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Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Young Frederick Douglass in the Fight of His Life

This is an excerpt from Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva. More info about the book is here. Standing in downtown St. Michaels today, with its tourist-friendly bevy of upscale shops and interesting eateries, it’s not easy to imagine the sort of place this town was when Frederick Douglass arrived from Baltimore in the early 1830s. Still known as Fred Bailey then, he…
July 28, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Love Comes in a Box

    This story of Lear Green's escape from slavery is a free preview from Chapter 27 of Tubman Tales: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delamarva, which will be published in September 2017. Before 1829, boats bound for Philadelphia from the Chesapeake Bay had to take the roundabout route, sailing down to the mouth of the Bay and then circling back up along the Atlantic Coast,…
July 27, 2017
Quote of the Day

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “That morning, we’d all pile in the workboats and go to Red Hills”

    Back before Chincoteague was a big tourism deal, folks from all over the Eastern Shore and points beyond used to flock to a resort called Red Hills to do their swimming and picnicking. Named for the color of the dirt on tall ridge behind the beach, Red Hills was on the Chincoteague Bay near Sinnockson, a tiny hamlet between Greenbackville and Horntown. There…
July 11, 2017
Way Back Machine

DELMARVA CLASSIC: The Sweet Strawberry Boom of Days Gone By

The story behind the variety of strawberry we enjoy nowadays is a global affair that stretches across two centuries and three continents. Way back in the 1500s, some French explorer noticed that the wild strawberries of Virginia had bigger fruits and brighter color than their European counterparts. He brought some back to Europe and farmers started playing around with them. But it wasn’t until two…
May 16, 2017
Quote of the Day

QUOTE OF THE DAY: How Royal Oak Became the “Healthiest Place in America”

    The writer Dickson J. Preston got to the bottom of this burning question when he put together a brief portrait of the boom times that came to Royal Oak  during the latter part of the 1800s. This is from Preston's book Talbot County: A History, which was published back in 1983. Royal Oak, an ancient community, gained momentum when the steamboats and railroads began bringing…
April 10, 2017
Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Back in the 1920s, Crisfield Was a ‘Sort of Tiny Vulgar Venice’

Back in 1922, the writer Edward Noble Vallandigham penned this ode to Crisfield for his travel guide, Delaware and the Eastern Shore. "Newest of all the large and active communities on the Peninsula is Crisfield, … has grown into an active little city with a busy main street that looks like that of a raw Western mining village. … One forgets on the sea front, with…
April 2, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

“TUBMAN TRAVELS” SAMPLER: The Miraculous Escape of the Dover Eight

The story of the Dover Eight that follows is excerpted from Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva, a book by Secrets of the Eastern Shore that tells stories of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and many other men and women whose journeys in slavery and out of bondage went through the Eastern Shore and Delaware. BIG PICTURE: The Pressure Cooker of 1857 The lush…
March 1, 2017