Captain Avery Museum Essay

Type of Site/Event

The Captain Avery Museum is a two story wooden house set on the banks of the West River in Shady Side Maryland. This current museum was once a small home; develop to a family vacation spot, and now its current use as a museum. The Captain Salem Avery House reflects the impact of the Chesapeake Bay on everyone from watermen to families seeking an escape to a small town. The purpose of the Museum is to collect, preserve and share local Chesapeake history by celebrating the culture around the Bay — past, present and future - through oral histories, collections, exhibitions, and community activities. The museum conveys a wide variety of educational opportunities. Tours at the museum can encompass cultural history of the Shady Side area, hands-on baking in their kitchen,

environmental stewardship lessons and ecological discoveries in their RainScape Gardens.
General Setting
The Captain Avery Museum is only about 5 minutes from my house and truly a hidden gem. The waterfront property holds the original Avery family home. The property has remained in the family all the way from 1860, where generations by generation have passed down South County history and culture. Currently now the property holds the museum (original family house), an office, a library, rental apartments and facilities for community activities, receptions and meetings. With help from Anne Arundel County, the State of Maryland, the Maryland Historical Trust, the Office of Housing, and Community Development's Scattered Sites Program made it possible to accomplish the restoration projects to bring the museum to what it is today.
What did you find interesting or impressing?
The most interesting and impressing thing about my experience was how flexible the museum is. From the elderly to middle age to teen to young, everyone was engaged in interest. All activities are geared towards all the different age groups to retain interest in each individual. This was truly the first time that I, my daughter (who is 8) and my dad (who is 56) all had a fun, educational and interesting time together. Living so close to Washington, DC, we have many different selections of museums and have gone to many but none with an experience like this.
How does your experience relate to class?
My experience relates to this class in two different ways, the visual arts and literature.

During week two of this course, we discussed the visual arts “Today we often think of art as precious things on display in a museum. However, that was not always the case, and the visual arts include more than just painting and sculpture. Architecturally crafted and designed objects—articles of daily use—are may be considered art.” The entire property of the museum was a piece of visual art from the waterfront property to the RainScape garden, the unique historical artifacts and preservation of the land. During week four we learned about literature and this museum had its own library. The Captain Avery Museum’s library contains a sizeable collection of printed materials, newspaper clippings, oral histories and photographs relating to Shady Side, its surrounding communities and the Chesapeake Bay. Topics include the families, businesses, churches, buildings and history of the area; the watermen of the West River and the Chesapeake, the Avery family and the home of Salem Avery, and the history of the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society, the founding organization of the Captain Avery

Museum.
Reflection
I feel that this assignment has allowed me to analyze my everyday life. The photographs, collections, exhibitions and oral histories are not only my present but also my past. My stepfather’s family has lived in Shady Side for over five generations. I was able to connect the stories I have heard from them to a real life piece of history. An excerpt from Spirit of Shady Side, Peninsula Life 1664-1984 by Virginia White Fitz describes Shady Side as "Shady Side, Maryland, a village of a thousand homes, lies on a peninsula of land washed by the Chesapeake Bay on one side and West River on the other; it is situated just south of Annapolis. The community is rich in history and folklore, for its people in many instances were born and raised there, as were their families before them. More recent arrivals quickly assimilate into the neighborhood, sharing a common love of a rural felicity seldom found elsewhere. On a spring morning one awakens to the sharp cry of gulls circling overhead, the angry squawk of mallard ducks startled by a curious dog as they waddle across a yard, crackling sounds of a jib being released as a boat comes about in the channel, a sighing of wind through tall old trees and faint echoes of earlier residents mingling in nature's sound, soft voices coming back to us through the veil of time." What is even more interesting is how many people who live in a small town can say they have a book written about their community? The pride that the Shady Side community has had made me want to continue to preserve the history of the community.