Donna and I will be leaving shortly for McHenry in Garrett County, in the mountains of Western Maryland. It's quite a drive -- 179 miles -- as you will see from the map I have posted below. The local Chamber of Commerce are putting us up in one of the spacious vacation homes near Deep Creek Lake on the same road as the County Fairgrounds where I will be giving two talks, one tomorrow evening and the other at lunchtime on Saturday. The different vacation properties cater to people who use the lake for boating or fishing in Summer and skiing and other Winter sports in the Winter months. I stayed at Deep Creek Lake with my parents as I recall in the summer of 1962 when I would have been fourteen and on holiday from Rose Lane School, Liverpool visiting my parents in Baltimore. Besides staying in a lakeside cottage we had the use of a boat with an outboard motor and traveled the length of the lake, fished, swam, etc. We caught a lot of sunfish and perch as well as the largest a "crappie" (excuse the expression) that my Mum caught but refused to clean, leaving that to my Dad! Donna and I will not have time for any of those sort of activities though and my time will be pretty much taken up with preparing for and giving the couple of talks that I have to deliver.
I have a suitcase full of copies of my books to take as well as a bunch of handouts that I regularly prepare for the audiences. The talk tomorrow evening will be a straight War of 1812 in the Chesapeake talk, while the one at Saturday lunchtime will have a focus on the African Americans in the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake. Among the groups appearing at the festival will be Aisquith's Sharpshooters who were at the re-enactment in Havre de Grace on May 4, as shown below. As far as I know, Michael Bosworth, who portrayed British Rear Admiral George Cockburn at Havre de Grace (bottom photographs) will not be at McHenry for the two-day event, but then he might be there under his other guise of portraying an American militia dragoon!
For more information on the two day event visit Maryland in the War of 1812 - A Living History Event.
