"Preserving Municipal History," June 26, 2002  Prepared by Karen A. Hare, 21 May 2002

Many of you here today may not realize the unique value of your positions as mayors, aldermen, and town council members to the study of local history.  For it is to you that tomorrow's historians will look to help uncover Maryland's rich heritage when they write the history of the turn of the twenty-first century.  We've come a long way from the historiography of only a few short generations ago, when the biographies of a few "great men" and the actions of their governments and armies formed the basis of what was considered authentic history.  Today's scholars recognize that if they really want to understand the totality of history, they have to look beyond politics, war, and diplomacy to what Fernand Braudel and his Annales school called "the structures of everyday life."¹  As American historians of the last century embraced the new social history and recognized that there was indeed much merit in studying the culture, mentality, and lifestyles of the common man, they began looking for new sources of information that were closer to home.  Local sources suddenly became crucial, for the history of individuals and communities is found in the details.  Today's official correspondence, reports, minute books, account books, and other documents originating from the operation of local governments are the sources for tomorrow's local historians.

Local history is history from the "bottom up;" it is history at the grass roots.  From local history we can piece together the larger picture of the state, but the reverse is not true; national history sheds little light on the way our own families and neighbors lived and worked in our own communities.  Local history is valuable not only because we can use specifics to make generalizations about state and national history, but it has its own intrinsic worth in that it contributes to a sense of self-identity and promotes self-respect.  It satisfies the curiosity of our children and grandchildren as they see the unique roles that their communities played in national events.  It gives us a feeling of connectedness to the people and places of our childhoods, to our neighbors and to the world at large.  Archivists working in the search room of the Maryland State Archives can attest to the tremendous growth in interest in family history and genealogy over the past 25 years.  Only when individuals and communities become aware of the inherent value of their own histories can they more intelligently work together to preserve the records and documents that tell their stories, and  make those sources available to others.  As one historian put it, "A good past is a guarantee of a good future; and to preserve the records of what came before us promotes that sense of continuity which gives us the faith to continue our own work, with the expectation that our descendants will find it equally interesting."²

Local history tells us the story of Wiley H. Bates.  Bates was born into slavery in North Carolina in August, 1859.  After the Civil War, he worked as a water boy and freight boy on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.  His father died when he was 13, and Bates found himself working on a boat that traveled on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal between Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and Cumberland, Maryland.  It wasn't long before Bates' mother sought a more stable life for her son and moved with him to Annapolis, where he worked culling oysters.  When he got a little older he joined Asbury United Methodist Church, the oldest black congregation in town.  Incredibly energetic and optimistic in a society that had afforded him no formal education to speak of and institutionalized racial discrimination, he worked hard at anything he tried:  waiting tables, crabbing, splitting wood and peddling it on the streets.  His outgoing and friendly nature earned him a trusting clientele that later patronized the grocery store he opened at 54 Cathedral Street while still in his early 20s.  He took a bride and made a home for himself a few doors down from the store.  As the grocery business grew, Bates became known for his fair business practices and honest dealings with his customers, who called him the "Negro Gentleman."³

Bates' popularity and leadership skills earned him a seat on the Annapolis city council in July 1897, when he was elected Annapolis' third consecutive black alderman representing the third (later fourth) ward.  During his two years on the council, he served as a member of the standing committees on public buildings and electric lights.⁴  Bates worked with the mayor, the city counselor, and five other council members to conduct such city business as electing city police officers, overseeing the grading and paving of city streets, approving the installation of electric lights and telephone poles throughout the city and the laying of additional track for the Annapolis and Baltimore Short Line R.R. Co., as well as the granting or denying of city liquor licenses.  Far from being a passive member of the council, Bates took a leading roll as an advocate for city blacks from his earliest days on the council.  In early October 1897, he spearheaded an effort to petition the legislature for funds to build of the city's first public school for "colored" children.⁵  When in May 1898 the city council ordered an additional appropriation to help pay the salaries of teachers at the all-white Annapolis High School in order for the school year to extend into June, Bates made sure that the salaries of black teachers were increased for the same purpose.⁶  In October 1898, Bates proposed a council resolution condemning the lynching of  Wright Smith, a black man accused of assaulting two white women, who was dragged from the Annapolis City jail in the middle of the night and then shot in the back while trying to flee a mob of angry white men.  Bates called the lynching a disgrace to the city and cited his belief that Smith would have been brought to justice shortly by due process of  law.  Although Governor Lloyd Lowndes  publicly condemned the lynching as "an outrage,"⁷ Bates' resolution was defeated in the city council with only one other member voting in favor of it.⁸

By the time Bates retired from the grocery business in 1912, he had become one of the wealthiest black residents in town.  He invested in local real estate and built on his reputation as a champion of improved education for blacks.   In the 1920s, Bates donated $500 of his own money toward the purchase of land to build a new black high school in Annapolis.  The new school opened in 1933 and was named the "Wiley Bates High School" in his honor.  At the age of 69 he published an autobiographical book of "sayings" that told of his deep Christian faith, his belief in the value of perseverance, hard work, thrift, brotherly love and a good measure of "pluck."  Aware that the basic needs of food and shelter for many of the older blacks in Annapolis were not being met on a regular basis,⁹ Bates directed in his will that one of his Annapolis homes be incorporated as "The Bates Old Peoples Home" to be used as a refuge for elderly blacks "regardless of sect."¹⁰  He died in 1935 at the age of 76, a testimony to the fruitfulness of diligence and optimism.

We can tell Bates's story today largely because the municipal sources were preserved in a central location and made available to the public.  Bates was from Annapolis, the municipality in Maryland that has deposited far and away the greatest number of  its municipal records with the Archives, comprising more than half of our municipal holdings.  From the proceedings of the city council dating from 1720, the original bylaws and ordinances dating from 1779, city commission reports from 1843, and the mayor's case files from the 1950s, a wealth of information lies at the fingertips of the anyone wishing to more completely uncover the secrets of  life in Annapolis over the past 350 years.

And this is where you come in.  We want to know your stories-- the stories of the individuals who have lived and worked in your towns--you, your parents and your grandparents.  The Maryland State Archives was created as the Hall of Records in 1935, only one year before the founding of the Maryland Municipal League.  As an independent state agency, the Archives is charged not only with the collection, custody, and preservation of state records and documents of permanent value, but also of county and municipal files not currently in use.  Where local facilities are poor, centralization of town and municipal records in a state repository is the practical solution to preserving local documents no longer in use.  Local officials cannot be expected to be experts in the standards and systems of archival care and preservation of records.   Records deemed of permanent value may be transferred to the state archives as determined by established retention schedules approved by the state archivist.  Of the 157 municipal governments in Maryland, only 25 currently have record retention schedules; the most recent cities added to the list being Annapolis (2000), Ocean City (2000), Taneytown (2001), and Frederick (2001-2002).

Under the pressure of daily business, old records naturally fall into neglect and can sometimes disappear altogether.  In November of 2001, officials of the town of New Windsor in Carroll County noticed that their Town Minute books between 1845 and 1930 were missing.  The books were nowhere to be found.  They were not in the town office as expected, although several former mayors reported that they had indeed seen the books on their shelves at one time.  City officials speculated that the minute books must have gotten lost in the shuffle when city files were moved to a new office about seven years earlier.  Board members of the New Windsor Heritage Committee hoped that they had simply gotten packed away in a box somewhere and temporarily forgotten about rather than destroyed or lost forever.  The books had not been deposited with the Carroll County Historical Society or the Maryland State Archives.  As far as we know the Town Minute books have not been located to this day.

The Maryland State Archives stands ready to work with the Maryland Municipal League to help avoid a repeat of this sad occurrence in the future.  Together we can develop model retention schedules that will serve as checklists for town councils to systematically handle the deposition of their permanent retired records and documents with the State Archives.  As the Maryland Municipal League moves closer to realizing its goal of "building inclusive communities,"¹¹ let us ensure that the process is safely preserved for future generations of historians and interested citizens so that the unique story of every Maryland town can be told.

Thank you.

Sources:

1.  Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life:  The Limits of the Possible, 19  .

2.  Lewis Mumford, "The Value of Local History," in Carol Kammen, ed. The Pursuit of Local History (Walnut Creek, CA, 1996), 88.

3.  Wiley H. Bates, Researches, Sayings and Life of Wiley H. Bates (Annapolis:  1928), p. 25.

4.  The other standing committees were finance, streets, Market House, fire department, and by-laws.  Maryland State Archives ANNAPOLIS MAYOR AND ALDERMEN (Proceedings) 1892-1898, MSA M49-14, 1/22/1/66, p. 350.

5.  Maryland State Archives ANNAPOLIS MAYOR AND ALDERMEN (Proceedings) 1892-1898, MSA M49-14, 1/22/1/66, p. 374.  The Stanton School was built in 1900.  Before 1900, the Gallilean Fisherman School, founded by Methodists, and St. Mary's Catholic Church served as private schools for black children.  See Philip L. Brown, The Other Annapolis 1900-1950 (Annapolis:  The Annapolis Publishing Company, 1994), p. 53.

6.  Maryland State Archives ANNAPOLIS MAYOR AND ALDERMEN (Proceedings) 1892-1898, MSA M49-14, 1/22/1/66, pp. 419-420.

7.  "Annapolis Lynchers," The Baltimore Weekly Sun, 8 October 1898.

8.  Maryland State Archives ANNAPOLIS MAYOR AND ALDERMEN (Proceedings) 1898-1901, MSA M49-15, 1/22/1/67, p. 27.

9.  Maryland State Archives ANNAPOLIS MAYOR AND ALDERMEN (Proceedings) 1892-1898, MSA M49-14, 1/22/1/66, p. 371.

10.  Maryland State Archives ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY REGISTER OF WILLS (Wills) MSA T2559-11, WMN 1, 1/1/10/56.

11.  Maryland Municipal League.
        http://www.mdmunicipal.org/