Chesapeake Country

by Eugene L. Meyer, Lucian Niemeyer (Photographer)

Overview

The classic photo book on one of America’s most picturesque destinations, revised and updated.

The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, stretching 185 miles from the Susquehanna River to the Virginia capes, touching more than 8,000 miles of shoreline. This country of mists and tranquil waters harbors a rare abundance of wildlife, as well as the last commercial sailing fleet in the United States—the famous skipjacks, or oyster-dredging boats. The bay and its rivers are home to isolated villages that preserve early colonial dialects; to historic plantations, such as Mount Vernon; and to considerable cities, including Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Richmond.

Beautifully photographed and written, Chesapeake Country tells the story of the bay in all its aspects: its waterscape and wildlife; its delicate ecology; its rich history as the seedbed of American liberty as well as American slavery; and its uncertain present, as the population of watermen who live by crabbing and oystering dwindles, and that of prosperous newcomers seeking a respite from city life grows. This new edition also discusses the future of the bay in the era of climate change and brings us up to date on the places and personalities that make the Chesapeake so unique.

For those who live on the bay, Chesapeake Country is a celebration. For those who do not, it is an invitation to explore. And for everyone, it is a journey of discovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780789212146
Publisher:	Abbeville Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	489,138
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Lucian Niemeyer was an award-winning photographer based in Santa Fe. Niemeyer published numerous books on varied topics, including most recently Africa: The Holocausts of Rwanda and Sudan; Darfur; and West Virginia: Mountain Air.

Eugene L. Meyer, a former staff reporter and editor for The Washington Post, has covered the people and places of the Chesapeake Bay for more than forty years. He is also the author of Maryland Lost and Found . . . Again.

Read an Excerpt

Chesapeake Country

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By Lucian Niemeyer, Eugene Meyer

Abbeville Press

Copyright © 2015 Lucian Niemeyer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1214-6

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"Nature craves moderation and ten inches of rain over ten weeks is better than ten inches of rain over one week. Big storms increase the velocity of water," which has, some might say, a spillover effect, accelerating erosion even as the sea-level rises. Indeed, the scientist say that the risk of hundred-year storms has nearly doubled from global warming.
In much of the Chesapeake country , meanwhile, little seems to have changed. Back Creek in the Eastport section of Annapolis is as full of pleasure craft as ever. Big yachts continue to tie up at the dock in "Ego Alley," the state capital's waterfront inlet. The full marinas in bay towns from Annapolis to St. Michaels, from Herrington Harbor to Solomons, testify to the economic well-being of many citizens of Chesapeake country.
Along the bay's major tributaries, the old plantations continue to stand sentinel by ageless rivers. Yet even here there have been changes, most notably in coming to terms with a part of the past that has for too long been swept aside: the very significant role played by America's "peculiar" institution, slavery. At Sotterly, on the Patuxent River, a descendant of a slave and a descendent of a slave owner sat together on the governing board of the non-profit foundation that owns it. At Stratford, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, on the Potomac, slave descendants held two well-attended reunions, in 2001 and 2011. Even Shirly Plantation, on the James, had begun to acknowledge this unsavory aspect of its own history, with archeological digs and a new exhibit on the enslaved African Americans who toiled there. At the same time, there is an ongoing family legacy at Shirley, as Charles Hill Carter, Jr., passed on in 2009 leaving stewardship of the plantation to his son, Charles III, the tenth generation to reside there.
Meanwhile, over in Easton, the city of Talbot County, on Maryland's Eastern shore, after much haggling and delay, they dedicated a statue in June 2011, of native son Fredrick Douglass, who fled from slavery to become a leading African American abolitionist, diplomat, writer, and orator. (It sits right next to a monument to the "Talbot Boys" who fought for the confederacy.) Two years the State Highway Administration had dedicated route 33 to Douglass; the road runs from Easton through to St. Michaels to Tilghman Island, encompassing the Bay Hundred district, where he toiled as a slave.
This then is welcome change—and continuity—that has come to Chesapeake country over the past quarter century. There is comfort in that, even as the sea level rises and the land retreats. For many, this is still, as boosters say, "the land of pleasant living." For now, and for the foreseeable future—Chesapeake country—with its distinct culture, history, resources, beauty, and yes challenges—lives on, and so does my love affair with it.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Chesapeake Country by Lucian Niemeyer, Eugene Meyer. Copyright © 2015 Lucian Niemeyer. Excerpted by permission of Abbeville Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Chesapeake Country


Contents


Chesapeake Country Revisited 7


Introduction 17
The Landings 37
The Plantations 61
The Watermen 97
Tidewater Towns/Chesapeake Cities 141
Chesapeake Country: Back to the Future 187
Epilogue 205


Suggestions For Further Reading 221
Acknowledgments 223
Index 225

Editorial Reviews

"Beg, borrow, or buy a copy of Chesapeake Country."

The Washington Times

“Sensitively photographed, sensibly written, and beautifully printed”
—Washington Post Book World



“Beg, borrow, or buy a copy of Chesapeake Country.”
—The Washington Times

From the Publisher