Project History

Conception

The Somerset County Historical Trust (SCHT) has long held the goal of publishing and providing access to the letters of Elizabeth Uphsur Teackle which are housed at the University of Virginia’s (UVA) Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The collection, the Papers of the Quinby, Teackle, and Upshur families, 1759-1968, represents hundreds of letters of the Teackle family. Elizabeth Upshur Teackle and her husband, Littleton Dennis Teackle began construction on Teackle Mansion in 1802 in Princess Anne, Maryland.

Having these materials online takes them off the shelf in Virginia where there is limited access to them and brings them home to the Eastern Shore. The letters touch on almost every topic that historians, educators, lifelong learners, and students need or want to understand the era that the Teackle family and their broad connections lived in. Topics such as: slavery, women’s history, home life, the economy, the War of 1812, social life, religion, health, and death – the letters encompass virtually every aspect of society that informs our understanding of the era. Furthermore, the letters firmly place the Teackles and their vast network of family, friends, and both business and social connections front and center into the story of early American history.

Mission

The Voices of the Eastern Shore project supports scholarship and learning by providing access to historical materials online. The documents are carefully transcribed, subject tagged, and annotated to enable learners and researchers to make connections to history.

Future Plans

In addition to the letters from the UVA collection, we have working copies of materials in collections from several other institutions that are directly tied to the overall project. In the future, we hope to include the travel journals of Littleton Dennis Teackle (Library of Congress); the Charles Nicoll Bancker Collection (Library of Congress); portions of The Fisher Family Papers (Historical Society of Pennsylvania); and portions of the Bancker Collection (American Philosophical Society). Duke University and William and Mary also hold various materials relevant to this project.