Why Publish
a Book?

We started a Facebook Group in 2018 to share and promote newly discovered (and re-discovered) local Guilford area history, try to protect the Patuxent Branch trail and surrounding historical sites from insults due to a storage facility (we lost that battle), and to give a platform to those that shared these common interests.

Through our research efforts, and interactions with others, we learned that 1) the Guilford area was not isolated from the rest of the county, and in fact, was the early center of social activities before becoming Howard County, 2) it was important to learn more about the interactions of folks from the Guilford area with other parts of the county, 3) and researching Howard County as a whole better informs the historical perspective (the Guilford area was a leader in desegregation of our schools in the 1950s).

We gathered too much information in these FB posts to easily share and find. So we decided to put them in a collection, research and review what was done and better document the sources used, expand the view beyond the Guilford area, and make the information available to a broader audience.

We are not done and our research continues. Deciding to use Arcadia Publishing/The History Press, rather than self-publish, was an easy decision. The guidance and editing/review was well worth it. But it did result in content limitations due to a 50,000 word limit and also a limit on the number of images that could be used. We cut a significant amount of content we wish we could have included, but we decided to save that for our next book.

We have more than enough materials for a second book when we are ready to do that again.  It took us a few years to prepare the first and we hope to have the second one scheduled soon.