Events

Past Events

View recordings of past lectures, seminars, tours and workshops, as well as helpful training videos on how to use various records in our collections in our free online Presentation Library.

December Lunch and Learn: The Missionary: William Levington, Founder of St. James First African Protestant Episcopal Church

Explore the life and times of the first ordained African American priest in the American South. Professor Lawrence Jackson will describe the life and works of William Levington, the founder of the St. James First African Protestant Episcopal Church in Baltimore in 1824. The church, now known as St. James in Lafayette Square, recently celebrated its 200th anniversary.

Lawrence Jackson is the author of the award-winning books Chester B. Himes: A Biography (W.W. Norton 2017), The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics (Princeton 2010), My Father’s Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War (Chicago 2012) and Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, 1913-1952 (Wiley 2002). His latest books are Hold It Real Still: Clint Eastwood, Race, and the Cinema of the American West (Johns Hopkins University Press 2022) and Shelter: A Black Tale from Homeland, Baltimore (Graywolf 2022). He teaches English and history at Johns Hopkins University and writes occasionally for Harper’s Magazine.

January Lunch and Learn: “Baltimore's Own” Soldiers in World War I: No Longer Lost to History

From the first day Camp Meade opened in 1917 to the last day of World War I, draftees from the Baltimore area—and the rest of Maryland—played a crucial and controversial role in bringing the Great War to an end. Hear the incredible story of the 313th Regiment of the 79th Division as never before, told through the first-hand accounts of the doughboys who went over the top and charged into merciless enemy fire and accomplished what their French ally insisted was simply impossible to achieve.

Time after time the French stormed the German-held heights of Montfaucon over the preceding three years. Time after time they failed miserably. The 313th—affectionately dubbed “Baltimore’s Own” by its adoring cigar-chomping colonel—did so in less than two days. But the cost was high and controversy over its battlefield success has followed the regiment for more than a hundred years. Author Mike Martin spent more than a decade meticulously researching and writing this epic story and brings it to life through the penned words these soldiers recorded themselves in tattered diaries, memoirs, and wartime letters from “over there.”

Mike Martin is a retired long-time Baltimore County high school teacher who was the coordinator of Lansdowne High School’s Academy of Finance program. Affiliated with the National Academy Foundation, Lansdowne was one of only a few Maryland public high schools, and 200 secondary schools in the nation to offer the five-course program in personal finance. Before joining the teaching ranks at age 50, Martin worked in the private sector. Prior to that he was a journalist, working as an editor for the local weekly paper in his hometown Catonsville community. He also spent time as a reporter for both the Baltimore Sun and News American daily papers. It was his passion for writing, and history that prompted him to write his recently published book, Baltimore’s Own: Courage, controversy and the crucial role of the 313th Regiment to end World War I (2024).

February Lunch and Learn: Using DNA to Connect Living People to Enslaved Ironworkers at Catoctin Furnace

Learn about successful efforts to trace the ancestry of enslaved African Americans who worked at Catoctin Furnace iron foundry in Frederick County, which began operations in the 1770s, around the beginning of the American Revolution.

In 2015, the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society began a research and tourism project aimed at increasing public awareness of the role of enslaved African Americans in the iron industry. The project’s first phase involved forensic analyses of the human remains from the African American workers’ cemetery at the site. Later, DNA analysis provided data on ancestral origins of individuals in the cemetery. Ancient DNA analysis (aDNA) from bone or tooth samples collected from a selected subset of 28 individuals has assisted in determining the relationship between these historic remains and living population.

Cross-referencing this DNA with genetic information on modern-day genealogy websites, the project has been able to compare the DNA of African Americans who labored at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland during the late eighteenth to early centuries to that of more than nine million research participants in the 23andMe genetic database. The project has identified 41,799 modern relatives, including nearly 3,000 who are extremely close and include likely direct descendants. Research also made it possible to trace enslaved peoples’ origins in Africa. By sampling DNA from historical people with closer ties to Africa, the project showed that the enslaved workers at Catoctin derived from a small number of African groups, particularly the Wolof of West Africa and the Kongo of Central Africa.

This work helps to restore personal stories. Within the Catoctin African American cemetery, DNA helped identify five genetic families, primarily composed of mothers, children, and siblings who were buried close together.

Elizabeth Anderson Comer is an archaeologist who serves as the president of the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc. and president of EAC/Archaeology, Inc. Ms. Comer has successfully managed more than 350 archival and archaeological survey, testing and excavation projects and historic architectural survey, evaluation and recordation. Ms. Comer graduated from Hood College with a B.A. in history and political science, and received her master’s degree from the University of Kansas in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology. She is ABD at the University of Maryland, currently completing her Ph.D. in American Studies with a concentration in archaeology. She has also studied at the University of London. As City Archaeologist for the City of Baltimore 1983-1987, she directed and managed the archaeological department for the city and specialized in complex urban, industrial and waterfront projects.

As secretary and now president of the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc., Ms. Comer has led efforts restore the 1810 log collier’s house, the 1821 stone Forgeman’s house, the Museum of the Ironworker, the construction of an interpretative trail for the African-American cemetery, the purchase and establishment of the ca. 1820 Miller House as the innovative “Furnace Fellows” headquarters, and bio-archaeological research about the Catoctin Furnace population. She edited Catoctin Furnace: Portrait of an Iron-Making Village (2013), a meticulously researched and extensively referenced social, economic and technical history of Catoctin Furnace.

Ms. Comer serves as the co-principal investigator for the joint Smithsonian Institution/Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc. research project focusing on the remains of thirty-five individuals from the Catoctin Furnace slave cemetery. Ms. Comer has made more than 75 presentations to local, regional and national groups about the ongoing research at Catoctin Furnace including XRF, LIDAR, archaeology, oral history, historic clothing research, and historic foodways.