Newsletter of
The Maryland State Archives

Vol. 20, No. 6

mdsa.net

Fall 2006

 

Interns, 2006

2006 Intern Class Photo
Standing (left to right): Erin Troxell, Genevieve Goerling, Sarah Waller, Amber Robinson, Faith Erline, Allison Smith, Emily Tordo;
Seated (left to right): Ryan Cox, Cindy Thompson, Camille Manganello, Amy Huggins, Keith Swaney, Louis Malick (not pictured: Christine Cohn and Anna Pritt)

Each summer the Archives offers paid internships to provide students with an opportunity to learn archival and historical methods in a professional setting.  High school, undergraduate, and graduate students attending Maryland institutions or Maryland residents attending out-of-state schools are eligible to apply.  In addition, students may participate in an abbreviated program for academic or community service credit.  This summer, the Archives hosted twenty students who worked on thirteen diverse projects throughout the agency.  The following articles, authored by the students, describe their work which ranged from preserving collections both traditionally and electronically to geographical, demographical, and biographical research.  We are extremely proud of their significant contributions, and we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

Beneath the Underground Railroad
by Ryan Cox

Throughout the summer of 2006, the interns working on the Legacy of Slavery project were given major assignments which continued the development of the Study of the Underground Railroad in Maryland.  For the first three weeks, we reviewed the 1830 United States Federal Census Records for Baltimore County.  In the 1830 Census, we looked for all households including slaves and free Blacks, and those dwellings where blacks were listed as the heads of household.  The 1830 Census does not provide information beyond the name of the head of the household, and the numbers of people that lived there, organized according to their age, race, and legal status.  We entered the numbers into a database which is searchable online at http://mdslavery.net.  Now, the information can be used to locate where African Americans lived and worked in Baltimore County, and to gain an understanding about how many were listed as “Free.”  Researchers are now able to study trends and themes found by comparing census data from previous decades.

Our second assignment involved using local newspapers to find advertisements from people looking to either purchase or sell slaves.  We also located articles referring to slaveholders who were trying to locate a lost or runaway slave.  I looked at the first newspaper printed in Baltimore County, the Baltimore County Advocate.  Its focus was on printing information useful to those that lived in the rural areas of the county.  Published by Eleazar Fenton Church in 1850, the Advocate was a popular newspaper that was established when the county pressured Baltimore City to separate and become its own independent city.  Most of the articles published in the Advocate focused on new techniques, tools, and tips to assist farmers and laborers with their harvests. However, not many advertisements discussed slaves and runaways.  The few articles that did mention slaves briefly described runaway incidents and captures.  Few advertisements about directly buying or selling slaves were printed in this newspaper.

After gathering information from the census and newspapers, each intern wrote a synopsis concerning an aspect of the research that particularly interested him or her.  My interest was piqued by articles in the Advocate that revealed public sentiment about slavery in Maryland during this time.  Kidnappings in both Maryland and Pennsylvania appeared in the newspaper, presumably because this was of great interest to Baltimore County residents during the 1850s.  Such subjects probably held interest for county residents because of the pivotal location of the Mason-Dixon Line, and the relation between a slave state (Maryland) and a free state (Pennsylvania).  It was fascinating to see how each state reacted to its neighboring state’s laws, especially in light of the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law.  In newspaper reports of trials that occurred during the first half of the 1850s, the juries seemed to reflect the biases and prejudices of their states at that time.  In Pennsylvania, slave catchers were seen as kidnappers; in Maryland, abolitionists were labeled as traitors for not upholding the Fugitive Slave Laws.  From these articles informing readers about national events and the opinion pieces in the newspaper, researchers can gain insight into the growing schism in Maryland and the nation on the eve of the Civil War.

Runaway Ads
by Genevieve Goerling

For most of the summer I worked with the resources of the Maryland State Archives and the Underground Railroad Project to find connections between various records. Using information from the online biographies and slave narratives, I tried to locate the slaves and owners on maps, in runaway advertisements and in land records posted online at http://mdlandrec.net.  Most of the connections were tenuous at best, but I did have some success. Most notably, I found a record written in 1815 in which John Ferguson of Prince George’s County promised to manumit Thomas Smallwood at the age of thirty.

In addition, I investigated the ages of runaway slaves for a web-based presentation. Using a sample of approximately two thousand individuals drawn from runaway ads for seven counties, I analyzed the dispersion patterns according to age of slaves who fled. I then used ex-slave narratives to find possible explanations for the patterns I had discovered. The combination of data and testimony provided insights into the rules of slave society as well as those individuals who broke the rules.  The presentation will be posted online at http://mdslavery.net.

Exploring Antebellum Baltimore County and the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland by Keith Swaney

My summer work focused on three projects for the Underground Railroad research initiative.  I investigated the 1840 U.S. Federal Census, recording the names of heads of households where either free Blacks or slaves lived, and noted the households that consisted entirely of African Americans.  I scanned runaway slave and domestic traffic advertisements from the Maryland Republican, an Annapolis-based newspaper, from 1851 to 1855.  And I researched the free Black community of Baltimore County, concentrating on the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s.  With the first two tasks, I entered data—including scanned images of the newspaper advertisements—into the Maryland Slavery Databases.  Using this resource, researchers will be able to access this data via the http://mdslavery.net website.

Each phase presented its own unique challenges, but also provided opportunities to learn from those challenges.  When conducting research on free Blacks in Baltimore County, for example, I relied heavily on the 1840 Census.  I especially focused on the households noted in the census as being entirely African American.  The census records, however, included neither occupational information nor name information on the individuals who resided within particular households.  It was not until the 1850 Census that this information first appeared.  Consequently, I was unable to determine much detailed information about the individual African Americans who resided in Baltimore County.  However, I was able to incorporate other primary sources in the account to show how free Blacks were treated—and marginalized—by the larger community.

These sources include original court dockets, newspapers, and legislation found on the Archives of Maryland Online.  In locating significant free Black settlements in antebellum Baltimore County, I used two important maps: the J.C. Sidney and P.J. Browne Map of the City and County of Baltimore (1850) (see http://www.mdslavery.net/html/mapped_images/bcd1.html) and Robert Taylor’s Map of the City and County of Baltimore from Actual Surveys (1857) (see http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/intromsa/digital/images/400px/map23large.jpg).  These maps helped me to locate African-American institutions—especially meeting houses where free Blacks convened to practice their religion—within Baltimore County.  The research combined primary sources, some secondary literature, and geographical analysis to show that free Blacks navigated difficult waters in antebellum Baltimore County.  On the one hand, they played important roles in an economy that was becoming increasingly based on free labor rather than on slave labor.  On the other hand, they were constantly under surveillance by the white community, who feared that free Blacks might undermine law and order by conspiring with slaves, by stealing money and goods from community members, or by becoming rowdy and violent when assembled in large groups.

Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame
by Amy Huggins

The Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame was established by the Maryland Commission for Women in 1985 and recognizes women from Maryland who “have made unique and lasting contributions to the economic, political, cultural, and social life of the state and to provide visible models of achievement for tomorrow’s female leaders.”  Six women were inducted into the Hall of Fame this year and came from such varied backgrounds as social activism, medicine, fashion and art.  Writing a total of ten biographies this summer, I had ample opportunity to delve into the lives of these extraordinary women.

All of the women inducted into the Hall of Fame most certainly have contributed to the state in some way.  I personally feel that the women I researched this summer were beyond extraordinary.  All showed perseverance in the face of opposition.  One example is the well-known Bea Gaddy, who continually worked to feed the hungry of Baltimore despite her own meager living. Another example is the less well-known Hiltgunt Margret Zassenhaus, who repeatedly defied the Nazi government and ultimately saved the lives of 1,200 Scandinavian political prisoners.  We also researched the life of Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston, a woman who strove to become a doctor at a time when women were discouraged from entering the medical field.  Another medical doctor inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006 was Dr. Liebe Sokol Diamond. Her success as a renowned pediatric orthopedic surgeon is only magnified by the fact that she faced nearly insurmountable physical deformities.

I was fortunate enough to research many sources in the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the Jewish Museum of Maryland and the University of Maryland College Park.  These sources, combined with the resources available here at the Maryland State Archives, contributed greatly to the biographies of the ten women I researched this summer.  I sincerely enjoyed researching and recording the lives of such extraordinary women, capturing the richness of their personal experiences, and creating a fuller, more complete understanding of the past.


From left to right:  Ronald Owen, Jr., Brian Oswinkle, Richard Brown, and Joshua Hood

The Martenet Project
by Richard Brown, Joshua Hood, and Brian Oswinkle, and Ronald Owen, Jr.

This summer we had the pleasure of working on the Martenet project at S.J. Martenet and Company in Baltimore City. The Martenet project entails scanning surveyor’s plats, maps, and field notes for Baltimore City and surrounding areas. The work was difficult and, at times, very time-consuming. However, the work was ultimately rewarding:  by the time we had completed one section of our assignment, we had gained both the experience and confidence to move on the next section.  Overall, the internship program ran smoothly and helped us learn marketable skills in a real work environment.

An inventory of the S. J. Martenet & Co., Inc. Collection is available on the Maryland State Archives Guide to Special Collections.

African-American Attorneys
by Louis Malick

My primary project this summer was to assist Research Archivist Owen Lourie, under the direction of Dr. Papenfuse, in his research for a forthcoming study on African-American lawyers in twentieth-century Baltimore.  Lourie’s primary focus is J. Steward Davis, who practiced from 1915 until his disappearance in 1929.  My primary focus for the summer was George W. Evans, Davis’ partner from the time of his admission to the bar in late 1923 until the partnership dissolved in late 1928.  Evans continued to practice on his own until his death in 1948, but my work this summer centered on his relationship to Davis.  This entailed researching Baltimore City court dockets for any references to Davis or Evans in an effort to compile a comprehensive list of cases in which they were involved.  This is quite an extensive task, as Baltimore City had six courts at that time, collectively known as the Supreme Bench of Baltimore.  Each kept its own dockets, sometimes as many as three or four for each year, ranging from 400 to 800 pages each.  So far, the project has documented over 1300 cases for the years 1922 through 1929.

Another project I worked on allowed me to interact with the Archives’ remote scanning operation at S.J. Martenet & Co. in Baltimore.  The operation’s goal is to process and scan a massive amount of surveyors’ records from the Martenet and Bouldin firms, ranging from the late eighteenth century to the present, and dealing primarily with Baltimore City and the surrounding area.  My goal was to learn as much as possible about the project.  Working under the direction of Archivist Saul Gibusiwa, I reviewed the processing and scanning procedures step by step and even processed a clamshell of records myself.  I gained a much better appreciation for the project’s great scope and breadth.  Both projects provided further experience in archival research and processing and reflect the great breadth of work the Archives is currently undertaking.

Women in Law

by Amber Robinson, Allison Smith and Erin Troxell

The Women in Law summer interns collaborated with other Maryland State Archives staff to research women admitted to the Maryland Bar between the years of 1902 and 1975.  The first woman admitted to the Maryland Bar was Henrietta (Etta) Maddox in 1902.  We began research in original test book indices and test cards online to find women admitted to the Bar.  The test book indices gave us the women’s original signatures and their dates of admission.  The online test cards were more valuable resources in the sense that some of them have been updated with name changes and dates of death.  Because of the immense number of test cards and the fact that they were in alphabetical order rather than numerical order by year of admittance, it took us approximately the first two and one-half weeks to finish looking at the cards. 

Once we had names of women and their years of admittance to the Bar, we compiled the names into a spreadsheet.  We included the names of the women, their dates of admittance, and which test book and page they signed.  Then we began the long process of going through the names for which we were not sure of the person’s gender, such as J.J. Moore and L.C. Reynolds.  We used resources such as Heritage Quest, U.S. Census records, city directories, Ancestry.com, LexisNexis, death records, and the Martindale-Hubbel Law Directory to identify the gender for these individuals.  We continuously updated our spreadsheet, adding birth and death dates for the women, law schools they attended, and other miscellaneous information about their lives.  We created biographical files on each woman we researched.  Currently, we have seven hundred and forty-nine people listed on our spreadsheet, forty-five of which may be men.  We have made immense progress.

As we came to know the women through our research, we grew increasingly interested in their personal stories.

One question we addressed was whether or not women admitted to the Bar in the early twentieth century actually went on to practice law.  The answer varies.  Anna Grace Kennedy, reputed to have been the second woman admitted to the Maryland Bar (1906), apparently never practiced law.  According to the 1910 U.S. Census Record, she became a public school teacher.  Lucie Marie Gueydan, who was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1928, moved to New York and worked at the firm of Newbold Morris until she retired at the age of 78.

Another question we researched was which women admitted to the Bar eventually married and which remained single.  That answer varies as well.  Anna Grace Kennedy was not married in 1910, when she was admitted to the Bar.  We were unable to find a record if her marrying at all, although it is possible she did marry.  Helen Sherry (admitted in 1923) not only married – she worked with her husband Louis H. Sherry at the law firm of Sherry & Sherry.  Lucie Marie Gueydan, who did practice as a lawyer, definitely never married.  After retiring, she moved back to Maryland and spent time with her nieces and her great-nieces for the rest of her long life – she lived to be 101 years old!  Gueydan must have had quite an influence on her nieces – two of her great-nieces became lawyers. Jeanette Rosner Wolman, who was admitted in 1924, not only worked as a lawyer and married a lawyer – her two sons, Benjamin and Paul followed in their parents’ footsteps and became lawyers as well.

Jeanette Rosner Wolman, like many women lawyers in Maryland, was also an active suffragist.  Others faced personal obstacles such as Lucie Marie Gueydan, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the age of 35.  These women were suffragists, housewives, immigrants, and native Marylanders – influential women who left their mark on the practice of law in the state.

Vivian V. Simpson was such a woman. She led a fascinating life as a lawyer and a politician. While attending the University of Maryland, Vivian was dubbed a “trouble maker” because she complained about the difference in the rules for male and female students.  Male students could “smoke on the University premises and keep their lights in their dormitories on all night if desired, [while] female students were forbidden to smoke on campus and were required to turn off the lights in their rooms by 9:30 p.m.”  Vivian was also accused of an “alleged infraction of student rules” and was expelled “for refusing to conform to school discipline.”  She was specifically accused of making fudge after the lights were out to which she responded that she had eaten the fudge but not made it. She was also charged with “wearing Kimonos at an improper time.”  Also a group of students provided affidavits to a news reporter, alleging that coeds and faculty members were engaging in “improper activities” including “drinking, swimming, parties, car rides and even spanking parties.”  When questioned by the dean, Dr. Woods, Simpson refused to provide any information. Vivian, along with two other girls, was expelled from the University of Maryland. However, she counteracted the expulsion by suing the university for reinstatement with the help of her father and brother. After the scandal, Dr. Woods actually resigned his position at the University of Maryland.

Simpson says that the experience with the University of Maryland was a learning experience and that it prepared her to practice law: “it toughened me; before I was as innocent as a babe in arms.”  Simpson transferred to George Washington University and graduated with her Bachelors degree in 1925 and her law degree in 1927 with straight A’s and the Order of the Coif, an honor to students with scholarly achievement. On May 31, 1950, she received the Alumnae Achievement Award from George Washington University.  Vivian Simpson fought for women’s equality in the legal profession as well as in society.  Simpson certainly paved the way for many other women lawyers and became an exceptional example of womanly intelligence and power in society and the legal profession. She has been quoted as saying that “she hopes that other women would look upon her experience as one that would encourage them to enter the legal profession” and that “there are no ‘women lawyers’ just lawyers.”  She dedicated her life to women’s rights.

Miss Simpson was only one woman out of the 749 total women found. These women were the first to open the gate for women in the legal profession. Hopefully we, as researchers, will be able to uncover what motivated these women to break the rules, step into a completely male profession, and change it for the future women lawyers of Maryland.

It has been a pleasure to work on the Women in Law project.  We were privileged to meet with Judge Deborah Eyler of the Court of Special Appeals and Judge Lynne Battaglia of the Court of Appeals, who are working on a two-volume book about women admitted to the Bar from 1902 to 1975.  It was inspiring to see the interest of the judges in the lives of these women who shared their profession and in many ways were their forbears.  Meeting with the judges, who were so interested in the research that we were conducting as well as the women that were being researched, helped to bring the tremendous accomplishments of these women into context for our time.  With the insight from the judges, we could see how these accomplishments by early women in Maryland’s legal profession have had an impact on women practicing law now.


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