Some reading

I'm busy writing captions for all the photographs I scanned last week from the Maryland Department at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Though they were all either created by government agencies, and therefore, free to use, or are in the public domain due to age, I'm still waiting to get the paperwork regarding the rights to use the imagery. I've already started going through the images again, at a more relaxed pace, hoping to find some new bits that I missed. I've learned a fair amount by looking at the photographs, and I think that with those insights, I may be able to get more out of another browse through the photo collection. On the other hand, I may just spend the time scanning the photographs from the State Highway Administration annual reports, which contain more useful information, I think.

I've been browsing Google Books, and a couple classic National Road titles have come to my attention: Thomas Brownfield Searight's The Old Pike: A History of the National Road; The Old National Road: A Chapter of American Expansion; and The Cumberland Road (from the Highways of America series) both by Archer Butler Hulbert. Multiple copies were listed for these titles - I have linked to the ones that appear to have the best / most complete pictures. This said, I may eventually provide high resolution scans of the plates. A few other titles, not quite classics, but interesting reads nonetheless include The National Road in Indiana by Lee Burns, A Political and Constitutional Study of the Cumberland Road by Jeremiah Simeon Young, and one Executive Communication to the General Assembly of Maryland, at December Session, 1818, on the Subject of Turnpike Roads.