Baldwin (c) is surrounded by four of his interns, (l to r) Rachael Murree, John Houser, Ariel Carkhuff and Michaela Guy
Lexington Park, MD — “God, what a great life I had.” John Hanson Briscoe told that to his son-in-law Sam Baldwin during the course of 30 interviews conducted during the final year of Briscoe’s life as he was battling cancer and the effects of chemotherapy. Briscoe died on January 1, 2014.
Baldwin knew he wanted to tell the story of Briscoe’s life. That full life went from being a “rascal” as a young man to going on to become the Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, founder of St. Mary’s County’s most prestigious law firm and circuit court judge. But Baldwin didn’t know that embarking on those interviews with Briscoe would lead to a far bigger and much more ambitious project.
“I didn’t know where it was going to go,” Baldwin said in an interview in the office of his law firm Baldwin and Briscoe, located in the same place that his father-in-law’s law firm Briscoe, Kenney and Kaminetz was once located in Lexington Park.
Baldwin would throw out topics and let Briscoe talk about them. From those 30 interviews Baldwin was led to talking to other people about the same topics. He soon realized that what started out as being a project about John Hanson Briscoe was really going to be about all of St. Mary’s County from the 1930s, when Briscoe was born, until the present time, and the dramatic changes that happened in the community over that time.
Realizing the scope of the project, Baldwin has enlisted the help of a team of interns, some of whom he met teaching a mock-trial course at St. Mary’s Ryken High School. The interns are: John Houser, currently attending Washington & Lee University; Rachael Murree, attending Smith College; Michaela Guy, a sophomore at Ryken; and Ariel Carkhuff and Nate Ryan.
The interns are meticulously listening to the interviews that have been conducted by Baldwin and transcribing key parts that can later be incorporated into the manuscript. The history will be told in the words of contemporaries to the time involved.
The first chapter, called “Johnny Briscoe, A Great Life” has been completed. It is 139 pages long and details life in St. Mary’s County, and particularly in Leonardtown where Briscoe was born and raised, in the era prior to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. The chapter concludes with the arrival of the base and the impact on the community.
The first chapter tells of a youthful John Hanson Briscoe who many of his contemporaries described as a “rascal.” But it also tells of life in general, with topics such as: life on the farm; hotels and restaurants and stores; stills and moonshine; the schools; entertainment, such as swimming, fishing and the movie theaters; slot machines; and the extremely popular Leonardtown carnival held right in the middle of town.
The first chapter also contains some material especially poignant this time of year — how Christmas was celebrated. Keep in mind that this was a time in which the country was in a Depression and St. Mary’s County was especially hard hit. Many people from the county who lost their jobs returned home to a subsistence life on their family’s farm.
It was a simpler time when children could play outside all over town and their parents didn’t have to fear for their safety. If young people got in trouble, their parents would know about it before they got home.
So during the holidays, families visited each other and neighbors visited neighbors and spent time with them. During an interview, Peter Wigginton reported: “Christmas to me was nothing but warm and beautiful memories. The family was all together, there was good times, there was laughter, we all visited each other, we’d go to people we knew, we laughed and talked.”
There weren’t nearly as many cars so parts of Leonardtown, such as the wharf hill, were blocked off for sledding during winters that many of the people who were interviewed remembered as being harsher than now.
Contributors to the first chapter included Kennedy Abell, J. Earnest “Ernie” Bell, Jackie Goldsborough Bond, John Hanson and Bonnie Briscoe, Jack and Mary Ada Burch Candela, Caroline Cecelia Thomas Countiss, Peter Egeli, Dr. John Francis and Elizabeth “Bee’ Fenwick, John Gatton, Sr., “Meme” Briscoe Gillaspy, Alfred Gough, William Alexander “Aleck” Loker, Jr., Laura Mae “Lari” Church Mako, Alfred Saunders Mattingly and Joan Connelly Mattingly, Loretta Beavin Norris, Norris and Betty Mattingly Shepherd, Idolia Shubrooks, Eleanor Duke Storck, Tom Waring, Ann Camalier Wathen, Bob Wigginton and George Peter Wigginton. The chapter also uses interviews with Larry Millison and Jack Daugherty from The Slackwater aural history project at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
The taped interviews conducted by Baldwin and his interns will be made available to the college once each chapter is completed. Dr. Julie King at the college has been an invaluable assistance to Baldwin.
Baldwin is also getting assistance in his project from Sotterley, the St. Mary’s County Genealogical Society and St. Mary’s County Historical Society
Baldwin is predicting the project will take six years, considering all of the material and topics he has to cover. But for now the first chapter is available for public perusal at: http://www.baldwinbriscoe.com/sd/documentlib/johnny%20briscoe%20-%20a%20great%20life.pdf.
In addition to text, more than 75 aural and video interviews can be accessed through separate hyperlinks within the 139 pages. The 18 transcripts from interviews captured in Chapter 1 are available now at http://tinyurl.com/pzp3bpr.
The researcher is always seeking assistance from the public for ideas, topics and materials from their family histories. He is especially interested in anyone with family ties to Sotterley when it was a working plantation. Briscoe’s family owned Sotterley.
Material has come out of the woodwork from unexpected places. For instance Baldwin found a tape of a speech delivered by John Hanson Briscoe’s father, John H.T. Briscoe, who was state’s attorney and a trial magistrate, delivered to the St. Mary’s County Bar Association. It contained invaluable information about the legal profession in the county that will be used in subsequent chapter.
As Baldwin envisions the finished product, his father-in-law will be the main character walking through the county’s history for the last 80 years, but that will be the vehicle to introduce other characters and topics that have made St. Mary’s County such an interesting community. Everyone who lives or has lived here, even for a short period of time, knows that Baldwin has a fertile field with much to write about.
Contact Dick Myers at news@thebaynet.com