Virtual and In-person tours
Baltimore Heritage has created a series of Five Minute Histories about our city and history. Other special presentations by Baltimore Heritage and the Baltimore Architecture Foundation will help you get ready for your trip if you’re attending in person or provide a virtual visit to Charm City for those who are not attending in person and following the business of General Convention virtually.
Follow us on Facebook to see our regular postings of Five Minute Histories leading up to General Convention.
Seeing what is no longer there is a daunting task. Footprints once left on the dirt streets by coffles — mournful processions of enslaved men in chains, followed by women and children — are gone. Only a ghostly footprint remains etched in the ground we traverse today.
Learn more about the hallowed ground upon which the 80th General Convention of The Episcopal Church meets. If you come to Baltimore in person, take time to visit a site or two and pray for those who suffered or lost their lives there. If you are taking this tour virtually you can use the photos to pray for healing of the hurt that occurred at each location.
Seeing the Unseen: A somber tour through one of Baltimore’s ugliest chapters of enslavement
by Amy Davis
May 5, 2022
Permission from Baltimore Sun Media. All Rights Reserved.
There is no evidence at Oriole Park at Camden Yards that people were sold at the site. In 1858, Joseph S. Donovan, one of Baltimore’s major slave dealers, built a slave pen near the southwest corner of Eutaw and Camden streets. It was one of about a dozen private slave jails downtown, according to a 1936 Sun article, that held enslaved people, suspected runaways and kidnapped free Black people.
Read more…
Slave Streets, Free Streets: Early Baltimore On-Line
by the American Institute of Architects and the Baltimore Architecture Foundation
Anne Sarah Rubin discusses her digital project “Slave Streets, Free Streets: Visualizing the Landscape of Early Baltimore.” This website allows users to virtually stroll the streets of Baltimore circa 1815, while exploring the lives of free blacks and enslaved workers. She will also discuss the on-line games her students made about the Pratt Street Riots of 1861, suggesting some of the ways that modern technology can reconstruct the past in newly engaging ways.
Baltimore’s Slave Markets – a webinar (2022) – 30 minutes
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation (BAF) and Baltimore Heritage present the Virtual Histories Series: 30 minute live virtual tours and presentations focusing on Baltimore architecture, preservation and history. Hosted every Friday at 1:00 pm EST.
Mapping Sites of Baltimore’s Slave Trade – from Baltimore Heritage
Baltimore Heritage offers some information on the city’s role in the slave-trade in the19th century. One of its dedicated volunteers, Richard Messick, has spearheaded that research and offers insight into what he found. For more history and sites to visit, click on Baltimore Heritage’s interactive map.
Baltimore City Churches
As General Convention’s host city, we invite you to tour our Baltimore City Churches and learn more about their history, communities, and their work in racial reconciliation. These congregations are all within the city limits and easily accessible for those who are attending General Convention in person. If you are visiting us virtually, click on the map to learn more about our city churches.
Explore Maryland outside of Baltimore
We invite you to learn more about all of our congregations and our Claggett Camp and Conference Center in Frederick County while visiting in person or virtually. You will find a map of churches in our diocese using the Episcopal Asset Map and learn more about the truth and reconciliation work they’ve done on our Trail of Souls website. If you’re visiting Maryland in person, we encourage you to take time to explore our coastal areas, farms, mountains and towns.