Organized to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Digital Maryland’s Civil War in Your Attic collection represents a statewide effort to locate, digitize, and preserve treasured materials documenting the Civil War and Reconstruction, held in private collections across the state. Among a trove of letters, diaries, photographs, reports, and more, you will find the discharge record for African American Union soldier George Washington, who served with the Massachusetts 55th Regiment, the second all-black regiment from the North organized after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Digital Maryland offers a unique and rich array of materials that speak to the distinctive history of the state, the Chesapeake region, and its people, as well as to national history and culture. Explore the development of the nation’s earliest railroads through the B&O Railroad Museum collection, dive into the life and letters of one of American literature’s most intriguing writers with Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Edgar Allan Poe collection, and learn how women took charge of Maryland’s farms during World War I in Montgomery County Historical Society’s Woman’s Land Army of America collection–and that’s just a preview!

You will also find new materials to support your next research project, such as resources on African American life in Maryland, nineteenth-century diaries and personal correspondence, photographs documenting everyday life on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and critical documents that help reveal the lives of enslaved people and families in the decades before the Civil War.

The Digital Maryland collection is now being shared with the Digital Library of America.

Start exploring today!