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This chapter contextualizes the families and households under consideration in the volume. In many regards, the story of the Maynard and Burgess families epitomizes the power of historical archaeology. They were families who are largely invisible in histories of Annapolis, yet the things they left behind have stories to tell about their lives, the city they lived in, and life for African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Recounts the story of how the houses came to be excavated and preserved. The story of how the house lived in by the Maynard and Burgess families came to be excavated and ultimately preserved by the city of Annapolis is inextricably linked to the ongoing relationship between black and white communities in present-day Annapolis. It is a story that starts with some nails and really old graffiti and continues to this day with debates about whose pasts deserve to be preserved.

This chapter, which introduces the city of Annapolis, a city that is deeply connected to the American Revolution and home to the United States Naval Academy, begins with a brief description of the city, and then examines the various identities normally associated with it. It shows Annapolis as a baroque city, which can be seen in the layout of the city and buildings that date back to the eighteenth century, and studies the way the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, were managed without substantial violence. The chapter also discusses the population of Annapolis, the historical preservation of the city, and the ideology and theory presented in this book.

This chapter identifies some central habitual patterns that James Deetz believed were the organizing thoughts which were reflected throughout the world of New Englanders, focusing specifically on the eating habits, such as the arrangement of the dishes on the dining table. It also presents a study of Annapolis ceramics, which covers the period from 1700 to 1900, and African American ceramic use.

This chapter studies the author's efforts to connect the past with the present using archaeology. It first studies the Marxist thoughts of Georg Lukács and Louis Althusser, explaining how the author was able to combine their ideas, then showing how the author created more awareness toward ideology. The chapter also takes a look at the ceramics and toothbrush exhibits, as well as Archaeological Annapolis, and ends with a discussion of Jürgen Habermas's notion of the “lifeworld.”

The United States Naval Academy (USNA) at Annapolis, Maryland, is the most revered source of officers for the Navy, for the Marine Corps since 1887, and for the Air Force between 1949 and 1963. The Naval Academy is an institution abundant with traditions, and this book employs culture as a vehicle to study and analyze the dramatic changes in Annapolis. It describes the activities within the institutional culture of USNA, beginning with an overview of the history of the academy and an outline of the USNA administrative organization. The chapter then describes aspects of midshipmen's admission, lives and activities in the Academy, and the graduation process. It also highlights one of the Academy's dramatic transformations, what came to be known as the “Academic Revolution.”

When the Naval Academy football team won the Sugar Bowl in 1955, USNA administrators realized the benefits of television exposure to the American public. This chapter examines the origin and development of Naval Academy recruiting, including specialized recruiting activities involving radio programs, the television series Men of Annapolis, films, and the creation of the Blue and Gold program, a system of admission advisers responsible for spreading information about the Academy and searching prospective candidates. It also examines midshipmen who were members of a variety of minority groups who experienced discrimination at USNA before 1965.

Women's acceptance into the Brigade of Midshipmen—the formal name for the population of midshipmen enrolled in the United States Naval Academy (USNA)—was a significant step in helping women fulfil their roles and responsibilities as American citizens. This chapter describes women's earliest presence at Annapolis and their roles in the Naval Academy community prior to 1976. It also follows a number of young women in their attempts to seek admission to the Academy, many of which were unsuccessful. In spite of many issues regarding the policy changes to integrate women into the USNA, the federal government eventually allowed women to attend the Naval Academy.

This chapter demonstrates how midshipmen reacted to both administrative attempts to tighten control over their lives and to national and international events and trends. It begins by examining the first steps made by the classes of 1951, 1952, and 1953 in creating an Honor Concept and dealing with honor violations. The chapter then discusses the relative quiet and subdued pranks in the 1950s and the 1960s, and how this period gave way to an era of remarkable midshipmen activity at Annapolis. These activities include challenging the Academy's mandatory chapel policy, staging a sit-in on the superintendent's lawn in the fall of 1968, and the creation of an action group to provide community service to Annapolis.

This chapter looks at George W. Bush's second term, during which the administration supported Palestinian elections that brought Hamas—a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization—to power. This resulted to the anomalous situation in which Bush could declare the Palestinian elections to have been “free, fair and democratic” but also vow that the United States would not deal with Hamas unless it changed its policies and its involvement in terrorism. Meanwhile, the Lebanon War in 2006—initially supported by the administration as offering the possibility of defeating Hezbollah—gave way to Israeli despair and demands from Arab moderates for the United States to reengage in peacemaking. Bush then organized the Annapolis conference in November 2007, wherein the administration promoted a new opportunity to negotiate a conflict-ending agreement and set a one-year deadline, but then assumed a noninterventionist posture. In the end, nothing was concluded.

Six months after joining the Marine Corps, Feland ships out to the Philippines to fight an insurrection in the newly acquired territory in the U.S. empire. After being promoted to captain, subsequent expeditionary duty takes him to Panama and Cuba, where he gains valuable military administrative experience. Back in the States, he trains new Marine officers at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and oversees construction of the Marine Barracks there. He also serves as commander of the Marine Guard aboard several ships. On Valentine's Day 1907, Feland marries Katherine Cordner Heath, a well-known soprano, in New York City.

This chapter analyzes the decisions made between 1691 and 1710 to relocate both colonies’ capitals to the new cities of Annapolis and Williamsburg, revealing that these moves restructured relations between the planters and the empire. Both capitals were established because of a brief confluence of three strands of opinion. First, the imperial vision of Francis Nicholson, who, as governor for both colonies, spearheaded the projects as part of a Lockean vision to connect small-scale farmers with the imperial state. Second, the ideas of a faction within the planter class who remained committed to the 1680s improvement agenda as a bulwark against imperial influence; these men eventually became disillusioned and advocated a new urban corporate plan. Third, the objectives of the wealthiest elite planters, who saw the capital cities as spaces to secure their status within the empire through consumption and display. The eventual triumph of this third faction meant that the new capitals served to consolidate planter-merchant networks and hardened the region’s commitment to slave-driven plantations. In the process this elite group, for the first time, rejected the century-long effort to use urban spaces to facilitate civic-minded regulation of the market, cementing the planter elite’s faith in rural civic virtue.

Black beaches proliferated across the coastal South in the 1940s and 1950s and became thriving centers of black leisure and entertainment and incubators of post-World War II black popular music and culture. The chapter tells the history of Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches in Annapolis, Maryland, and Bay Shore Beach in Hampton, Virginia, which became two of the most prominent black-owned beaches, performance venues, and amusement parks in the mid-Atlantic South. It traces the rapid growth and commercial success of black beaches and amusement parks in the years following World War II, when these venues attracted large crowds and hosted popular black musicians and performers on the “chitlin circuit.” It explores the deep and murky financial ties between black-owned leisure enterprises and operators of illicit urban economies. It shows how black beaches spawned a wide range of related business ventures (including, nightclubs, hotels, restaurants, and carnivals), opened new opportunities for African Americans in security and law enforcement, and facilitated the emergence of some of the era’s most popular black musicians and performers.

This chapter describes the mood in Washington on April 23, 1861 as Union forces continued to make preparations against the Confederacy. It first looks at the return of only two of the eight men dispatched by General Winfield Scott, commander of the U.S. Army, from the capital. It then cites the disappointment of many residents of Annapolis who were waiting for the landing of the Union troops in their city, the united public front put up by the administration of President Abraham Lincoln against the looming war with Confederate forces, and the administration officials' animosity towards Baltimore. The chapter also considers the quartering problems encountered by the volunteer regiments in Washington.

This chapter focuses on the arrival of the Seventh New York Regiment in Washington on April 25, 1861 to reinforce the Union against the Confederacy, marking the immediate salvation of the nation's capital and paving the way for other Northern volunteer regiments to follow suit. The Seventh New York Regiment was initially camped outside the Annapolis Junction station before boarding the train for Washington, where they were met with a thunder of jubilation that brought joy to the despairing President Abraham Lincoln. The Seventh New York began to mythologize its march from Annapolis to Annapolis Junction soon after landing in the city. This chapter also considers the strategic planning being done by the Baltimore leadership, along with the unequivocal and repeated calls for retaliation against Baltimore, both from Washington and elsewhere in the North. Finally, it looks at the resumption of mail service in the capital.

In 1940, Nabokov took up a new position at St. John’s College, Annapolis, where he taught the “Great Books Course,” first in tandem with Carter. In Washington, he became close to a circle of young diplomats and Russian specialists which included Charles Bohlen and George Kennan. He formed a solid friendship with Isaiah Berlin, through whom he met W. H. Auden, also frequenting the exiled Alexis Léger (the poet Saint-John Perse). He made his debut as a music critic, writing on Soviet music. His disparaging comments on Shostakovich won him praise from Stravinsky, with whom friendship was renewed.

Mindful of the keen public interest in heritage preservation, environmental organizations have routinely characterized nature as a “heritage” asset to be preserved for future generations. But while doing so has often proved effective for winning public support for environmental initiatives, it can lead to a conflation of environmental with “natural heritage” stewardship that is at best misleading and at worst can undermine both endeavors. The chapter uses a failed campaign to nominate the Annapolis River to Canada’s Heritage Rivers program to illustrate the problems that can arise when divergences between these two forms of stewardship are overlooked. Recognizing the differences is essential if we are to maximize our changes of achieving a satisfactory convergence between them.