Stories from these waters
The Chesapeake has fed, carried, divided and joined the people on its shores. We tell those stories as they happened.
People and arrivals · a series in three parts
Part 1 · The Chesapeake, 1619–1864 Brought here. For more than two centuries, the Chesapeake was a route for the slave trade. Ships first carried captive Africans into its rivers. Then, after 1808, Baltimore's harbor sent thousands of enslaved Marylanders south to New Orleans. Read the story Part 2 · Locust Point, 1868–1914 Came here. Ships from Bremen tied up at a railroad pier on Locust Point, and more than a million people walked off them into a new country. Most boarded trains west the same day. The ones who stayed built neighborhoods that still stand around the harbor. Read the storyPart 3, on the nations who were here first, is coming.
The first story on the Bay itself is coming.
The first story on gathering places is coming.
How we tell these stories
Every story is checked against more than one source, with archives and scholarship ahead of opinion. We show our sources at the end of each story, so you can read them yourself.
Where accounts disagree, we say so, and we explain what we chose and why.
We name people by who they were, where they came from and what they did. The people of this water came from everywhere: the nations who were here first, the enslaved and the free, the immigrants who landed at its piers, the watermen who worked it, and the families who still gather on its shores.
We tell the whole story. The water brings people together. It has also been used to keep people apart. Both happened here, and both are worth knowing.