The Amazing Story of Arundel-on-the-Bay: 1600s to Today

By The Arundel-on-the-Bay History Project and Pamela T. Duncan

The Amazing Story of Arundel-on-the-Bay:1600s to Today chronicles a community evolving from the Gay Nineties, through the segregated Jim Crow era, World War II, woman's liberation, and other 20th and 21st century realities. What emerges in the telling is a portrait of America's social and cultural history that shaped a community. It started in 1890, with the purchase of 350 acres south of Annapolis, Md. on the Chesapeake Bay, America's largest estuary. Lots on this waterfront land acquired by the Chesapeake & Colombia Investment Company were advertised for sale based on the beauty of the site and its solitude as a woodland paradise. Who were the owners of the Investment Company? One of the book's nine authors, Pamela Duncan, historian and preservationist, profiles the history of the Company owners. They were seven successful business men of Washington, D.C., members of America's Nouveau Riche, ready to enjoy the lifestyle of the Gay Nineties at their own seaside cottage community. They even built a railroad to get folks to the summer resort. While the majority of lots were purchased by white entrepreneurs, African American relatives of Frederick Douglass also bought building sites in the new Arundel-on-the-Bay. Lively summer activities were reported on in the society columns of the big city newspapers. The "Queen Resort of the Chesapeake Bay," Bay Ridge, an amusement park to the north, prospered with visitors using an extensive network of railroads and steamboats. Just down the road at Arundel-on-the-Bay, generations of urban families spent the hot months fishing, crabbing, wading, loafing and enjoying the wide-water vistas. It was the kind of American- country life style, steamboats and all, popularized by Mark Twain. The community distinguished itself in unique ways; * It began as almost all white to became almost all black in the 1950's, and then evolved into the proudly integrated neighborhood of today. * Hourly passenger train service from Annapolis, connected travelers from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore to the Bay Ridge resort, where the Company's "Blackberry Train," open summer cars, ran along the beach to Arundel-on-the-Bay from 1893 to the early 20th century. * This smallest incorporated town in the U.S. for many years was all but wiped out by a major fire in 1916. * The only community in Maryland where woman had the right to vote before 1920. * Thomas Point Island, just offshore, had a home on it until it was destroyed by two hurricanes in the 1930s. * Famous folks had ties there including Frederick Douglass, Alex Haley, Martha Washington, Patrick Henry, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Todd Duncan-opera star of Porgy and Bess fame and Rep. Clarence Mitchell, Jr. * During the War of 1812 a British Sloop of War ran aground off Thomas Point, an incident which almost caused Annapolis to be burned to the ground. Although the community was founded by investors who in 1890 largely created a whites-only summer resort; African Americans purchased property as early as 1893. In an interesting example of what is described as the community's "conundrum of race," in the 1920s, at the same time that the community's new owners were enacting racially restrictive covenants on the sale of property, white residents of the community were using the services of an African American doctor (who lived on the north side of the community) for emergency medical care. There would come a time when the resort community would shift from an all-white to an almost all-black community; but the recent history is one of not only embracing racial diversity, but also celebrating it. This is a brand new, fully illustrated, and very detailed chronicle. The book demonstrates how all of our family histories are worth the telling.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0692195513
• ISBN13: 9780692195512
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Pamela T. Duncan
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.6" x 8.5"