Northern Chesapeake Heritage Foundation

07/18/2026

Respect! Nothing more need be said... 🇺🇸

07/03/2026

Could it be that the "Star Spangled Banner" we have always been told is on display at the Smithsonian institution is not the flag Francis Scott Key saw that morning?

On display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., is the historic “Garrison Flag” flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore on Sept. 13 &14, 1814: the flag that would inspire Francis Scott Key to pen his iconic poem, “Defence of F...

06/30/2026

In the mid-19th-century women found it nearly impossible to open the doors and enter what was considered a “man’s world,” but Julia Lee Hutson did just that...

Help us to honor Julia by fulfilling her final wish!

In the mid-19th-century women found it nearly impossible to o… Northern Chesapeake Heritage Foundation needs your support for Honoring a young woman who broke through cultural barriers.

06/23/2026

Did You Know?

The Tripoli Monument, located on the grounds of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD is the oldest military memorial in the United States. The monument is a memorial to six U.S. Naval Officers who made the ultimate sacrifice during the first of the Barbary Wars at the dawn of the 19th century.

The memorial was the vision of future Navy Commodore David Porter, then a Lieutenant, who wanted to honor his former shipmates that had been killed-in-action during a series of attacks on Tripoli in 1804: Captain Richard Somers, Lieutenants James Caldwell, James Decatur, Henry Wadsworth, Joseph Israel, and John Dorsey.

It would ultimately be commissioned by officers of the US Navy's Mediterranean fleet.

In early 1806, Capt. Porter engaged the Bishop of Florence who introduced him to the famous Italian sculptor, Giovanni Charles Micali. For half his usual fee, about three thousand dollars, he agreed to design and construct the memorial. There are many schools of thought and opinion regarding the design, but history generally records that it was left to Micali's vision with some input from Capt. Porter.

The white Carrara* marble sculpture consists of a thirty-foot-high column topped by an eagle and mounted on an elaborate base adorned with allegorical figures representing Glory, Fame, History, and Commerce. History, on the northwest corner, is represented by a seated female figure holding a book in her proper left hand and a pen made of bronze gilt in her proper right hand. She looks up and begins to record the event that she sees. Commerce, on the northeast corner, is represented by a male figure pointing to the column with his proper right hand and holding a caduceus in his proper left hand. Winged Victory stands beside the column, her proper right hand holding a laurel wreath over a sarcophagus and her proper left hand holding a bronze gilt palm branch. The column is adorned with two rows of antique "beaks of galleys" and two rows of antique anchors carved in relief. The sculpture rests on a square base constructed with blocks of stone and adorned with an urn on each corner.

Completed in late 1807, the monument would be transported, as ballast, onboard the USS Constitution to Newport, RI, where it would then be transported to Washington by another ship.

Unfortunately, the monument would sit in storage until such a time as further subscriptions, investments in funding, could be made to pay the import fees and for its assembly and installation at the new capitol building. When congress passed an act to remit the importation fees in March 1808 and adequate funding had been secured for its placement, that plan had to be abandoned in part because of the unfinished state of the building. Finally, agreement was reached to place it in the Navy Yard, where according to Benjamin Latrobe, architect of the United States Capitol and the official charged with installing the monument, it was “. . . the principal object of view to all those who enter the yard, either by land or water, and to an extensive portion of the city and of the port.”

Damaged during the burning of Washington by the British in 1814, it was restored in 1831 and moved to the west front terrace of the United States Capitol, where it would remain until its move to the Naval Academy in 1860. It was the first monument, and for the next thirty-five years after its installation, the only monument in the emerging “District of Columbia.”

It is also known as the “Navy Monument” or “Peace Monument.”

*White Carrara marble comes from Carrara, Italy – an area that is widely recognized for producing some of the finest marble in the world.

06/23/2026

Did You Know?

Ever wonder why so many houses in the south, especially along the coastal regions, have porch ceilings painted in a variety of pale, sky-blue, or blue-green colors? There is tradition behind the mystery of what is known as “Haint Blue” coloring.

That tradition originated in the Gullah Geechee culture, descendants of enslaved Africans in the low country of South Carolina and Georgia, in the early 19th century and is a practice believed to ward off evil spirits, or "haints" (a variation of "haunts"). The blue color was thought to trick spirits into believing the ceiling was the sky or water, preventing them from entering the home; many would also paint the window frames the same color as to give the spirits the impression the house was surrounded by water, so they could not cross into the home.

The blue color was also meant to mimic the daytime sky, so as to trick the spirits into thinking the ceiling was actually the open sky, causing them to pass harmlessly through the porch without entering the home.

Over time, the tradition has spread well beyond its geographic origins, but for a more practical purpose. Many people believe the blue hue tricks insects (like wasps and spiders) into thinking the ceiling is the sky, causing them to look elsewhere to build nests.

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06/20/2026

Honoring Laura Virginia McGonigall

Army Nursing Corps, WWI

Born 6 Oct 1884 to Millard F. and Sarah R. (Stilwell) McGonigall, in Havre de Grace, MD. Graduated May 1912 from the prestigious Training School for Nurses at Union Protestant Infirmary in Baltimore, MD.

Founded in 1854 as Baltimore’s first community hospital, in 1920 the facility was renamed Union Memorial Hospital. Today, it operates as MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, a major teaching and specialty hospital located at 201 E. 33rd Street in Baltimore, MD.

Laura joined the Army Nursing Corps in Sept 1918 and was subsequently assigned to the Post Hospital at Camp Meade in Anne Arundel County, MD. Camp Meade Hospital was utilized as a primary training and mobilization center for the Army, where they also handled routine illnesses, training injuries, and the 1918 influenza pandemic among recruits.

Following the war and her release in June 1919, Laura returned to her nursing career in Baltimore. She would meet and marry William Stanley Ray, a printer in Pennsylvania, and relocate to Harrisburg, PA. William died in Jul of 1929, leaving Laura with a young daughter, Virginia who would later marry and settle in Montreal, Canada. Laura returned to Baltimore just before 1940 and worked as a private nurse in and outside city hospitals.

Laura passed away on 3 Jan 1973, with her daughter in Canada and all but one sibling having passed before, her cremated remains would sit unclaimed at a local Baltimore Funeral Home for the next 27-years. In 2000, she, along with the cremated remains of several others, was finally interred in an unmarked grave at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. To recognize and honor her memory and service to her country, we procured and placed a government marker for her in Sep 2025.

06/20/2026

We remember and honor Maryland’s own…

Pvt. Clinton Augustus Mitchell
Co. F, 24th U.S. Infantry

Born in Montgomery County, MD to William E. and Leanna (Howard) Mitchell. Both William and Leanna were born into free Black families in antebellum Maryland. Clinton was raised alongside several brothers and sisters, but unfortunately, the family bloodline died out by the late 1970s.

The 24th US Infantry was a segregated regiment of Black enlisted men and white officers and was one of the four historic all-Black U.S. Army regiments famously known as the "Buffalo Soldiers". The Moniker was originally bestowed by Western American Indian Tribes who likened the soldiers' fierce, brave fighting style and dark, curly hair to the mighty buffalo. The Four Regiments that constituted the "Buffalo Soldier" Regiments were the U.S. Army’s 9th and 10th Cavalry, and the 24th and 25th Infantry.

The regiment fought heroically during the Spanish American War in Cuba, participating in the assaults on El Caney and San Juan Hill. Shortly after the war’s end, the 24th regiment was deployed directly to the Philippines in March1899 to help suppress the nationalist guerrilla movement led by Emilio Aguinaldo. The Army’s command originally deployed the 24thand 25th Infantry, and the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, believing falsely that Black soldiers were better equipped to survive tropical diseases and climates.

While in the Philippines, Pvt. Mitchell fell ill and was left behind at Bayonbong, along with two other members of his company. They all disappeared while enroute to rejoin their company. The Army and War Department determined the official date of death for all three soldiers to be 4 Dec 1899. Their status remains as “unaccounted for,” or MIA, in the official record.

Pvt. Clinton Augustus Mitchell served his state and country from 22 Aug 1898 until 4 Dec 1899.

We have placed a memorial marker in our Memorial Garden of Remembrance for Pvt. Mitchell, so that his memory will not fade, but will rest among other Marylanders who paid the ultimate sacrifice for state and country since our founding, but never made it home, or whose final resting place in Maryland has been lost to history.

01/08/2026

The last American battle casualties of the Vietnam War are believed to be CDR Harley D. Hall, Capt. George W. Morris, and Lt. Mark A. Peterson. One of them, George W. Morris, was a "hometown boy," from Baltimore, MD.

Captain George William Morris, Jr. was born on 16 Sep 1946 to George William and Elizabeth (Davies) Morris, Sr. in Baltimore, Maryland. The family would later relocate to Alhambra, CA, in the suburbs of Los Angeles where George, Sr. would serve as mayor from 1971-1973.

Capt. Morris was assigned to the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron, 504th Tactical Support Group, 56th Special Operations Wing, 7th Air Force, Nakhon Phanom RTAFB, Thailand, arriving in-country on 13 Nov 1972.

On 27 January 1973, just hours before the ceasefire agreement signed earlier that day in Paris would go into effect, Lt. Mark Peterson and Capt. George W. Morris, pilot and co-pilot respectively, were piloting an OV-10 Bronco light attack and observation aircraft, tail number 68-3806, call sign "Nail 89,” on a search mission for two Navy pilots of a downed F-4 Phantom near the Cua Viet River in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. Those pilots were Navy CDR Harley D. Hall, executive officer of the F4 squadron, VF143, on the USS Enterprise, and his back-seat Radar intercept Officer (RIO), LCDR Al Kientzler.

Their aircraft was soon hit by a Soviet made, S7 surface-to-air missile in the right engine causing pieces of aircraft wreckage to sever the Bronco's tail. Capt. Morris and pilot Lt. Mark Peterson ejected safely, with witnesses in other aircraft in the vicinity seeing the parachutes land close to one another. Rescue beepers from both crew members of the Bronco were heard for a short time and radio communication with one of them, believed to be Lt. Peterson, stated that he was about to be captured. That was the last communication received from either of pilots.

Due to the enemy presence in the area, attempts at rescue were abandoned. There are many conflicting “witness” statements from American pilots in the area, civilians on the ground, and NVA military veterans after the war as to the fate of Capt. Morris and Lt. Peterson on that day, just hours before America’s involvement in its longest war would come to an end.

When the North Vietnamese released U.S. prisoners of war during Operation Homecoming just a few weeks later, the crew members of the OV-10 Bronco, tail number 68-3806, call sign "Nail 89,” and CDR Harley D. Hall were not among them. LCDR Al Kientzler, though wounded, was the only survivor of the two ill-fated flights.

Baltimorean, Captain George William Morris, Jr. is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, and among his fallen comrades on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC.

We are proud and honored to establish this local memorial to an American hero in his hometown of Baltimore, MD. His memorial marker will join those of other hometown Maryland hero’s in our Garden of Remembrance within the walls of Baltimore’s historic Green Mount Cemetery.

With this memorial garden, we pay special tribute to all Marylanders who paid the ultimate sacrifice, and whose final resting places are known but to God.