Finding Aid Provides Guide To Document Collection

A famous historian has written that “without the documents, there is no history!” If documentary evidence is a measure of a historic site’s importance, Hampton National Historic Site, located in Towson Maryland, is one of the most historically significant places in the country and it is now more accessible than ever before. Recently, the site completed a comprehensive finding aid, enabling researchers to locate over 10,000 documents spanning 350 years of the Hampton estate.

Founded by the Ridgely family in the 1700s, Hampton was the center of a sprawling 25,000 acre business empire founded on iron-making, agriculture, slavery and shipping. The story of Hampton is the story of America. 

“The extensive landholdings and family fortune are gone, but the Ridgely family left behind a wealth of archival holdings,” said chief of interpretation Vincent Vaise.

The comprehensive guide to collections is a combined index to nearly 100 manuscript collections held in such places as Yale University, Maryland Historical Society, Duke University, The Library of Congress, Maryland State Archives and many others. Documents relating to Hampton’s role in early-American iron-making, slavery, colonial life, the American Civil War, reconstruction, suburban development, economics and decorative arts are now more easily found. Published for the first time on the web, researchers can access this “road map to collections” from their own home.

“Hampton’s documentation is extraordinarily complete, the mansion never suffered a major fire and new findings are always showing up.” says Julia Lehnert, archivist at the site. “The finding aid saves a researcher a lot of legwork, Hampton has many stories and sometimes you can find untold stories in unexpected places.” 

The project illustrates the value of partnerships.  The park’s friends group, Historic Hampton Inc. (HHI), successfully applied for the grant from Preservation Maryland to fund the project. HHI then contracted for its completion and co-managed the project with the National Park Service.  Since going online a few months ago, the site has received numerous hits.

“The site is just beginning to be discovered,” says Lehnert, “We were recently contacted by a researcher from California who is writing her dissertation on slavery in Baltimore and Anne Arundel Counties, she said that the finding aid was a tremendous help in informing her what documents were here at the site and what to look at.”