Books: 1812 – A Guide to the War and Its Legacy

• Bill Bean
• Fri May 17 2013
• 
• 1812: A Guide to the War and its Legacy, by Terry Copp, Matt Symes, Caitlin McWilliams, Nick Lachance, Geoff Keelan and Jeffrey W. Mott (Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies Press of Wilfrid Laurier University, 264 pages, $34.95 softcover) — One might be forgiven for thinking there would be little to say this year about the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

  After all, it’s not called the War of 1813, is it?

  But this misunderstood and somewhat under-appreciated conflict that drew in Canada, the United States, Britain, Spain and First Nations peoples, trundled on from 1812 to 1814 (and continued on in bloody battle even after a peace treaty was signed), so there are many significant events and historic figures caught in the bicentennial spotlight this year and next.

  For anyone with a car, a bent for things historical, and a few weeks to spare in good weather — and who prefers a summer excursion with a theme — this book will be a gift.

  It is a two-part offering, with 106 pages of history of the conflict, written by Wilfrid Laurier University historian and professor Terry Copp and New Brunswick historian Jeffrey Mott, and another 135 pages describing tours of battle sites, monuments, plaques, historic sites and vistas along both sides of the so-called “undefended” border between Canada and the United States, with contributions from Copp, Mott, Caitlin McWilliams, Geoff Keelan, Nick Lachance and Matt Symes.

  The latter four are staff members at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo.

  The Copp/Mott history is as succinct a piece on the War of 1812-1814 as anyone would want — not a “Cole’s notes” version, but a detailed and observant telling of the highs and lows of the military and political manoeuvres.

  The “tour” portion of the book is a Lonely Planet-esque review of War of 1812 highlights from Mackinac Island in Michigan to the Citadel at Halifax, a distance of roughly 2,600 kilometres .(Compare the sweep of this to Napoleon’s march from Paris to Moscow in 1812, at more than 2,800 kilometres.) To complete the entire War of 1812 tour would not be for the faint of heart.

  Indeed, this book does not cover the war in its entirety: perhaps not wishing to weary the car-bound traveller, the authors left out Chesapeake Bay, Bladensburg, Washington and New Orleans, locations that loomed large in the war, but were not really part of the Canadian experience.

  The tour portion of the book comes with Google maps of the present-day locations and road directions, plus such helpful information as the beer selection offered at a potential lunch-stop in Sandwich, Ont. (30 types) and the tip that one can blissfully ignore the “No Trespassing” signs at Boblo Island on the Detroit River.

  Sprinkled throughout are such orthodox travel guide phrases as “If you have the money” or “the guides are fantastic.” And as the writers indicate, much of the tour is about seeing the land and water, usually described as stunning or picturesque, which is likely the hope of any summer traveller.

  1812: A Guide to the War and its Legacy is worthy of a place in any Canadian’s bookcase, and likely somewhere handy in the car as well.

 

Eastern Shore maritime museum tells story of the War of 1812 on the Chesapeake Bay

The Washington Post

By Associated Press, Published: May 11

ST. MICHAELS, Md. — Runaway slaves, captured women and children, British officers bestowing suspicious gifts and turncoat plantation owners trading with the enemy under a white flag — it all happened in Maryland on the Chesapeake during the War of 1812, according to a new exhibit at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

“Navigating Freedom: The War of 1812 on the Chesapeake” opened this weekend, beginning with a gala preview and donors party Friday evening.

Historians in St. Michaels have been waiting a long time for these dates to roll around — 2012, 2013, 2014, and a little bit of 2015.

It’s the bicentennial of the War of 1812 — the war that, in a sense, put St. Michaels on the map. The Battle of St. Michaels occurred on August 10, 1813.

Details from that day have become a blend of history, myth, legend and tourism marketing that scholars are generally discouraged from unraveling.

Researchers at the Maritime Museum decided to take a different tack. They would tell the story of the War of 1812 in St. Michaels, the Chesapeake and Maryland by recounting the tales of individuals whose lives were forever changed by war.

The sources for the accounts were a collaborative effort that included the museum’s Center for Chesapeake Studies, the Maryland State Archives’ Legacy of Slavery in Maryland program, Pulitzer-prize winning historian Alan Taylor, and author and professor Jennifer Dorsey, Norman and Ellen Plummer, Bill Dudley and others.

They include the accounts of people like Gabriel Hall, a slave on a farm in Calvert County who escaped with two others to a British squadron moored on the Patuxent River, and eventually moved to Halifax.

Another account would be of four slaves who escaped to a British ship off Poole’s Island in Kent County in 1814. The slaves led the British to an attack at Caulk’s Field and the British were thrashed soundly, leading scholars to believe the slaves deliberately lied and set up an ambush.

Mrs. Dawson, a young Quaker mother with two children was captured by the British with other passengers as she was traveling by commercial sloop between Easton Point and Baltimore. The prisoners were taken to Tangier Island for a few days and entertained lavishly, according to accounts. As Mrs. Dawson was feeding her infant, an admiring officer offered her a silver spoon with his name engraved on it. The spoon is now a family heirloom.

While most exhibits on war focus on famous military figures and battles, there is an effort to draw the visitor into the personal lives of those who lived in the area 200 years ago.

“We decided to focus on people — how it impacted everyday, ordinary people,” said Robert Forloney, who is director of the Kerr Center for Chesapeake Studies at the museum.

Revealing in the exhibit is the number of slaves trying to escape to the British even as slavery had not reached peak historic proportions.

“We want to show the bay as a highway,” Forloney said. “African-Americans try to escape by using the bay as a highway.”

A fascinating feature is a 3D virtual aerial tour of St. Michaels and surrounding areas as it would have looked in 1812-1815.

Plantations, shipyards and historic places in existence at that time are pointed out, along with the miles and miles of shoreline and untouched forests that paint a clear picture of the 1812 Bay Hundred area. The tour was created in Washington College’s Geographic Information Systems laboratory in partnership with the museum.

A team of expert curatorial and design professionals led by Rick Beard, Laura Friedman, and Sally Pallatto translated the research into exhibit.

Funding included more than $110,000 in support from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and a “Star Spangled 200” grant from the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.

Other donors include Fred and Leslie Israel, Bob and Kay Perkins, the Plummers, Lesley and Karen Shook and Joan and Clifton West.

The exhibit continues through 2015 and is included in the regular price of admission or free to members.

Chesapeake Legends and Lore from War of 1812

May 10, 2013

Available at the Calvert Marine Museum Store

The Calvert Marine Museum Store has an impressive selection of books about the Chesapeake region, and in keeping with the bicentennial of the War of 1812, book selections on that topic are especially rich. The recently released publication Chesapeake Legends & Lore from the War of 1812 written by Ralph E. Eshelman & Scott S. Sheads is now available for sale in the store.

In the two hundred years following the War of 1812, the Chesapeake Campaign became romanticized in tall tales and local legends. St. Michael’s on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was famously cast as the town that fooled the British, and in Baltimore, the defenders of Fort McHenry were reputably rallied by a remarkably patriotic pet rooster. In Virginia, the only casualty in a raid on Cape Henry was reportedly the lighthouse keeper’s smokehouse larder, while Admiral Cockburn was said to have supped by the light of the burning Federal buildings in Washington, D.C. Newspaper stories, ordinary citizens and even military personnel embellished events, and two hundred years later, those embellishments have become regional lore. Join historians Ralph E. Eshelman and Scott S. Sheads as they search for the history behind the legends of the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake.

Ralph Eshelman was co-director of the Patuxent River Cultural Resource Survey, which discovered and partially excavated a War of 1812 vessel from the U.S. Chesapeake Flotilla. He conducted a holistic inventory of War of 1812 sites in Maryland for the National Park Service’s National Battlefield Protection Program and has published four books on the War of 1812. Eshelman was designated “Honorary Colonel of the Fort McHenry Guard” by the National Park Service in 2009. He currently serves as a consultant to the Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail. Eshelman has visited every known War of 1812 site in the Chesapeake Bay region and is considered among the leading experts on this resource base.

Scott S. Sheads has served as a ranger-historian and historic weapons officer at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore since 1979. Scott served as a co-historian for the Smithsonian Institution’s “Saving the Star-Spangled Banner Project” and for the National Park Service’s “The Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail” feasibility study. He has published several books on the War of 1812 and the Civil War and has authored numerous journal articles for the Maryland Historical Magazine. Scott’s most recent publication is The Chesapeake Campaigns, 1813–1815: Middle Ground of the War of 1812 (Osprey Publications, Ltd., 2013).

The Museum Store is open seven days a week from 10:15 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. For more information about this publication, contact store manager Maureen Baughman at 410-326-2750 or email baughmmp@co.cal.md.us .

Thorold to be bicentennial ground zero

NiagaraThisWeek

• Paul Forsyth
• |
• May 08, 2013

• Thousands expected to pour into city for Battle of Beaverdams commemoration

   

  

  Thorold to be bicentennial ground zero. John Burtniak, chair of the Thorold War of 1812 Bicentennial Committee, speaks at the opening of the new DeCew House Heritage Park in June of last year. He told city council Tuesday night that thousands of people are expected to pour into Thorold for the weekend of June 22-24 to mark the bicentennial of the Battle of Beaverdams. File photo

  Thorold is set to become ground zero in Canada’s War of 1812 bicentennial celebrations, with thousands of people expected to pour into the city for the weekend of June 22-24.

  The weekend will mark, exactly, 200 years since Laura Secord famously make her treacherous journey all the way to Thorold’s DeCew House to warn of an impending invasion by American troops, and the crucial Battle of Beaverdams in which native warriors defeated their American interlopers.

  The big bash coming in June is the culmination of some three years of endless planning by Thorold’s War of 1812 bicentennial committee. At Tuesday night’s city council meeting, committee chair John Burtniak and events co-ordinator Tony Vandermaas gave city politicians an overview of the festivities planned for the weekend.

  Burtniak said the weekend will, in part, finally give native warriors their proper due by correcting the long-held view by many that the Battle of Beaverdams was a ‘British’ victory. He noted that after Secord struggled through 32 kilometres of rough terrain to warn British Lieut. James Fitzgibbon that hundreds of armed American soldiers were heading toward Thorold with mayhem on their minds, it was native warriors who laid in wait and then fought and defeated by invaders in the fields and beechwoods east of where the Welland Canal now is.

  “They did all the fighting and suffered casualties and received no credit,” he said.

  Part of the weekend’s festivities will involve unveiling a boulder placed where the former War of 1812 cairn that now sits in the Battle of Beaverdams Park used to be. That cairn was removed from its old location at old Thorold Stone Road and Davis Road in the 1970s when plans were in place to widen the canal, said Burtniak.

  The boulder will have plaques imbedded in it, including one that provides a “clear and telling description” of the role native warriors played in the battle, he said. “It was a pivotal victory for Canada.”

  DeCew Park, which was transformed into a new heritage park last June, will be a beehive of activities on Saturday, June 22 and Sunday, June 23. There will be camps with battle re-enactors, a provincial town crier competition, performances by the Thorold Reed Band and Thorold Pipe Band and a welcoming ceremony on the Saturday. The big moment will come when upwards of 3,000 people taking part in a re-enactment of Secord’s walk from Queenston arrive at the park on Saturday, said Burtniak.

  Sunday’s events will kick off with a pancake breakfast, with festivities throughout the day. Hamburgers and hotdogs will also be served at the park by the Thorold Lions Club and Enbridge both days.

  Shuttle buses will run continuously throughout Saturday and Sunday, shuttling people to and from the downtown to regional headquarters and the DeCew House park. Vandermaas said the shuttles will make stops at places such as the Keefer Mansion, Welland Mills, Trinity United Church, the Thorold Museum and Beaverdams Church.

  The Battle of Beaverdams memorial site will be unveiled at 2 p.m. on the Monday.

  There will also be performances of the Battle of Beaverdams play ‘The Whirlwind’ at Trinity United Church on the Saturday and Sunday, and airing of the battle film ‘Uncommon Courage’ at the Thorold Public Library on the Saturday.

  Vandermaas said his committee is hoping people will volunteer to help out with such things as preparing food and handling parking. People willing to help can go to the website http://www.battleofbeaverdams.com or call him at 905-680-7509.

  He said he’s also hoping Thorold residents embrace the once in a lifetime chance to celebrate the city’s crucial role in the only war ever fought on Canadian soil.

  “We hope to see all of Thorold at least at this,” he said.

  Burtniak said the celebration, culminating in the unveiling of the permanent battle site marker, will mean “leaving a lasting legacy for Thorold.

  “It is incumbent on us to remember and not forget those who served and suffered and died,” he said. “It’s a way for us to say thanks.”

Presentation on War of 1812 at GAR Hall May 9

 

May 8, 2013

n honor of the Bicentennial of the War of 1812, local historian, Sharon Myers, will present a Power Point program on the War of 1812 on May 9 at 7 p.m. at the GAR Hall, 1785 Main St. in Peninsula for the Peninsula Valley Historic & Education Foundation.This program will also contain information about the Battle of Lake Erie and the young hero Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. There will also be a War of 1812 display during the month of May at the GAR Hall.

These activities will lead up to a Memorial Ceremony at 11:30 a.m. at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Peninsula for the Veterans of the War of 1812 buried in Peninsula.

1813 invasion of Havre de Grace re-created for weekend visitors

The Baltimore Sun

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/harford/aberdeen-havre-de-grace/ph-ag-hdg-war-1812-0508-20130506,0,1181945,full.story

BY DAVID ANDERSON

May 6, 2013

 

People fled in panic when British troops invaded Havre de Grace 200 years ago, as rockets rained down on the city and soldiers and Marines stormed through the streets, ransacking and burning homes, businesses and houses of worship.

In 2013, however, throngs of people lined the downtown streets, cameras in hand, and followed a small contingent of re-enactors – some in blue uniforms and others in red – from their landing zone at Concord Point, up Market Street, through the main shopping district at Rochambeau Plaza and eventually to a U.S. militia encampment on the grounds of the Susquehanna Museum at the Lock House.

“It’s okay honey; they’re just playing,” one mother in the crowd told her child as the British regulars exchanged musket fire with fellow re-enactors dressed as American militiamen, wearing green and blue uniforms.

• Related
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The re-enactors were participating in a recreation of the May 3, 1813 battle between British troops and American defenders of Havre de Grace.

The mock battle took place Saturday, part of a weekend of festivities in Havre de Grace to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and Havre de Grace’s role in it.

Re-enactors dressed as British redcoats marched up Market Street, muskets in hand, and shouted to spectators to clear the streets. Their cry was echoed by law enforcement officers and EMTs on bicycles and vehicles, who shadowed the troops as they marched through the city.

Volunteers in bright red T-shirts also exhorted spectators to remain on the sidewalk, as many attempted to go into the street to grab pictures of the troops from the front.

A documentary film crew even followed every move of the crowd and the re-enactors.

A number of other re-enactors in civilian garb of the period could also be seen mingling with the crowd of spectators.

The re-enactment of the invasion included a raid by British troops on the Old Ordinary, a small former tavern house, which currently hosts a local real estate office.

The British march stopped at the grounds of the Lock House, on the banks of the Susquehanna River.

There, re-enactors of all stripes spoke with visitors.

Chris Lieberman, a student at Loyola Blakefield High School in Baltimore County, portrayed an American drafted militiaman Saturday. This is year is his second participating in historical re-enactments.

“It never stops being fun,” he said of his experience Saturday, which included firing a small cannon and muskets. “It’s nonstop, it’s just a blast.”

The crowd also heard from Vince Vaise, chief historic interpreter at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The British Chesapeake Campaign of 1813 and 1814, during which troops sacked and burned communities throughout the Chesapeake Bay region, including Washington, D.C., was stopped at Fort McHenry.

“In a sense, the War of 1812 gave Americans confidence,” Vaise said, speaking with the modern-day Route 40 Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge at his back.

Vaise explained that the War of 1812 essentially ended in a tie between the British and the Americans.

While much of the United States was in ruins at the end of the war, the Americans were able to keep the British invaders from taking over, and the sight of the U.S. flag flying over Ft. McHenry – as well as Havre de Grace after the invasion – gave the young nation the confidence it needed to complete feats such as a canal system, the Transcontinental Railroad, and being the first nation to put a man on the moon.

“We took a big bully on, and yeah we may have gotten a black eye and a bloody nose, but we taught that bully a lesson,” Vaise told the crowd.

Vaise said the war gave one the feeling “you could do anything if you were an American.”

The streets of Havre de Grace were filled with visitors Saturday, who took in not only the re-enactment of the battle, but two tall ships docked along the city’s waterfront – the Pride of Baltimore II and the Sultana – the 32nd Annual Decoy and Wildlife Art Festival at Havre de Grace Middle School and an evening ceremony at the Concord Lighthouse grounds.

The ceremony included a performance by The Columbia Orchestra and a fireworks show over the Susquehanna River.

Downtown merchants threw their doors open to visitors Saturday.

Spectators could also see Harford County students portray residents of Havre de Grace circa 1813.

Drama students performed monologues as people from the period.

One student, Laurel Yau, a junior at C. Milton Wright High School in Bel Air, performed a monologue as Matilda O’Neill, the daughter of Havre de Grace defender John O’Neill.

John O’Neill, an Irish immigrant, was a local merchant and an officer in the militia at the time of the invasion, according to a copy of an article published in The Artilleryman Magazine in 2002 and provided by Yau.

He is famous for single-handedly manning a battery at Concord Point in an unsuccessful attempt to hold of the British troops.

He was later captured and brought on board a British ship in the river. Locals expected he would be executed, but Matilda, according to legend, rowed out to the ship and convinced Admiral George Cockburn to free him.

Yau-as-Matilda told onlookers Cockburn was so impressed with her courage, he presented her with his snuffbox.

Kevin Connelly, of Bloomfield, Conn., who The Aegis caught up with at the annual Havre de Decoy festival early Saturday evening, had watched the British invasion earlier in the day. The decoy festival was also held over the weekend.

“It’s historically interesting, and you think, also of the people who lived here, all of a sudden seeing the British landing, burning houses, stealing things – looting basically — and then moving through the city,” Connelly said.

“How does an Afghan village feel when the Taliban comes there, or we [the U.S.] come there?” Connelly continued. “People are typically frightened by armed strangers.”

Although organizers had expected as many as 10,000 visitors on Saturday, the actual number came in at between 5,000 and 6,000, according to county emergency operations officials who monitored the weekend events for security purposes.

Harford County government spokesman Bob Thomas said that the sheriff’s office, city police department, county executive’s office, fire and EMS officials and emergency services had staff on duty throughout Saturday at the county’s emergency operations center and well as in Havre de Grace. There were no incidents reported, he said.

Simonson awarded national 1812 honor

 

by jmaloni

Press release

Sat, May 4th 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lewiston’s volunteer director for the War of 1812 bicentennial, Lee Simonson, has been awarded the “Spirit of 1812″ medal by the United States Daughters of 1812. The distinguished award is the highest national honor bestowed by the volunteer women’s service organization, which is dedicated to promoting patriotism and preserving and increasing knowledge of the history of the American people.

Pictured with Simonson is Jan Johnpier, the president of the New York state society, who submitted the nomination to the national society and presented the award on behalf of the 4,000-member organization. In attendance was President National Virginia Louise Apyar of Maryland, New York City Chapter President Anne Farley, and Jeanette Brooks, Niagara chapter president. Bruce Sutherland, volunteer president of the Historical Association of Lewiston, also participated.

Simonson has led Lewiston’s volunteer efforts to educate the general public about the area’s role in the War of 1812 (Lewiston was on the front lines of the battle between the U.S. and Great Britain). Hundreds of local volunteers have been involved in several events, including the Battle of Queenston Heights re-enactment, Flames Though Lewiston, and the forthcoming dedication of the Tuscarora Heroes Monument, which will be unveiled on Dec. 19.

The monument, the largest 1812 bicentennial monument project in the nation, will be a tribute to the Tuscarora natives, which saved the lives of dozens of Lewiston residents during the British attack on Lewiston during the war.

Reenactors Overtake Havre de Grace for War of 1812 Bicentennial

Costumed actors portrayed the British attack on Havre de Grace through downtown.

• By Elizabeth Janney
• May 4, 2013
• 13 of 17
   

  British march on Market Street Credit: Elizabeth Janney

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• One day and 200 years after British troops arrived at Concord Point Lighthouse and burned much of the city, Havre de Grace relived the experience.

  As part of the city’s War of 1812 bicentennial commemoration, reenactors sailed into Concord Point on The Sultana, which had been docked at the Tidewater Marina.

  On land, reenactors responded with gunfire and cannons on behalf of the citizens of Havre de Grace.

  Once the British came ashore after 10 a.m., the two sides exchanged gunfire intermittently between Concord Point Lighthouse, Market Street and Saint John St. The conclusion came at the Lock House around 3 p.m. Saturday.

  Did you watch the skirmishes in Havre de Grace? Tell us in the comments!

  Related Topics: Havre de Grace War of 1812 and War of 1812 Bicentennial

Tecumseh Parkway Launch

May 3rd, 2013 6:09pm

The Tecumseh Parkway is now officially open in Chatham-Kent.

Written by Ashton Patis

Reporter

The parkway showcases 11 historically significant sites across the municipality and spans over 70km. The parkway runs parallel to the Thames River which hosts many landmarks from the War of 1812 including the Tecumseh Monument and Trudell’s Farm, which was used as a refuge for British troops.

Dave Benson is the Heritage Coordinator for Chatham-Kent and says the parkway is designed to draw people off highway 401. “What we’re hoping it will be is a really great attraction for people to come to Chatham-Kent as tourists and hopefully people coming and exploring and maybe deciding to stay here, either as a place to retire to come and start a family or a business.

Work on the parkway has been under way since 2007. This year marks the Bicentennial of the War of 1812. Chatham-Kent with multiple celebrations planned in October.

 

War of 1812 Photos: Post Yours Via #HdG1812

http://havredegrace.patch.com/articles/war-of-1812-photos-post-yours-via-hdg1812