilities that are totally unsuitable.
For the long-term preservation of record material and fine art, environmental control is vitally important. The impact of temperature, relative humidity, air quality/pollution, and light has been studied and recognized the world over. The lack of temperature and humidity controls at the adjunct warehouses of the Archives, without question, puts record material at risk. The consequence of inaction is the degradation and ultimate destruction of Maryland records and fine art.
Staffing and Succession Planning. Like many state agencies. The Archives has had difficulty over the years in retaining qualified staff. It has become quite routine for IT staff and junior archivists to get their training at the Archives and then move on to higher paying jobs. We know we will never be able to compete with the salaries of the federal government or that of the private sector, but our problem is seriously exacerbated by the fact that most of our junior professional staff do not have “PIN” positions with benefits. The real dilemma this portends for the future will be compounded by the fact that there are many of our senior staff who are now, or will be soon, eligible for retirement. Without trained, experienced junior staff to replace them, the Archives as an institution is in peril, not unlike the U.S.S. Maryland at Pearl Harbor.
The Budget Analyst asked that we address what we can do to rectify the critical storage problems we face right now. I have no easy answer. We have maxed out our ability to raise special funds. So much of what we have been able to earn through our entrepreneurial on line services has already been sucked away to pay for substandard warehouse rent. The short response is that in the short run we must have a direct appropriation for rent of a storage facility that meets minimal archival standards just to accommodate the permanent records that are sitting in expensive agency office space or are being thrust upon us because of the downsizing of government. Where will that come from? It is not allocated in this budget before you and I know of no private angel of mercy who will fund it for us, even though I have indeed tried to find one. The last time I tried unsuccessfully, Bernie Madoff had a great deal to do with why I was turned down. Perhaps by taking but a small amount from every other priority that is funded throughout the budget, a reallocation to us for temporary archival storage can be achieved while we await better times and a capital appropriation?
While we also realize that we must do more with less, we can’t do anything if we do not have a core professional staff to manage our collections and to seek out new sources of special fund revenue, while maintaining the flow of what we already have which currently amounts to about 80% of what it cost to maintain our current inadequate level of storage and service.
This is not to say that we have not re-thought our staffing goals and reduced them significantly through the creative use of volunteers and utilization of what is called a ‘cloud’ approach to storing, indexing and accessing our records. What I mean by a ‘cloud’ is a techy term related to sharing resources privately and publicly owned. For example, our pioneering efforts to share electronic storage with a consortium of Libraries and State Archives, because of the leadership role we have played in creating a true electronic archives, should result in significant on-going support from the rest of partners for storing their collections in our electronic archives facilities.
Just recently the Library of Congress interviewed me as a digital pioneer, the pod cast of which was released on Valentine’s Day. While I am flattered, what that means is that Maryland has been recognized by those in the business of preserving and making accessible electronic information as a leader in coming to grips with the storage and retrieval of permanent electronic records. Our on-line access to all the land records ever recorded in Maryland (at least those that survived court house fires) has no peer and is looked upon as a model electronic archival system. I fervently hope that what we have accomplished is not undermined by our inability also to properly care for the permanent paper records and artifacts poorly stored or awaiting transfer.
Despite the worrisome outlook for the proper care and management of our paper and artifact holdings, we do continue to deliver a very high level of service to the public and public agencies. Just a glance at the statistics of service accompanying our budget proves that point.
We also have an active Friends group that in small but meaningful ways assists us in salvaging records for public use that would otherwise be lost, and with helping us properly interpret the treasures in our collections. To date they have raised about half the funds necessary to exhibit Washington’s draft of his speech that he gave in the Old Senate Chamber on December 23, 1783, establish firmly the principal of the primacy of the Civil Authority in our Republic. I was proud to be able to display that speech to Mrs. Obama and members of the Obama family last summer. Now all we need is the capital appropriation to restore the Chamber.
Just this last week the Friends of the Maryland State Archives came to the rescue of a fine private collection of records relating the history of Baltimore City, including this rare original Seaman’s certificate which documents the beginning of the sailing career of a St. Mary’s county mulatto by the name of Allen Thomas. Note the poignancy of what the document makes clear. He was ‘free’ but definitely not a citizen. That would take a civil war and for successive generations of his brethren, decades of struggle in and out of the courts for civil rights, a public record that we cannot afford to lose, yet is in danger if we don’t store it well.
Mark Twain with Governor Warfield at Government House, May 1907
I suspect that by now you may be wondering where Mark Twain fits into all this discussion of preserving the public memory.
A year after the school children of Maryland labored to help pay for the Battleship Maryland Silver Service (which we will soon have on display again in the State House thanks to the generosity of the Senate and private donors) Mark Twain came to Annapolis, straight from his bed where he had been dictating his autobiography to his secretary Miss Lyon (Mrs. Twain was long dead but fondly remembered).
Twain’s visit and the humor he dispensed on the occasion was widely reported in the newspapers of the day from Maine to Texas and beyond.
Twain came to raise money for the First Lady’s favorite cause, her Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, which needed a new roof. The desire to hear from Twain was so great that his after dinner speech was moved from the Governor’s Mansion to the recently dedicated, new House of Delegates Chamber, the one still in use today. He regaled the crowd with story after story. Peals of laughter filled the chamber as he told of the day he drowned, the watermelon he stole, and the tale of the drunken sailor who at the end of the story was heard through the darkness explaining to his wife “with a fervent, appropriate, and pious ejaculation. “God help the poor sailors out at sea.”.”
As was nearly always with Mark Twain, under the humor lay a serious message. It was a message of the importance of memory; remembering the good and evil that has befallen us, with humor yes, but as lessons not to be forgotten.
Take his memory of his life near Hannibal Missouri on the farm of his Uncle, John Quarles. And what he learned about slavery.
There was … one small incident of my boyhood days which touched this matter [of slavery] and it must have meant a good deal to me or it would not have stayed in my memory, clear and sharp, vivid and shadowless, all these slow-drifting years. We had a little slave boy whom we had haired from some one there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping laughing –it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last one day, I lost my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn’t stand it, and wouldn’t she please shut him up. The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this—
“Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child’s noise would make you glad.”
It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy’s noise was not a trouble to me any more.
One bit of good news that I am pleased to share with you today is that because of our efforts to document the history of slavery in Maryland, The U. S. Department of Education has awarded us us a grant of $739,000 over three years to continue our research on the this history slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. That in essence means that we can continue to have a nationally recognized research program without any significant drain on the general fund. (See: The Capitol, for 2/3/2010, http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/top/2011/02/03-26/State-archivists-uncover-stories-of-slavery.html).
Paul W. Gillespe — The Capital: Chris Haley, director of the Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland at the Maryland State Archives, and research archivist Maya Davis look over 150-year-old copies of the Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, where the news item about Harriet Tubman was discovered.
As to Mark Twain, he left Annapolis earlier than planned for his bed at home in New York, and further dictation to Miss Lyon of his autobiography, the complete edition of which he insisted could only be published 100 years after his death, largely because of the truthful things he said about a lot of people. So far only the first volume has been published, making it in 735 pages to dictation in 1906. I can hardly wait to read what he had to say about his Annapolis sojourn and Mrs. Warfield’s benefit in 1907, but at least the prospects of doing so are near at hand. He saw to the recording and preservation of his memories. We must do the same with our public memory. We must find the resources to preserve, protect, and to access those memories to maintain our sense of mission, accomplishment, and humor in public affairs. I can but give what I believe is good advice and advocate for what I believe ought to be done as the Custodian of the State’s public memory. The resources to do so can only come from you and the administration.
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazurus Long
US science fiction author (1907 - 1988)
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address.
How would you date and interpret this cartoon? It is from the National Library of France and they too would like you tell them more about it. Hint: it is not exactly what the National Library of France thinks it is.
