Get Your Shoes On: St. Michaels Museum Presents Historic Walking Tours

For the 2015 Season St. Michaels Museum at St. Square is expanding its walking tour selections and inaugurating a new “short” tour on Saturday afternoons which will involve a shorter time and minimal walking.

The regular Saturday Morning tours will continue to be offered every Saturday at 10 a.m. beginning May 3. This year there will be three different tours offered on a rotating basis. A new tour “St. Michaels During the Civil War” has been developed by our historian, Betty Seymour, and will be given on the second Saturday of each month. This new tour is a walk through historic St. Michaels to learn about the Union veterans of the Civil War, who they were, where they lived, where they served and where they died. Twenty-five of these Union men, black and white are buried in St. Michaels as are two Confederate men. You will learn about tensions between Union and Confederate sympathizers and how St. Michaels was much more aligned with the Union than most surrounding slave-holding areas in Talbot County. This will lead to a picture of St. Michaels, at that time, as a predominately blue collar, hard working community with both white and free black watermen.

St. Michaels Museum – New entrance at Teetotum Building

The general tour “Historic St. Michaels: its People, Places and Happenings” will be offered on the first and third Saturdays of each month. This tour will give highlights of St. Michaels during the 19^th Century, chronicling the rise and fall of the shipbuilding industry, the War of 1812 and battles of St. Michaels, and the rise of the seafood industry. These stories will be told by viewing many restored structures from that era and describing life of famous and typical residents of these times, including Frederick Douglas.

On the fourth Saturday the Museum’s signature tour “Frederic Douglass, a slave, in St. Michaels 1833-36”, will give a more detailed view of the early life of St. Michaels’ most famous 19^th century resident and probably the most important African-American Abolitionist in the Civil War Era. This will fit well with the 2015 expanded exhibit on Frederick Douglass; “Frederick Douglass: His world 1818-1895 “.

These approximately 90 minute docent-led walking tours will leave from the Museum every Saturday morning at 10 AM starting on May 2. The Saturday morning tours are available for $10 for Adults and $5 for Youth (6-17) with the fee including both the tour and museum entry fee. Detailed schedules can be found on the Museum’s Website: www.stmichaelsmuseum.org.

– Dedication plaque from 1913 on St. Square cannon

Starting on June 13 a weekly shorter tour, “St. Mary’s Square” will be offered at 2 PM on Saturday afternoons. This tour will involve a docent led discussion of the History of St. Michaels Museum and its exhibits, on life in the 19^th Century, Frederick Douglass, and the 1813 Battles of St. Michaels. Then will follow a leisurely walk in St. Mary’s Square where the participants will hear about the History of St. Michaels starting with the original plat by James Braddock with St. Mary’s Square as the central “Town Green”. The tour will describe the several Booms and Busts of St. Michaels including the Ship Building Boom through the War of 1812 followed by collapse. Then Steam Boats, Seafood and Tourist industries in the Victorian Era with the focus shifting to tourists and retirees in recent times. The tour will discuss, the Town Bell, the ceremonial cannons, various buildings currently or previously on St Mary’s Square and how they relate to the Town’s history including the Battles of St. Michaels, the Civil War, Frederick Douglas, and other highlights.

This tour will last approximately 45 minutes and will cost $5 per person which includes admission to the Museum,

Detailed schedules for all of the tours can be found on the Museum’s Website: WWW.stmichaelsmuseum.org. Reservations are appreciated. Please Email [email protected] for reservations and information or call 410 745 0530.

Subject to docent availability any of these tours can be offered at other times for groups of 5 or more..

Lead photo:Tour group visiting the Dobson/Bruff House – Site of Frederick Douglass reconciliation with his former master Captain Thomas Auld in 1877

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