The purpose of this site is to assist researchers in the study of Baltimore History.  Its emphasis is on the public record, although reference will be made to secondary sources and private records in public and private repositories.  It is a work in progress and is meant to be instructive as the time and resources of the contributors permit.  The initial principal contributor and editor is Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse, Maryland State Archivist, but suggestions and contributions are welcome.  The hope is to make this  web site a permanent, authoritative guide to research and writing about Baltimore City with its focus on the care of, preservation of, and access to, the public record.

The Baltimore City Archives has a new home at 2615 Mathews Street, Baltimore, MD 21218.  Google Maps provides good directions. On some mapping services you may have to use 601 East 27th Street, Baltimore, MD 21211, for directions, but the entrance is around the  corner on Mathews.  Rebecca Gunby is the City Archivist and Records Manager.  The  phone number is 410-396-3884.

Begin the introduction to the Baltimore City Archives with: A Guide to Research in the Public Records of Baltimore City and the following suggesstions:

1) The Geography of Baltimore City: Sources

The study of Baltimore City should begin with a good overview understanding of its geographic and demographic growth.  The mapping of the City is discussed at length in Sherry Olson’s Baltimore, and in Edward Papenfuse and Joseph M. Coale’s Atlas of Historical Maps of Maryland.

2) The Demography of Baltimore City: Sources

Tracking the changes over time in the distribution and character of the population of Baltimore is complicated by the ever changing and ill-defined boundaries of Federal and Police census taking, and neighborhood definitions over the City’s history, but with Heritage Quest and Ancestry.com’s digitalization and indexing of the census records and the widespread availability of ward, block and street level mapping, it is possible to isolate place and people within the bounds of the city in studying change over time.

Once the researcher is familiar with the physical and general demographic changes that take place over time in Baltimore, then a thorough grounding in the general secondary literature on the history of the city is required.

3) The Historiography of Baltimore City

While research in the history of a city is shaped by the surviving sources, generally students come to study urban history with a topic in mind, often inspired by a secondary source or general research trends in the different disciplines that are drawn to urban history and planning, such as a close reading of Sue Greene’s, Fee’s et. al,  and Sherry Olson’s books on Baltimore, or exposure to the Baltimore Ecosystem study.

But whatever the topic, understanding the nature and extent of the surviving public records of the city is critical to any successful research strategy, yet until recently, and for over nearly twenty years, the permanent public records of Baltimore City were permitted to lapse into a horrendous state of decay and disarray, even undoing in some measure, the initial careful work undertaken by the first two City Archivists, Richard Cox and William LeFurgy with National Historical Publications and Records grants in the 1980s.

Given the renewed interest in the current city administration to address the neglect, it would serve no purpose to criticize what was not done, but rather to provide a working guide to what has survived and how it can be accessed, adjusting the results over time to the improved storage and access that is now under way.

See: A Guide to Research in the Public Records of Baltimore City