Garrett County & Maryland Information: Maryland

Explores abandoned Maryland homes, uncovering the stories behind their decay and lost legacies. Historic mansions, farmhouses, and family homes rot across Maryland, the wealthiest state in the nation, from the Eastern Shore to the west in Appalachia. As the authors explored these homes, they researched the reasons the families lost their properties, so they could tell their stories. They discovered families often leave due to financial distress and environmental disasters. In other cases, developers purchase property with decayed historic homes and then allow them to rot until they can get them condemned through a process called demolition by neglect. Complex laws, or lack of legislation, leave local municipalities in a bind as properties deteriorate and unpaid property taxes accumulate. For the authors, these homes represent lost memories, lost hopes. Buying a home has always symbolized a means to accumulate wealth and rise to the middle class. Losing a home means losing access to the American dream. Walk with the authors as they have discovered, in weather-worn halls, 200-year-old architectural gems, faded photographs of ancestors, vintage trinkets, and antiques of yesteryear. Each item signifies a stop on a family's ancestral road map.

The official guide to 95 miles of the Appalachian Trail from the Pennsylvania line, south through the center of Maryland, briefly into West Virginia through Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, and down along the West Virginia-Virginia line to the entrance to Shenandoah National Park. The book includes trail-route descriptions in a unidirectional format and thorough information on the lands through which the footpath winds, all rich in colonial and Civil War history. The three detached maps are scaled at either 1:62,5000 or 1:50,000 with 100-foot or 10-meter contour intervals and elevation profiles.

This history begins with the earliest brewers in the colony--women--revealing details of the Old Line State's brewing families and their methods. Stories never before told trace the effects of war, competition, the Industrial Revolution, Prohibition and changing political philosophies on the brewing industry. Some brewers persevered through crime, scandal and intrigue to play key roles in building their communities. Today's craft brewers face a number of very different challenges, from monopolistic macro breweries and trademark quandaries to hop shortages, while attempting to establish their own legacies.

What’s weird around here? Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman asked themselves this question for years. And it’s precisely this offbeat sense of curiosity that led the duo to create Weird N.J. and the successful series that followed. The NOT shockingly result? EveryWeirdbook has become a best seller in its region!   ((Series Sales Points))   This best-selling series has sold more than one million copies…and counting   Thirty volumes of the Weird series have been published to great success since Weird New Jersey's 2003 debut

Detailing the salacious history of Baltimore and its denizens from the city's earliest history up to and through Prohibition. With nicknames such as ""Mob Town"" and ""Syphilis City,"" no one would deny that Baltimore has its dark side. Before shows such as ""The Wire"" and ""Homicide: Life on the Streets"" brought the city's crime rate to national attention, locals entertained themselves with rumors surrounding the mysterious death of writer Edgar Allan Poe and stories about Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who spent time in a Baltimore area sanitarium in the 1930s. Tourists make the Inner Harbor one of the most traveled areas in the country, but if they would venture a few streets north to The Block on Baltimore Street they would see an area once famous for its burlesque shows. It is only the locals who would know to continue north on St. Paul to the Owl Bar, a former speakeasy that still proudly displays some of its Prohibition era paraphernalia.

The only book to delve deeply into Maryland's rich musical performance history and the people who created it. In Musical Maryland, the first comprehensive survey of the music emanating from the Old Line State, David K. Hildebrand and Elizabeth M. Schaaf explore the myriad ways in which music has enriched the lives of Marylanders. From the drinking songs of colonial Annapolis, the liturgical music of the Zion Lutheran Church, and the work songs of the tobacco fields to the exuberant marches of late nineteenth-century Baltimore Orioles festivals, Chick Webb's mastery on drums, and the triumphs of the Baltimore Opera Society, this richly illustrated volume explores more than 300 years of Maryland's music history. Beginning with early compositions performed in private settings and in public concerts, this book touches on the development of music clubs like the Tuesday Club, the Florestan Society, and H. L. Mencken's Saturday Night Club, as well as lasting institutions such as the Peabody Institute and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). Yet the soundscape also includes militia quicksteps, sea chanteys, and other work songs. The book describes the writing of "The Star-Spangled Banner"--perhaps Maryland's single greatest contribution to the nation's musical history. It chronicles the wide range of music created and performed by Maryland's African American musicians along Pennsylvania Avenue in racially segregated Baltimore, from jazz to symphonic works. It also tells the true story of a deliberately integrated concert that the BSO staged at the end of World War II. The book is full of musical examples, engravings, paintings, drawings, and historic photographs that not only portray the composers and performers but also the places around the state in which music flourished. Illuminating sidebars by William Biehl focus on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century song of the kind evoked by the USS Baltimoreor inspired by the state's history, natural beauty, and romantic steamboats. The book also offers a sampling of the tunes that Maryland's more remarkable composers and performers, including Billie Holiday, Eubie Blake, and Cab Calloway, contributed to American music before the homogenization that arrived in earnest after World War II. Bringing to life not only portraits of musicians, composers, and conductors whose stories and recollections are woven into the fabric of this book, but also musical scores and concert halls, Musical Marylandis an engaging, authoritative, and bold look at an endlessly compelling subject.

Ida was a coal miner's daughter from the Appalachian Mountains. Norman was the son of a Baltimore City carpenter. At the age of seven, in separate incidents, both of their fathers died violently. In their teens, Ida was sent to a girl's reform school by her brutal stepfather, and Norman lost his mother to mental illness and was left to fend for himself. Both had to grow up fast, and there was little time for tears. "She Called Him Jim" tells the story of how these children rose above adversity and came to know and love one another. It is a true story of courage and perseverance, describing their adventures, hardships, and romance in the early 1900s of Baltimore City, Maryland. The next book in the series, "The Barnes Bridge," is a collection of stories about Ida and Jim, their children, and their lives in Friendsville, Maryland-their joys and sorrows, harrowing near-death experiences, hardships, humor, and courage.