News Briefs

Yesterday, after meeting with the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, I delivered our traveling exhibit (see below) to Charles County's administrative building in La Plata. It will remain on view in the first floor foyer for awhile, only a few feet from the exhibit prepared by Mike Sullivan and Julie King on their discovery of the first County Courthouse at Moore's Lodge. I'll be looking throughout the County for other venues for our exhibit.

Travelling exhibit in the Flowers Building at the Charles County Fair, September 2008.

As you all know, next year is the bicentennial of President Lincoln's birthday. April and I think that Port Tobacco should participate in the celebration. The Preserve America grant awarded to Charles County will fund research into the assassination plot and we hope to use this information to develop programs (e.g., signage, web pages on the Society for the Restoration of Port Tobacco's site with links to other Lincoln-related sites, etc.) that will land Port Tobacco back onto the Lincoln trail. That trail includes the Dr. Samuel Mudd House and Mary Surratt's house in Prince George's County. We also probably will be able to identify the encampments of those Federal military units that patrolled the area and that participated in the search for the Lincoln assassination conspirators.

Finally, we will be taking down our latest poll in just a few days. In the now classic modern American tradition, we have no clear majority vote, although the interest of our readers clearly is greatest in the areas of colonial Port Tobacco and the so-called Contact Period. Per my blog of the other day, we are no longer treating these subjects as separate research agendas; therefore, we do, in fact, have a clear majority...so far. We will not dismiss the Civil War (see above) or the Revolutionary War periods, but Port Tobacco has a rich, well-preserved archaeological record and we have some choice in what we will focus on. For those of you who have cast a vote, thank you...it means a lot to us that you have these interests and we will do our best to pursue them.

Jim