C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience

Senator James Alfred Pearce, who later chaired the Joint Library Committee of Congress and served on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents, lived in the Custom House in the late 19th century.

[8] One of the building’s most influential owners, Wilbur Ross Hubbard, carried out a major renovation and restoration project in the 1970s before bequeathing the house to Washington College.

[11] The tour provides a walk back in time into an era when local streets bustled with revolutionaries and convicts, slave traders, British soldiers and heroes of the Underground Railroad.

“History on the Waterfront” was researched, written and performed by Washington College students, faculty and staff, along with members of the Chestertown community, and includes narrative, music, reenactments and firsthand accounts of life in the colonial port.

The Center’s program manager, Michael Buckley, who also produces the weekly radio series "Voices of the Chesapeake Bay" on 103.1 WRNR, oversaw the technical aspects of the production.

Starr Center director Adam Goodheart began initial excavations at Poplar Grove in 2003 with the Archaeology Field School at Washington College, and in 2008, one of his students discovered the collection of papers.

Current Poplar Grove owner James Wood, a descendant of the Emory family, has been a source of information for Goodheart’s students as they participate in the project.

[14] His mother, Mary Wood, published a book about the Emory women called My Darling Alice: Based on Letters and Legends of an Eastern Shore of Maryland Farm – 1837 – 1935.

[16] Other winners have included Richard Beeman (2010) for Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution,[17] Annette Gordon-Reed (2009) for The Hemingses of Monticello,[18] Marcus Rediker (2008) for The Slave Ship: A Human History,[19] and Stacy Schiff (2006) for A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.

[21] The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship offers a nine-month residency to authors doing innovative work on America’s founding era and its legacy.