News Archives 2006 - January

Become a Docent/Interpreter at CBMM!

ST. MICHAELS, MD—Anyone who enjoys interacting with people, has a curiosity about the Chesapeake Bay, and would like to help promote the Bay's cultural heritage is welcome to participate in volunteer docent/interpreter training at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. The Museum is offering a 9-week docent training program beginning Thursday, February 16 which prepares participants to lead group tours, interpret the Museum's exhibits, and assist at special events. Once individuals complete the training program, they are able to provide much-needed assistance to the Museum staff in many unique and interactive ways. This program is offered once a year and is free of charge.

CBMM Education Coordinator Rachel Rébert leads the docent training sessions, which are held each Thursday morning from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon. Participating in this training program is a great way to meet others and connect with those who share an interest in the Chesapeake Bay. The session topics range from learning about the Museum's exhibits and collections to developing tour group management techniques.

The 2006 docent training schedule is as follows:

Thursday, February 16 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Welcome; introductions; overview of docent program; review of guidebook

Thursday, February 23 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Understanding interpretation; role of the interpreter; connecting with your audience; theme tours

Thursday, March 2 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Exhibit learning: Bay History and Waterfowling; working with objects

Thursday, March 9 9:30 - 12:00 noon
CBMM library tour; meeting and managing groups

Thursday, March 16 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Exhibit learning: At Play on the Bay and Oystering on the Chesapeake; interpretive techniques

Thursday, March 23 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Working with kids; children's programs at CBMM

Thursday, March 30 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Exhibit learning: Hooper Strait Lighthouse and Small Boat Shed; safety procedures at CBMM

Thursday, April 6 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Exhibit learning: Waterman's Wharf and Floating Fleet; tour evaluation techniques

Thursday, April 13 9:30 - 12:00 noon
Individual exhibit interpretation; wrap-up

CBMM docents provide invaluable support to the Museum in its mission to promote a deeper understanding of the Chesapeake Bay region and its history. Docent duties include guiding Museum visitors and providing a memorable and positive visit; staffing individual exhibitions and leading demonstrations, classes, and special events as needed; attending training sessions and monthly meetings; and promoting the Museum and its mission to others. Many docents have expressed that volunteering at the Museum is one of their most gratifying experiences, and that engaging Museum visitors from across the country and around the world is inspiring and fulfilling work.

To enroll in the Museum's 2006 docent training program which begins on February 16 or to receive more information about the program, contact Rachel Rébert at 410-745-2916, ext. 133 or via email at rrebert@cbmm.org. Additional information about the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum can be found at www.cbmm.org.

CBMM Spring Lecture Series Begins March 15

ST. MICHAELS, MD— The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum's 2006 Spring Lecture Series begins Wednesday, March 15 and continues through Wednesday, April 5. All lectures will be held at 10:30 a.m. at the Parish Hall of the Christ Episcopal Church in St. Michaels, Maryland.

Admission to each lecture, which can be paid at the door, is $6 for non-members, and $4 for Museum members. This series is supported in part by the Lenfest Foundation Lecture Series Endowment Fund and by the Academy for Lifelong Learning at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

The theme of this year's lecture series—African Americans and the Chesapeake—is organized in anticipation of the opening of "Waters of Despair, Waters of Hope," a special exhibit on African Americans' lives on the Chesapeake. This new exhibit, which will be opened in summer of 2006, will be housed in the Museum's Steamboat Building.

This lecture series features recent scholarship of the black experience on the Chesapeake from colonial times to the twentieth century. Four academic and public historians will examine the importation of slaves, the institution of slavery in the region, slave escapes, and an overview of maritime activities in which the region's blacks participated.

A summary of each of the lectures to be presented is as follows:

March 15
Bradley Skelcher, Ph.D.
"Wade in the Water: The Underground Railroad and Slave Escapes by Sea"
In the Chesapeake Bay region, slave escapes often took advantage of the network of waterways and the remarkable access that many blacks had to schooners and other vessels. This lecture explores the shape that the underground railroad took around the Chesapeake. Dr. Skelcher is Acting Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences for Delaware State College and author of "Historical Geography and the Underground Railroad in Central Delaware." He has been a Ford Fellow in African Studies at Howard University and Ford Fellow in African American Studies at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia.

March 22
Philip Morgan, Ph.D.
"Chesapeake Slavery in the Eighteenth Century"
The Chesapeake's tobacco agriculture shaped every aspect of slave life from work schedules to conception of time. In the Chesapeake, whites and blacks worked alongside one another to a remarkable degree, creating contradictions in their relationships. Already by the eighteenth century, a distinctive slave culture emerged in the Chesapeake, encompassing family, language, entertainment, and religion. These and other themes of Chesapeake slavery will be explored by Dr. Philip Morgan, the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University. His book Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998) won the Bancroft, Beveridge, and Frederick Douglass Prizes. He also co-edited Colonial Chesapeake Society.

March 29
Glenn F. Williams
"The Crowning Crime: The International Slave Trade"
A poem entitled "The Crowning Crime of Christendom" circulated on handbills by antebellum abolitionist groups. This lecture by Glenn Williams explores the origins of the slave trade, its Baltimore connections, Federal legislative efforts to curtail it, and the U. S. Navy's role mission to interdict the trade on the eve of the Civil War. He includes a focus on the USS Constellation's role in this effort from 1858 to 1861. Williams is a military historian/planner for the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, and previously served as historian/curator of exhibits for the USS Constellation Museum.

April 5
Benjamin Trask
"Waters of Despair, Waters of Hope: African Americans and the Chesapeake"
In addition to slavery and escapes to freedom, the Chesapeake shaped work experiences for blacks over time, ranging from canal diggers, caulkers, coopers, and crab pickers ashore to oystermen, hands on steamboats, and ferrymen on the water. Benn Trask, a teacher and former associate curator at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, organized a major exhibition on this theme, and this lecture explores the major themes of the exhibit.

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