18th Century

A daylong Colonial Camp gave fifth-graders at Joppa View Elementary School insights into 18th-century life in America and surprising news about whether they would have been eligible to fight in the revolutionary army. At 10 years old, they would have met the age requirement for enlistment. But before they could be armed with a musket, children also had to master 12 camp calls on fife and drum that were the army's battle commands. And they would have to have demonstrated a strong bite.

A daylong Colonial Camp gave fifth-graders at Joppa View Elementary School insights into 18th-century life in America and surprising news about whether they would have been eligible to fight in the revolutionary army. At 10 years old, they would have met the age requirement for enlistment. But before they could be armed with a musket, children also had to master 12 camp calls on fife and drum that were the army's battle commands. And they would have to have demonstrated a strong bite.

Not every artist performs his own musical accompaniment.But a weekend exhibit of the prints of Randy Miller will also feature the fiddling of Randy Miller.His art and music will be on hand during the Ellicott City Millfest from 7 p.m. to midnight today and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow at the Margaret Smith Gallery."It fits with the Millfest," said Ms. Smith. "It's an old heritage festival and he's popular. It's a good mix. He puts in rural, old American folk art."A self-taught artisan and musician, Mr. Miller has spent years mastering the antique, yet compatible, art forms -- wood engraving and New England fiddle music.

Phyllis L. Mowbray, former director of the Carroll County Public Library's "Library Link" program, who restored an 18th-century farmhouse with her husband, died Monday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Carroll Hospice Dove House. She was 88. Phyllis Louise Wagner was born in Baltimore and raised in Pikesville. She was a 1939 graduate of Franklin High School. Two years later, she became ill with tuberculosis, which forced her to be confined for a year at the state sanatorium at Sabillasville in Frederick County.

Travel back in time to Annapolis of 200 years ago during the 18th-Century Trades Fair on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Charles Carroll House, 107 Duke of Gloucester St.Charles Carroll, portrayed by Baltimore actor David Guy, will be on hand to greet you. Carroll was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the wealthiest men in the American Colonies. You will meet his wigmaker and servants and a large group of Colonial tradesmen, portrayed by the South River Sutlers, who will set up shop in the Carroll garden.

The HM Bark Endeavour, a replica of an 18th-century ship that sailed around the world, is to arrive in Baltimore firing its cannons and under full sail at noon today for a nine-day stay at Constellation Pier in the Inner Harbor.Endeavour will be open to visitors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow through June 7. The ship is stopping in Baltimore as part of a 16-port, seven-month tour of North American cities.Endeavour was commissioned in 1994 and was built using the specifications of the HM Bark Endeavour that Capt.

Market Square in Alexandria, Va., will be filled with hawkers and peddlers, merchants, musicians and members of the militia as Gadsby's Tavern Museum re-creates an 18th century fair from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday.You can participate in an auction, learn the latest dance steps, attend a court session, watch a militia muster, hear campaign speeches, watch a theater production, buy crafts and enjoy 18th century fare. Children can play old-fashioned games and see an 18th century puppet show.The fair is free, but a donation is suggested.

Like a number of other artists these days, Pablo Cano recycles found objects -- junk, more or less -- into artwork. But what Cano also recycles, as his exhibit at Nye Gomez Gallery shows, is the 18th century, and therein lies some of the wit that makes this show a pleasure.Cano is both a visual and a performance artist. He and writer Giulio V. Blanc have collaborated on a performance work that combines music, Blanc's words and Cano's marionettes (manipulated by Cano and others). In it, four 18th century characters comment on love and other matters: Casanova, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire and Fragonard.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation will re-enact an 18th century slave auction for the first time Monday -- a vivid step back into racism the foundation's black history interpreters decided to take themselves."

Ash Lawn-Highland, home of President James Monroe in Charlottesville, Va., is the setting for opera, a Broadway musical, concerts, and other events during the 15th annual Summer Festival of the Arts in progress through Aug. 16.Visitors will be transported back in time to see the plantation as it was in Monroe's lifetime when "Plantation Days" is held there Saturday and next Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Costumed craftspeople and artisans will be engaged in...

One of Maryland's most mysterious ruins can't be seen from any nearby road. In fact, in summer you could stand within 20 feet of it and see nothing but the trees and vines that are slowly demolishing the fragile structure. But behind that green curtain, off Garrison Forest Road in Owings Mills, you would find stone walls two stories high, pierced by rows of vertical slit windows that suggest gun embrasures. Scott Frenkil, 53, a Lutherville mortgage broker, thought he'd found a forgotten old fort when he first saw it as a kid in the 1970s.

Bryant Bunch, who came from Prince George's County to attend college here at the far end of the Maryland panhandle, first saw the sign on Interstate 68 while traveling with a carload of friends a few years back. He remembers their reaction: Does that say what we think it says? Maxine Broadwater, born and raised on a farm outside Grantsville, and the town's librarian for three decades, recalls the first time she ever gave the name a second thought. It was the early 1990s, and people passing through had stopped at her library to ask about it. Her thought: Why would that bother anybody?

Three years after he started on the project, Baltimore filmmaker Mike Lawrence has released his latest documentary, "Bach & Friends," the kind of work that has "labor of love" all over it. Lawrence's passion for Bach's music led him to ask a cross section of artists to discuss the composer's place in their creative lives. The result is an entertaining mix of ideas and emotions, along with music-making of a high caliber. The two-hour DVD comes with a bonus disc with complete performances that are heard partially in the film.

After five years of contention, Howard Community College is putting Belmont, its secluded 18th-century estate in Elkridge, up for sale. The unanimous decision by the college's board of trustees comes as college leaders confront a growing demand for money to expand the main campus in Columbia. With the state cutting operating funds, tuition increases are likely even as more students seek financial aid. "There is concern this might not be the end of cuts for the year," Howard Community College President Kate Hetherington told the board of trustees at a meeting Wednesday night.

Susan Wooden can work miracles with history. She can get people excited about doing ordinary tasks such as laundry, washing dishes, or hearth cooking. "I go back to a time when there was no electricity and no freezers," Wooden said. "And then I show people how things were done. I enjoy seeing the excitement in the eyes of the audience. I know I have connected with them." Wooden joins a group of historians and living history interpreters as a board member of Jerusalem Mill. She is also a docent volunteer at Hays House, a member of the Maryland Loyalists Battalion, and a volunteer docent at a Colonial Williamsburg event.

Most people walking among 18th-century furniture in original surroundings are probably visiting a museum or on a house tour. For Diane and Kenny Putman, it has been part of their daily life since they bought the circa-1768 Jacob Hess House in Keedysville, in Washington County. The original two-story log structure has been covered by German lap siding and built in the German style of three rooms up and three rooms down around a central chimney. In 1790, according to records, a two-story stone addition was built onto the east side of the house.

Susan Wooden can work miracles with history. She can get people excited about doing ordinary tasks such as laundry, washing dishes, or hearth cooking. "I go back to a time when there was no electricity and no freezers," Wooden said. "And then I show people how things were done. I enjoy seeing the excitement in the eyes of the audience. I know I have connected with them." Wooden joins a group of historians and living history interpreters as a board member of Jerusalem Mill. She is also a docent volunteer at Hays House, a member of the Maryland Loyalists Battalion, and a volunteer docent at a Colonial Williamsburg event.

When Michael and Lois Hodes began collecting five years ago, they had one main goal -- find something unique with character. Today, their 27-room house in Roland Park is stuffed to the brim with interesting and unusual furnishings and accessories. Walking through the rooms is like taking a tour of a mini-museum. In fact, Mrs. Hodes sometimes refers to herself as a curator.For starters, a seven-piece salon set of 18th century French furniture sits near the fireplace in the living room. The settee and six matching chairs are gilded and upholstered in the original tapestry.

A properly installed lightning protection system could have shielded the First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church from Tuesday's lightning strike, according to one of the nation's top experts in the field. "Thirty percent of all fires in church buildings are caused by lightning. And guess why? Steeples," said Martin A. Uman, co-director of the Lightning Research Laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville. And that's why most church buildings have protection. Witnesses said Tuesday's bolt ignited a blaze in the wooden spire that rose above First Mount Olive's stone bell tower.

Charles Carroll, Barrister, and his wife, Margaret Tilghman, stare down from their portraits at the black-draped "coffin" in the parlor of Mount Clare like benign spirits contemplating their future. "He died in March of 1783," says Michael Connolly, assistant director of Mount Clare Museum House, the well-preserved home of the Carrolls. "So we used his death as sort of the basis of our interpretation of what was happening in the house at that time." Charles Carroll, Barrister was the cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who signed the Declaration of Independence.