Baltimore; Past and Present: With Bibliographical Sketches of Its Representative Men (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Baltimore; Past and Present: With Bibliograp...)
Excerpt from Baltimore; Past and Present: With Bibliographical Sketches of Its Representative Men
The comprehensive Historical Sketch of the city, from the graceful pen of ax'rz mayer, late Piesidcnt of the Maryland Historical Society, traces, suc ciuctly, but clearly, the history of the city from its first settlement to the present time, including its religious, social and commercial advancement. Replete as it is with information of the development and material growth of the varied industries which make a metropolis, and rich in happy description and pleasant memories of the olden time, we are persuaded that it will be found as enter taining as it is instructive and valuable. It has been prepared with great care from the most authentic sources, and we have no hesitation in claiming for it the authority of a standard.
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Brantz Mayer was born on September 27, 1809 in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Christian Mayer, a native of Ulm, Württemberg, came to Maryland in 1784 and became a trader later president of a local insurance company and consul-general of Württemberg in the United States. He married Anna Katerina Baum of Kutztown, Pa.
Education
Mayer was educated partly in the Baltimore schools and at St. Mary's College (Sulpician), but largely by a private tutor. At eighteen he traveled to China and India, studying law by the way. He completed his law course at the University of Maryland.
Career
On admission to the bar in 1832, visited Europe, stopping for a while at Ulm. After his return he practised law until 1841, when he went to Mexico as secretary of the United States legation. Evidently his mind turned to history, for in 1844 on his return to Baltimore he was instrumental in founding the Maryland Historical Society, of which he subsequently became president (1867 - 71). In this year he published Mexico as It Was and as It Is (1844), which ran through three editions. It was well-timed, for the United States was on the verge of the Mexican War. Though the book was on the whole a scholarly work, its references to the Catholic Church caused heated controversy. In 1845 Mayer edited, for the Historical Society, the Journal of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, during His Visit to Canada in 1776, a valuable record which was republished by the Society in 1876. As president of the Library Company of Baltimore, he directed the erection of the Atheneum Building in 1846. In 1851 he published Tah-Gah-Jute: or Logan and Captain Michael Cresap, defending Cresap from the charge of murdering the family of the Indian, James Logan. This was followed by Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican and Calvert and Penn (1852). In 1854, he edited and published Captain Canot; or Twenty Years of an African Slaver, illustrated by his nephew, Frank Blackwell Mayer. It was a highly colored account, though evidently based on fact; seventeen thousand copies were sold, and it was republished in London and Paris, with a New York edition as late as 1928. In 1851 and again in 1855 Mayer was called to Louisiana as executor of the will of John McDonogh, and in this capacity drew the plan and charter of the McDonogh School near Baltimore. Retiring from practice in 1855, he continued to interest himself in writing, contributing articles to the Baltimore American, of which he was an editor. Other works of his include: "Observations on Mexican History and Archaeology, " in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. IX (1857); Outlines of Mexican Antiquities (1858); Memoir of Jared Sparks (1867); Baltimore: Past and Present (1871); and Memoir and Genealogy of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Family of Mayer Which Originated in the Free Imperial City of Ulm, Wurtemberg, 1495-1878 (1878). In 1866 he urged the state to create an archive commission and depository, and eventually the state records were placed with the Historical Society under whose auspices publication of the Archives of Maryland has been carried on ever since, fifty volumes of this important series having appeared by 1933. On the outbreak of the Civil War Mayer was elected chairman of the Maryland Union Central Committee, where his spirit of conciliation was valuable. He was appointed in 1862 a brigadier-general of Maryland volunteers, was active in recruiting troops, and in 1863 was appointed an additional paymaster. On January 17, 1865, he was made a major and paymaster in the regular army, and the following year was brevetted lieutenant-colonel, to date from November 24, 1865, for his services during the war. He continued in the pay department of the army until 1875, the last five years in California, and then retired with the rank of colonel.
(Excerpt from Baltimore; Past and Present: With Bibliograp...)
Religion
He was a member of the Unitarian Church.
Personality
He was an untiring student and an able writer; his work on local history is still considered authoritative. His writings on Mexico, still referred to, contain numerous errors, due, no doubt, to the vast extent of his subject, and the unreliable government statistics of the time, but he was a pioneer in encouraging the study of local material, especially on social history.
Connections
By his first wife, Mary Griswold, whom he married September 27, 1835, at St. Mary's, Ga. , he had five daughters. She died October 30, 1845, and on November 15, 1848, at Baltimore, he married Cornelia Poor. Three daughters were born to this union.