Announcements
Longtime Berlin mayor writes new book showing how "America's Coolest Small Town" earned its laurels
In a new book, former Berlin mayor Gee Williams sets out his prescription for revitalizing small-town America. Turn Your Town Around: How to Make It a Great Destination Community maintains that building on any town’s distinctive history and hospitality, along with nurturing local entrepreneurs and artists, can lead to transformative results. Williams’ case rests on a tangible example– the real-world success of Berlin, where he served as mayor for 12 years (2008-2020). A town of 5,000 located between its larger neighbors of Salisbury and Ocean City on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Berlin traces its own history to a Colonial-era plantation...
Easton author publishes debut book on century-old injustice
“This rigorous account clearly shows that Isaiah Fountain suffered a fate he didn’t deserve.” - Kirkus Reviews Easton author Joseph Koper has released his first book - a riveting account of racial injustice in Talbot County, painstakingly pieced together from the headlines and court records of a century ago. In the wake of World War I and the “Spanish flu” pandemic, economic and racial tensions flared across the country. The Eastern Shore of Maryland was not immune. In April 1919, a successful Black farmer named Isaiah Fountain set out by foot from his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, to Easton, Maryland,...
Novel of pre-Civil War Maryland wins new award
For her nine years of research bringing back to life and thus preserving the vivid 1850s African American history of her own farm, and the remarkable life of Elizabeth Burton, its free Black owner 165 years before, author Barbara Lockhart has been awarded Underground Railroad Free Press's 2022 Prize for Preservation, the highest honor bestowed in the international Underground Railroad community. Lockhart’s research resulted in her multiple-awarded book, Elizabeth’s Field: Of Freedom and Bondage on Harriet Tubman's Eastern Shore (Secant Publishing, 2020). Lockhart’s and Burton’s farm is located in Dorchester County, Maryland, birthplace of Harriet Tubman, who...
English author to speak on 17th century Eastern Shore settler
On Thursday, Sept. 29, Shore History will host British author Margaret Rice to speak about and sign “The Henry Bagwell Story.” The 220-page book is the first biography of an influential English settler on the Eastern Shore in the early 17th century. “My own journey with Henry’s story began 10 years ago,” Rice said. “Looking through my research on my family line, the Chappell family of Exeter, I noticed the name David Bagwell, a marriage to Joan Chappell, birth of their children, including a Henry Bagwell, christened on Oct. 29, 1589. “This led to amazing discoveries, which took me...
Years in the making, a popular SF trilogy for teens reaches its finale
When science fiction author Paul Briggs started writing The Locksmith Trilogy ten years ago, he’d never even heard the word “Covid.” The notion of a global pandemic wiping out most of the people on earth was a plot device, and little more. World events caught up to the author’s imagination. On July 4, when the final volume of Briggs’s trilogy, Locksmith’s War, is released, his exploration of how some precocious teens battle the threatened extinction of humanity by a global pandemic will come to a satisfying but haunting conclusion. Instead of inventing mRNA vaccines in their basement to save humankind,...