BNH is pleased to announce that we now have links on our website to an incredible collection of documents held by the Maryland State Archive, donated by the late Stan Quick. A team under Dr Ed Papenfuse has digitized Stan’s entire collection of documents relating to the War of 1812 and especially the area around Chesapeake Bay. The following email from Dr Ralph Eshelman of the Maryland Historical Society, explains the circumstances surrounding the collection.
Hello friends and colleagues,
I know most of you either knew or heard of Stan Quick. I am happy to report that Stan’s book about the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake is being published early next year by the Naval Institute Press. I am also happy to report that Stan’s research notes and documents are now available online thanks to Dr. Ed Papenfuse and the Maryland State Archives.
Stan spent a small fortune accumulating documents related to the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake in his dedicated effort to research his book. Stan unfortunately developed Alzheimer’s disease and died November 7, 2008 at age 85. Eventually his widow Marian gave me Stan’s research collection
per his wishes. As I slowly reviewed this material, consisting of about 20 file boxes, plus maps, charts and prints, it became clear to me this was a special collection. Stan paid for copies of everything he could find on the subject. I realized that this collection needed a good home where other researchers could also benefit from it, but where? After careful consideration I called Ed Papenfuse. Ed drove to my house to personally look over the material, borrowing several boxes of records to peruse more carefully at the archives. Ed and I eventually agreed that MSA was the best home for the collection and Ed promised to scan the entire collection to make it available online. Ed and an intern have now completed that task.
At present the scanned collection consist e-pubs reflecting how the collection was received keeping intact any organization that Stan had given to them, including some of the chaos caused by his final illness. Attached is a brief summary of each data file and the URLs to access the collection. The hundreds of document copies come from many resources including National Archives and Records Administration, Library of Congress, National Archives United Kingdom, Maryland State Archives, and USN Academy.
Unfortunately, there is no detailed index or abstract for all these documents and there are duplication of records among the different databases. A future need is to complete a good detailed index of the all the documents so they can be more easily accessed by page number. The good news is that in many cases Stan transcribed the records in his own handwriting (Stan could not type nor use a computer); in other cases Stan provided summaries of documents.
Usually the transcription of the document is followed by a copy of the original document. While many of these documents are now available in the wonderful Naval Documents series, and hard copies or micro film copies are available at National Archives and Fort McHenry Library, now most of these documents are also available online for the first time, in the Maryland State Archives.
For those of who knew Stan we were impressed by his thoughtfulness, generosity, and detail to research. We hope his book will be a testament to his commitment to his work. We think Stan would be pleased to know that his research notes and document files are now available to other scholars to help them in their work. This is Stan’s lasting tribute to all of us. Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Ralph Eshelman and Marian Quick
These documents are an amazing resource for those who are interested in the War of 1812, and we’re very glad to be able to provide those links and further spread the word about Stan’s great work.
Maryland State Archives Stanley Quick War of 1812 Research Collection
MSA_sc5969_2-0001 Box 2
MSA_sc5969_3-0001 Box 3
MSA_sc5969_4-0001 Box 4
MSA_sc5969_5-0001 Box 5
MSA_sc5969_6-0001 Box 6
MSA_sc5969_7-0001 Box 7
