Site #1: Highlandtown, 1978-1980
Dates
- 1978-1980
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research use.
Historical Note
Highlandtown was first settled in 1866 by Thomas McGuiness, a young Irish immigrant, who settled the area for its owners--the Philadelphia Land Company. The original name given to the neighborhood was Snake Hill. Prior to this year, the area had been closely associated with the neighborhood of Canton. It was also the location of Fort Marshall, a stronghold for Union troops.
Attracted to its large, thinly populated tracts, industries moved in before homeowners. The earliest companies included George F. Weissner’s Fort Marshall Brewery, Mickey Dorsey & Son’s Acid Factory (later becoming Geyner’s Lime Kiln), and the Schluderberg Brother’s butcher shop. In 1870, the merchant’s association renamed the community “Highland Town” because one could see all the surrounding countryside from the town central area. When Baltimore City annexed the area in 1918, the spelling changed to “Highlandtown” to avoid confusion.
The neighborhood was first settled largely by German immigrants of the Roman Catholic faith. Many found work in the town’s local industries, which now included slaughterhouses and packing houses. Others found work on the B&O Railroad or worked as “hucksters,” (street merchants) who sold their goods from cars and trucks. By the 1920s, Highlandtown became one of the city’s major commercial districts.
At the time of the BNHP, the area was suffering from commercial decline due to the opening of shopping centers like Eastpoint Mall in the 1960s; however Highlandtown merchants were working together to combat the problem.
The BNHP attempted to help foster that community bond. Some community members were a part of the Highland History Group, an offshoot of the BNHP’s “Eating Together” site at the Abbot Memorial Church in the neighborhood. In the fall of 1978, Linda Shopes, oral history consultant for the BNHP, trained the members in oral history interviewing techniques so that they could participate in documenting their own community. These participants conducted many of the interviews for Site #6: East Baltimore.
Sources:
Donald G. Hammen, “Highlandtown” in Livelier Baltimore Committee of the Citizens Planning & Housing Association, Beyond the White Marble Steps: A Look
at Baltimore Neighborhoods (J.W. Boarman Co., 1979). (PAM 10,988)
"History of Highlandtown," Highlandtown Merchants Association, accessed on March 26, 2005, http://www.highlandtownmerchants.com/history.html
Extent
47 Items : 47 oral histories
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Scope and Contents
The Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project Oral History Collection contains paper records and audiocassette recordings from 1978 through 1980. The paper records are composed of the files kept on each narrator (the person being interviewed) and the administrative needs of the project. Narrator records contain biography forms, interview notes, and tape indexes for approximately 212 narrators. The interview notes briefly describe the circumstance surrounding the interview(s) session. The tape index includes the name of the narrator, the name of interviewer, the number of tapes, the tape(s) length, and the primary subjects covered. Seventy-nine of the records include transcripts. Transcript length ranges from 8 to 65 pages. Some are single-spaced; others are doubled-spaced. The interviews range from twenty-five minutes to three hours in length. One file, #183, and its accompanying cassette(s) were removed from the collection.
Thirty-two interviewers participated in the project. Typically, the interviews were one-on-one sessions between interviewer and narrator; however, single interviewer and double-narrator situations occurred, as did three group “nostalgia” sessions. Most interviews were prefaced by unrecorded, pre-interview sessions that occurred days before the recorded interview.
Each narrator abstract includes the following information when available: the BNHP interview number; the name of the interviewer; the date of the interview; the place of the interview; the length of the interview; the number of tapes used; the length of the transcript; and the file contents, such as subject index, interview notes, and biography form. The abstracts follow the numerical order of the interview number. However, interview numbers are not consecutive, but site specific. That is to say, any omitted number within a site can be found in another site.
When controversial or outdated terms, especially those referring to race and ethnicity, are mentioned in the abstract, the politically-correct term is used and the term or terms used by the narrator has been placed in parenthetical (“ ”) quotation marks. Specific terms from the interviews and textual uncertainties are often placed in parentheses alone ( ). Maiden names of female narrators are placed in brackets [ ].
Repository Details
Part of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library Repository
H. Furlong Baldwin Library
Maryland Center for History and Culture
610 Park Avenue
Baltimore MD 21201 United States
4106853750
specialcollections@mdhistory.org