As America commemorates 250 years since its founding, the Howard County Historical Society presents A Place Between: Building a Nation from the Patapsco Valley — a year-long initiative exploring how the landscapes, people, and ideals of this region helped shape the nation’s story.
Howard County has always been a place between Baltimore and the Piedmont region (and later, Washington, DC), industry and agriculture, slavery and freedom, tradition and innovation. These in-between spaces were where early Americans built communities, tested ideals, and defined what freedom, faith, and progress would mean in the new republic. These ideals and spaces still exist within the landscape, which is home to new communities of Americans – geography shaping identity, opportunity, and belonging.
New displays added throughout the year at the Museum of Howard County History.
Howard County Freedom Seekers explores documented cases of those charged with assisting, enticing, persuading, or inciting escape - using records from our Courthouse Collection. These cases were also corroborated by census records, runaway ads, newspaper articles, account books, and maps.
Are you interested in seeing this exhibit? Visit at the Museum of Howard County History.
For nearly 180 years, Clark’s Hardware Store supplied the workers & residents of Howard County and the surrounding region with the tools and materials required to support their daily lives. Founded in Ellicott City in 1845, Clark’s remained family-owned and operated for seven generations until its sale in 2024.
Clark’s Hardware Store: Tools, Trust, & Change in Howard County, explores what the tools the store sold, records it produced, and services it offered reveal about the county’s history. These objects and services document the labor that sustained local communities, the trust that shaped relationships between businesses and their customers, and the store’s evolution as Howard County transformed from a largely rural landscape into a growing suburban community.
On display at the Museum of Howard County History, this exhibit encourages visitors to look beyond what an object is and ask “What can it teach me about Howard County?”.