As today marks the 80th anniversary of the Feb. 19, 1942, presidential order authorizing the internment of Americans with Japanese ancestry, I recalled an April day in 2016 in Bridgeton, NJ. On that Wednesday as spring got underway, I spent a delightful morning talking with 92-year-old Frank Hitoshi Ono. At the time I was doing…
Enslaved Person Led British Invaders into an Ambush
When the War of 1812 arrived on the Chesapeake Bay, it created opportunities for enslaved people to flee with the British to freedom. The invaders liberated some 4,000 people and “used several hundred in their army in a special unit known as the Colonial Marines,” according to the National Park Service. As the British offensive…
Havre de Grace Provides Historical Public Records Online
Local government records are essential for studying the past. These primary sources document governance, along with the history of communities, institutions, and people. With state and federal agencies the process of accessing the items usually works efficiently. But when municipalities retain files, there are often challenges in locating the aging volumes as they rarely…
The Coroner Investigated Deaths
For over three hundred years, coroners took charge of investigating unnatural or mysterious deaths in Maryland and Delaware. When someone raised the alarm after discovering a corpse, this county official hurried to the locality to examine the death scene, gather evidence, and figure out how the loss occurred. Colonists brought this grim job over from…