About Us

Miss Ethel Memorial Library  

phone: 410-867-4486 
e-mail: curator@captainaverymuseum.org

The Captain Avery Museum’s library and contains a sizeable collection of printed materials, newspaper clippings, oral histories and photographs relating to Shady Side, Maryland, 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.

Named in honor of Flora Ethel Nowell Andrews, a long time member of the Shady Side community, the library also accessions and maintains artifacts in the museum collection.

 

Oral Histories

The library has a collection of more than 150 oral histories in various formats (DVD, VCR and audio tapes and some written transcripts) that capture the early and current life of people in the Shady Side Community. 

A number of our histories can also be accessed online as part of the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program (MDCH), a collaborative, statewide digitization project to preserve the history and culture of Maryland. Those available through MDCH are from family members of the group of Jewish Washingtonians who owned the Avery house and property for some 60 years as a weekend home and fishing club – and cover a time when Shady Side was a popular summer vacation area for people escaping the city heat of Washington and Baltimore.