Annapolis, the jewel of the Chesapeake, is familiar to anyone who studies America’s past, and loves its architecture and arts. But, the Trust symposium that convened in Annapolis proved once again that a combination of personal guidance and fresh scholarship can provide a new breadth and depth of understanding.

Our waterside hotel showed the city spread before us like a map, and when the symposium opened that map was interpreted by the best of guides. Orlando Ridout, Architectural Historian of the Maryland Historic Trust, is the scion of a four-century Annapolitan family. His knowledge of his home city and his understanding of its history was evident to us throughout the symposium. Opening by telling us his interest is in “the greater landscape,” the natural landscape with man on it, Ridout told us the Chesapeake’s greater landscape extends from the end of the 16th century, and permits us to observe man and the land in “the maximum variety of eco-conditions.” He showed us the community’s interaction with the Chesapeake, from stains in the ground that mark the earliest dwellings to the baroque double-circle street plan overlaid on the landscape, and the majestic brick structures of Annapolis that mimic London’s townhouses.

Wendy Cooper, Winterthur’s Henry S. and Lois F. McNeil Curator of Furniture, took us inside the great houses, showing us some of the kinds of furniture we associate with Maryland in the Federal period. She concentrated on the suites of painted furniture most often attributed to the shop of Hugh and James Finlay of Baltimore. These movable, elegant furnishings permitted the new nation’s wealthy families — not only in Maryland but all along the coast — to interact with the landscape of their country homes. Citing examples of similar seating furniture on estates from Massachusetts to South Carolina, she illustrated convincingly that the painted furniture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries was a forceful wave of taste rather than a regional peculiarity. When we visited Annapolis’ great houses, with their terraced gardens, it was easy to see such furniture moving between back parlor and garden in response to the ebb and flow of season and society.

Progressing from the furnishings to the people, Anne Verplanck, Winterthur’s Curator of Paintings, showed us the Marylanders who populated the great houses, and talked about the artists who recorded their likenesses. C.W. Peale, who has given us images of many great Maryland families of the 18th century, believed firmly that an artist should know and love the art of classical antiquity to be able to draw it from memory, and incorporate it into his works. He provided his network of patrons with images ‘coded’ with clues about the sitters’ lives and positions. Verplanck reminded us that since a portrait, unlike silver or property, has no resale value, a person who commissioned it was spending money on something that celebrated family identity and assumed continued prosperity.

Returning us to the architecture of Annapolis, Orlando Ridout gave us a virtual walking tour by means of slides, that alerted us to characteristic features we’d encounter later. The tradition of using ornamented plaster paneling rather than wood, as early as the 1720’s; the square box shape of the 1730’s houses; the appearance of all-header bond and “slab chimneys” in the 1740’s. And we reveled in “the great house-building binge” of the 1760’s, that produced a series of landmark structures whose features combined references to English pattern books with definite local choices, producing gracious homes still recognized as unique to the region. Jennifer Goldsborough confirmed Ridout’s description of the colony as built around the Chesapeake, saying that the absence of true cities (even Annapolis was only a “designated town”) implied the absence of silversmiths, since silver is an urban craft. Moreover, those with wealth had it in the form of London credits, so London provided the goods they needed. Early smiths came to Annapolis but couldn’t find business, because of the preference for London wares. Even later, when smiths were established here, no one made a living at smithing alone. She cited William Faris (1728 - 1804) as a typical example: Faris the innkeeper, the watchmaker, the nurseryman, and also the silversmith.

Maryland choices included the social preference for tea and especially chocolate, rather than the more public coffee. The number of chocolate pots with histories of Maryland ownership lets Goldsborough say confidently that the consumption of chocolate among friends was a fixture of Maryland social life. Tea wares survive from private collections, many by London or Philadelphia makers. Even when silver needed repair or remodeling, ties to London were so strong that records survive of silver being shipped back to England rather than taken to a smith in a colonial city.

Such strong English orientation helps explain the success of Scottish cabinetmaker John Shaw in Annapolis. But the connection with Britain didn’t stop with Shaw or Annapolis. Sumpter Priddy enlarged our mental file of Maryland cabinetmakers greatly with another Scot, John Muir, who came to Alexandria in the 1780’s; Joseph Hoban, the architect of the Capitol, who was also a cabinetmaker; William King, born in Britain and apprenticed to Shaw; William and James Green, from Britain in 1841, who provided furniture for James Madison.

We’re familiar with the movement of German settlers down into Maryland in the 18th century; but there was intense activity along the Potomac in the first half of the 19th — west into Harper’s Ferry and the surrounding lands. So the German furniture forms were overlaid with Anglicisms, resulting in unique furniture that is finally receiving the scholarly attention it deserves.

“The attention it deserves” could be the caption for the recent study of Wye House and its inhabitants and furnishings conducted by Alexandra Alevizatos, who studied almost 400 years of the Edward Lloyd family, its homes, possessions and documents for her Winterthur Master’s thesis.

Arriving in Maryland in the 1640’s, the first Lloyd prospered mightily, as did a series of his descendants, by means of trade monopolies and agricultural production. The study of such success is made especially interesting since few American families of their stature have such a long and well-documented past, and few have retained such a strong connection to their patriarchal home and the land on which it stands.

There have been several times when the family changed the house, the rooms, and their furnishings — most notably whenever a new proprietor assumed responsibility for the family affairs — and they left documentation of having done it. So, not only do we see a house, its furnishings and its landscape as beautiful as they are significant, but we have a chance to understand when and how they got that way. We listened delightedly to Alevizatos’ account, then climbed into busses, rode to Wye House, were welcomed, entertained graciously, and permitted to visit the house and walk the grounds.

A similar double treat was provided for members able to remain on Sunday. Archaeologist Al Luckenback, responsible for oversight of all projects in Anne Arundel County, spun the history of the county’s six “lost towns” for us: communities whose existence is supported by records but no visible structures. He concentrated on a small community, London Town, then described its partial rediscovery, and showed us objects brought from the surprisingly rich midden associated with one building. Later that afternoon, he led a busload of members to the town site, near Edgewater, MD, where we visited the 18th-century William Brown House, furnished and skillfully interpreted as the tavern that met the needs of sailors on vessels that plied between England and the region’s plantations. At the site, we were welcomed by Dr. Gregory Stiverson, Executive Director of Historic London Town House and Gardens. We visited the dig in progress with Al Luckenbach, who interpreted the layers of ceramic shards, bones and oyster shells in situ. Between visits to the dig and the Brown House, we walked the acres of lush springtime gardens.

Returning to Annapolis, we were welcomed into one of the city’s most historic townhouses, undergoing restoration for a family’s use. It was a fit conclusion to a symposium that had been rich with visits to remarkable houses and gardens. On Thursday, pre-symposium travelers saw “Homewood,” the lavishly restored federal manor of Charles Carroll, Jr, and the delightful Ladew house and topiary gardens. The brick sidewalks of Annapolis led us past an appealing medley of houses, with their gardens springing into bloom. We were invited into the Hammond-Harwood and the Chase-Lloyd Houses: both National Historic Landmarks, their interior ornamentation and furnishing gave us the definition of Annapolitan high-style. We had the opportunity to visit the great John Brice and Charles Carroll Houses, and look at various stages of restoration And we dined in the celebrated garden of the William Paca House. After a visit like that, how could we fail to feel at home in Annapolis?