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.