The Maryland Historical Society has now put up a century’s worth of Maryland Historical Magazine, the society’s journal, on a free, on-line searchable database.  I stumbled on it the other day when I was looking for information on Carrollite, a mineral named for Carroll County where it was first found in 1852.
I already had the historical society bookmarked in my research folder, but I quickly added this one. I’m always working on Maryland topics and this will definitely help with my research. If you use the search feature, make sure you try the most-unusual words that will get your information, otherwise you may get a lot of dreck in your results. For instance, a search of the word “Carrollite” yielded two useful hits, but “Carroll” gets you any article where Carroll County, Charles Carroll, Carroll Creek or John Carroll appeared. It’s a thorough search engine, but too many Maryland topics are inter-related.
I have had an article appear once in the magazine. My article about the 1905 Great Ransom Train Wreck was in the Summer 2010 issue. Since the magazine doesn’t pay, I did it more to start working on my scholarly article credentials and to make sure I could shift from writing historical features to scholarly history articles.