The Potomac River
The Potomac River

Author: Garrett Peck

Publisher: History & Guide

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781609496005

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Learn about the Potomac River and its significant role in American history. The great Potomac River begins in the Alleghenies and flows 383 miles through some of America's most historic lands before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. The course of the river drove the development of the region and the path of a young republic. Maryland's first Catholic settlers came to its banks in 1634 and George Washington helped settle the new capitol on its shores. During the Civil War the river divided North and South, and it witnessed John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the bloody Battle of Antietam. Author Garrett Peck leads readers on a journey down the Potomac, from its first fount at Fairfax Stone in West Virginia to its mouth at Point Lookout in Maryland. Combining history with recreation, Peck has written an indispensable guide to the nation's river.

Life on the Potomac River
Life on the Potomac River

Author: Edwin W. Beitzell

Publisher:

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780788419355

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This is the first complete history of the Tidewater Potomac (Washington DC to the Chesapeake Bay). It covers the full period from the settlement of Maryland and Virginia in the early 1600s to the late 1960s. The author, editor of the Chronicles of St. Mary's (the monthly magazine of the St. Mary's County Historical Society), tells of the generations of men who worked, fought and sailed the waters of the lower Potomac for over three centuries. For more than 50 years he observed the happenings on the river and deplored the pollution and waste of resources of this beautiful arm of the Chesapeake. During this period, he accumulated a considerable store of river lore. Included in the story is data concerning the effect of several wars and the losses and suffering of the river front people in these wars. The establishment of the Federal City, the "Oyster Wars," steam-boating, great freezes and hurricanes are part of the river story. Boat building on the river is traced from the original Indian dugout canoe through the pinnace, shallop and sloop, and in later years, the pungy, schooner, bugeye and the Potomac River "dory." A chapter on boyhood reminiscences is a nostalgic recall of youth, and the author closes with an appeal to help make the Potomac safe and beautiful for the generations to come. Edwin Beitzell's "Life on the Potomac River" remains the primary reference on the Potomac. His meticulous documentation of the region's watermen and their boats is particularly valuable to anyone who is interested in the history of the Potomac River. We welcome the reappearance of this long out-of-print classic. - Richard Dodds, Curator, Maritime History, Calvert Marine Museum. A wealth of charming illustrations and vintage photographs, as well as a full name plus subject index augment this work.

Waters of Potowmack
Waters of Potowmack

Author: Paul C. Metcalf

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9780813920429

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Waters of Potowmack is a documentary history of the Potomac River and its wide, fertile basin--the setting for much of early United States history. A collage of primary accounts, it extends from the first explorers and colonists, the building of the Capitol, and the incidents of the Civil War through our recent past. Waters of Potowmack records the firsthand impressions of the settlers and surveyors of this river basin, an area that includes parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. In addition to offering an introduction to the geography, geology, and climate of the region, Metcalf's fascinating pastiche includes early descriptions of flora and fauna, and accounts of some of the earliest encounters between European settlers and indigenous peoples. Here, too, are the voices of Washington and Jefferson, of Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln, as well as the lesser-known stories of revolutionaries, mercenaries, and canal and road builders. And from diary and journal entries we follow the correspondence between Washington, Jefferson, and L'Enfant as they lay out the new Federal City. Selections from Civil War diaries focus on key battle sites, and primary accounts offer a new understanding of the motives of John Brown and John Wilkes Booth. The last section of Metcalf's engrossing book looks at the ruinous pollution of the river basin after the Second World War, at the rioting and looting of the 1960s, and at the despoliation of a land that at the book's beginning was described as an Eden, a paradise on earth. An evocative and moving book, this is a history of exploring, settling, rebelling, governing, rioting, building, and cultivating, all on the "waters of Potowmack."

A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time
A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time

Author: Paula Tarnapol Whitacre

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2017-09

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1612349609

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In the fall of 1862 Julia Wilbur left her family’s farm near Rochester, New York, and boarded a train to Washington, DC. As an ardent abolitionist, the forty-seven-year-old Wilbur left a sad but stable life, headed toward the chaos of the Civil War, and spent the next several years in Alexandria, Virginia, devising ways to aid recently escaped slaves and hospitalized Union soldiers. A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time shapes Wilbur’s diaries and other primary sources into a historical narrative of a woman who was alternately brave, self-pitying, foresighted, and myopic. Paula Tarnapol Whitacre describes Wilbur’s experiences against the backdrop of Alexandria, a southern town held by the Union from 1861 to 1865; of Washington, DC, where Wilbur became active in the women’s suffrage movement; and of Rochester, New York, where she began a lifelong association with Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents of a Slave Girl, became Wilbur’s friend and ally. Together, the two women, black and white, fought social convention to improve the lives of African Americans escaping slavery by coming across Union lines. In doing so, they faced the challenge to achieve racial and gender equality that continues today. A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time is the captivating story of a woman who remade herself at midlife during a period of massive social upheaval.

Let the River Run Silver Again!
Let the River Run Silver Again!

Author: Sandy Burk

Publisher: McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780939923953

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Let the River Run Silver Again is an environmental conservation success story for students ages 10 to 15 and the teachers, parents, and others who mentor them. It is a source of information and insight for those who want to learn about and benefit from the success of others as well as those who are interested in developing environmental restoration programs in their own watershed. The full-color format presents engaging, action-packed photographs along with maps, graphs, and original art that extends the information presented in multiple directions and dimensions. The greater part of the book follows students from one elementary school in Maryland as they take part, over a period of nine years, in a major regional conservation initiative to restore populations of an important fish, the American shad, to the Chesapeake Bay watershed and to allow the shad to breach numerous dams while migrating to many of their former spawning areas. Numerous private organizations and local, state, and federal agencies contributed to the program - which was indeed successful - but the emphasis in this book is upon the students, their teachers, and their community as they collectively committed to the project, followed through with this commitment, and benefited in myriad ways from the success of the project. The narrative of the students' projects is presented in an energetic style, and at a level, that will both engage and inform other readers of the same age. A short section at the end of the book draws upon the insights offered by the students' story while identifying pathways for students and their mentors to the development and implementation of water, wetland, and watershed restoration projects that could be implemented in other locations and circumstances. The students' experience thus serves as a model and inspiration for student or youth-group conservation projects anywhere.