News & Publications
Maryland History Lecture on Alexander Hamilton at St. John's College
FOR RELEASE: November 4, 2008
CONTACT: Patricia Dempsey 410-626-2539
Patricia.Dempsey@sjca.edu
Author and historian Elaine Breslaw will give a lecture at St. John's College entitled, "Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial Maryland: Expanding the Orbit of Scottish Culture" as part of the Maryland History Lecture Series, which is co-sponsored by the Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation and the Friends of St. John's College. The lecture, which will be held in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium on November 25, at 8:15 p.m., is free and open to the public. Dinners, held at 7:15 p.m. in Randall Hall, must be paid in advance. A single reservation is $30. To make a dinner reservation, contact Anne Zolkower at 410-626-2507 or anne.zolkower@sjca.edu before November 20.
Dr. Alexander Hamilton left his home in Scotland and arrived in Annapolis, Maryland late in 1738. "He was initially horrified at the cultural wasteland he viewed in Annapolis, yet this cosmopolitan physician attempted to transform the society around him, making it closer to the intellectual and cultural life of Scotland," says Breslaw. "To do that he founded the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, modeled on the clubs in Edinburgh, and encouraged a more sophisticated interest in music, philosophy and literature."
Breslaw is the author of a recent biography of Hamilton and has written widely on early Maryland history and edited the "Records of the Tuesday Club." She was a professor of history at Morgan State University and has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Tennessee.