The culture of Western Maryland and the role of its newspapers as a mirror of that culture deserve attention. In Western Maryland lay the busy cross roads through which passed much of the activity that drove the growing young country before the Civil War. From the northeast to the southwest, the great valley migration route passed through Hagerstown and Williamsport.
Germans and Scotch Irish, so important in pushing back the American frontier in the eighteenth century, stayed in Western Maryland to permanently shape its character. From southeast to northwest, the development of a route out to the Ohio River focused on the turnpikes, canals, and, finally, the railroads. Farming, milling, and mining produced the commodities for trade back down the new transportation routes to the commercial center of Baltimore.
The newspapers of Western Maryland documented a culture going through
the changes that Schudson described: people living in communities of "self-sufficient
family economies" becoming "unstuck from the cake of custom."
In a region with emerging ties with the East and the West, within a nation
developing transportation and communication linkages to form a national
culture, the transformation was probably inevitable. The culture moved slowly
but surely toward the consumer society of modern America.
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Last updated: March 9, 1998.
Comments to: Communication Department
