Category: Research Resources

Local papers have brought up-to-date information to residents of Havre de Grace since the early 1800s. But on that day in May 1813 when the British stormed into the fishing village, almost completely destroying it, there wasn’t a local weekly to tell people about one of the biggest stories in the annals of the town’s history.

As buildings smoldered and shocked residents started cleaning up the devastated place, readers around the nation turned to city papers out of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and elsewhere to see the headline grabbing intelligence.  Those urban broadsheets, snatching all the reporting they could from letter writers, stage-coach drivers, militia officers, and other eyewitnesses, told subscribers about the outrageous warfare that came to the one small community on the Chesapeake Bay.  Those journals, often called the first draft of history, captured the alarming story as word spread slowly throughout an apprehensive region.

But in the town another five years passed quickly by before citizens had a local source printing news.  Beginning in 1818, editor William Coale kicked off a long tradition of local broadsheets with the Bond of Union, recording the goings on, the adventures and events, and the details of life on ink and paper.  In 1820 the publisher moved the operation to Bel Air, according to the Library of Congress.

As papers concentrating on the attractively situated village started publishing it was a point in time when people still recalled those frightful memories.  It was just as if it was yesterday that they’d lived through the harrowing assault by redcoats.  So the adventures, events, actions, and dangers of that unforgettable Sunday came up periodically in remembrances, on anniversary dates, and when aging defenders passed away.  Plus those old papers are full of advertisements for business, real estate and much more offering insights into that era from long ago.

Two decades later old-timers still eagerly shared first-hand accounts when the Susquehanna Advocate started publishing in 1839.  As the 19^th century moved along, the municipality had papers such as the Madisonian and Harford County Weekly Advertiser, Harford County Times, , Democratic Ledger, Havre de Grace Republican, Independent Press, Electric Light, and more, according to the Library of Congress.

In constructing the annals of these times, the War of 1812: Havre de Grace Under Fire committee I’ve been overseeing the process of delving into these and other old newspapers, conducting research and culling insights from fascinating sources.  Project volunteers have spent untold hours at microfilm readers staring at the aging old film as well as rummaging through issues filed deeply away in special repositories.

The researchers also used the products of city publishers to glean the happenings that dangerous spring nearly 200 years ago.  While much of that undertaking called for using microfilm, there is a revolution going on with newspaper research, involving the digitization of newspapers.  Lots of data are now just keystrokes away and valuable information describing the attack and the damage was found.  In this area, many of the major papers from populated centers are now available online.

Those old newspapers help tell the story of the time when warfare came to the Havre de Grace’s shore as the committee chronicles and presents those days.  Buried deeply inside the untold number of pages published through the 19^th century are stories of the attack, defense, and damage; enemy relics of war uncovered a generation later; anniversary observances of the attack and bombardment;  and the passage of old defenders.

Newspapers, as journalists often say, are the first draft of history.   The preliminary accounts are rarely the final ones as editors and reporters face the challenge of gathering information during difficult wartime conditions while rushing to meet the printer’s deadline.  Nonetheless, these colorful and engaging sources provide a glimpse into another time as we triangulate new gleanings with other manuscripts.

Nearly two hundred years later, the project has pulled out those dusty, untouched issues while also squinting to read microfilm and online digital content.  Thank goodness those broadsheets were worth hanging onto and weren’t crumpled up and tossed away the away like we generally do with our daily papers.

While historians learn about the past in many ways, one of the most exciting can be reading letters that were penned long ago.  You never know what these private communications from another age are going to reveal or where they’re going to come from.  Sometimes these pieces of paper have been stashed away in a long sealed attic trunk or shoe box, placed there by relatives who passed away generations ago.  But a few times they’ve been trapped or secretly stashed behind walls for some reason, and revealed by construction or some other disturbance.  Whatever the case these private exchanges are often illuminating as they put a different sort of light on times gone by.

As the War of 1812 Bicentennial draws near I’ve been examining aging, unpublished manuscripts from that era and came across one from Captain Andrew Hall of the 30^th Maryland regiment.  This document had been in the custody of a relative Thomas E. Hall, who generously shared a copy.

Nearly two hundred years ago on November 13, 1813, the Captain penned this letter to his brother-in law David Wherry and sister in Brandy Camp, Ohio.  After talking about the family in Cecil County and his aging mother,  he informed the recipients that these were dangerous time here as the waters of the Chesapeake were polluted with the English and they had been here since last spring blockading all the seaport towns.  As a consequence, merchandise of all sorts, especially sugar and salt, was very high.

One of the consequenes of the blockade was that trade from Baltimore to Elkton and then by wagon to Christiana was brisk.  The demand for wagons exceeded anything Hall had seen and they were charging as high as a half a dollar per barrel for flour and 15 pence per hundred for hauling from Elkton to Christiana as there was no water passage.

Hall also told his brother-in-law about the British invasion on the Upper Chesapeake.  On the 26th of April (1813), the militia had orders to march, but not being armed things were in a confused state.  On the 28th the British landed at Frenchtown and set it on fire, which  ”consumed  it to ashes.”  Elkton would have been destroyed if it the invaders hadn’t been “cowed” by the shot of one cannon ball from a small battery thrown up at the landing.  It had a “good effect on them” which prompted the royal marines to retreat by the time the local militia was pretty well collected with arms.

The invaders fell down the river till the fourth of May when they attempted a landing at havre de Grace under a heavy cannonading on both sides.  As they had the greatest force they succeeded in landing and setting fire to the town and several small vessels.  From there the British went to Cecil Furnance, which was also burnt to ashes.

Hall was born in Cecil County in 1768 and died in 1846. He married Rosannah Mahaffey on February 6, 1789.  He noted in his communications written in the middle of the war, that he had eleven children living and three dead (seven sons and four daughters).

The history that unfolds in aging letters provides glimpses into a very personal past as they reveal what others thought and observed.  There’s great value in these aging letters for they show what someone though and generally was passing along in a private exchange between two people.  That’s far different from say a newspaper, where an editor wrote for a large general audience and numerous factors affected the coverage provided by those sources.

Finally thanks to Thomas for sharing this letter so we know what was on the mind of one milita officer from northeastern Cecil County during those trying months, a dangerous times when the war came to our rivers and shores on the Chesapeake.