Introduction

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Welcome to ecpclio's Virtual Research Wiki

While in Gloucester, England, I had the good fortune to meet the County Archivist, Brian Smith (1932-2018), later Secretary to the British Historical Records Commission.   At the Cathedral Brian introduced me to the only known monument of an Archivist, John Jones, who died in 1630, having been Sheriff and a member of Parliament, but who wanted to be remembered as a Keeper of the Records.   As you can see from Jones's monument, he was proud of the care with which he organized and preserved the records.  I was taken  by his bemused smile, but also the encircling quotation: “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me write,” a challenge for all Archivists and Historians.

The purpose of this wiki is to provide a collaborative platform for the study of the history of Baltimore and Maryland through biography, topics, and layers of time and place including relating historical maps and plats to today's landscape. While the organizing framework consists of sources, biography, place, topic and time, pages are created randomly as new research progresses and as I add my writing and reference collection that is confined to paper and various impermanent forms of electronic storage. My goal is to share as much of the research and writing I have done over the past 50 years through this virtual archive. I suspect that given its volume, I will not finish what I have started here with regard to my own work, but hopefully I have created a virtual presence that will be carried on after me, and have provided a viable context for collaborators to add to and improve upon what I have begun that will be both useful and sustainable. If you wish to contribute and edit existing entries, write to me at transcribedoc@gmail.com for a user name and password. For essays derived from my research see: http://virtualarchive.us or consult http://rememberingbaltimore.net. I look forward to working with you on this site as I add notes, sources, and links to essays relating to Maryland and Baltimore history. If you have any questions regarding the site don't hesitate to write to transcribedoc@gmail.com.