Four Rivers Heritage honors bestowed

The Four Rivers Heritage Area honored exemplary people and projects that enrich the area's historic and cultural life at its sixth annual awards celebration held last week at Historic London Town and Gardens.

Two people won the top honor, the Heritage Award: county archaeologist Al Luckenbach, whose work has helped residents discover more about Anne Arundel County's past; and Mavis Daly, who has doggedly served thousands of volunteer hours to help create and promote the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society and its museum.

Both were thankful for the honor and noted they could not have accomplished much without the people who work alongside them.

That sentiment was echoed in opening remarks by Four Rivers board Chairwoman Patricia Barland. She said the success of the heritage area - which promotes heritage tourism in Annapolis, London Town and south county and has brought in $2.2 million in matching and program funding since 2001 - was "built on partnership and collaboration."

The organization would be nothing "if not for all of you," she told the gathered group of about 80 people, most of them involved in some fashion with the heritage and historic destinations that collectively make up Four Rivers.

Before the awards were handed out, Barland noted the passing of Roberta Cassard, a driving force in the formation and flourishing of the Galesville Heritage Society and its museum. Cassard, who died Sept. 30, also spearheaded other community heritage efforts, from the Fourth of July celebration to an annual Veterans Day commemoration.

She was also an early proponent of the Four Rivers organization and shared its Heritage Award in 2007 with her heritage society cohort, Jack Smith. In the spring, Four Rivers will supply plantings in Cassard's memory for the Galesville museum's garden.

The Heritage Award given to Daly honored the spirit of volunteerism and dedication that keeps all of the area's historic and cultural entities running.

Daly and her late husband George moved to the Shady Side area about 20 years ago as that heritage group was making a momentous commitment to purchase the Captain Salem Avery House. The home was built by the area's earliest big-time oysterman, who moved here from Long Island in the mid-19th century.

The Dalys threw themselves into working for the society and its museum, helping bring the building into its current condition, organizing and promoting drives and events, and spearheading the society's oral history project.

Mavis Daly has since volunteered some 16,000 hours, according to her cohorts at the museum, several of whom were on hand to fete their friend.

She has spent those hours churning out news releases well in advance of the events they herald, helping to record 170 hours of oral history on video and audiotape, and helping to organize Fourth of July affairs and a popular winter luncheon series.

"I'd rather be sitting at my computer writing some news release," the 85-year-old Daly said, anticipating all the fuss before the ceremonies began. She did just fine, though, noting in her remarks how she wished her late husband, who plunged into the heritage effort alongside her, could be there.

"But now it seems all the people I have worked with have become my family. And I am glad to be here with them, my family," she said.

Luckenbach's contributions to the store of knowledge about Anne Arundel's past are almost immeasurable. With the help he briskly acknowledged upon receiving his award, his efforts as the county archaeologist have uncovered the first English settlements in the county at Providence across the Severn River from Annapolis; Londontown, the once prosperous tobacco port and transportation hub; and Herrington, a short-lived settlement on the shore of Herring Bay below Deale.

The Lost Towns Project has continued its work, recently uncovering the remains of the home belonging to Samuel Chew, said to be the grandest brick home on the Chesapeake Bay in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Most recently, a prehistoric dig has found evidence of Native American settlement on the shores of Jug Bay on the Patuxent River. Some recently unearthed artifacts point to activity between 2,000 and 3,000 B.C.

"I am honored and flattered," Luckenbach said. "I share this with all the wonderful people I've gotten to work with over the years."

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OTHER HERITAGE HONORS

Four Rivers Heritage awards also went to:

• John Kille, the county's assistant archaeologist, was awarded Four Rivers' Heritage Professional honor for helping to direct much of the work of the Lost Towns Project.
• Scotti Preston, who earned a Heritage Professional award. Preston's living history interpretations, specifically regarding African-American heritage, have helped inform the community about its many-hued past.
• Historic quilter Joan M.E. Gaither, who earned a Legacy Award for her efforts to tell the story of the African-American experience via 'story' quilts.
• Galesville's Norman Hazard, who recently built a West River bateau, a dead-rise workboat, so called because of its sweeping bow, a design first used around 1904 by Shady Side captain and boat builder Perry Rogers.

Awards also went to these projects:

• A signage and brochure project that describes and guides visitors and residents to notable green infrastructure projects and structures earned the New Initiative award.
• The Hanover Street Historic Streetscape project, which reused existing bricks and other features to rebuild aging and crumbling infrastructure along a short dead-end street abutting the Naval Academy, won the Heritage Area Certificate of Merit.
• Carr's Beach Historic Music Festival, which celebrates the history of Carr's Beach and the music that put the beach on the map for African-Americans throughout the mid-Atlantic, won the Heritage Project award.