The Eva M. Muse Collection
Collection background:
Eva M. Muse was born in Cecil County, Maryland, and graduated from the Elkton Colored High School in 1942. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education in 1950 from the Bowie State University in Maryland and graduate credits from the University of Delaware. She began her teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse in 1950 and went on to teach elementary school in Millsboro and Dover, Delaware. She retired in the 1982 school year, and embarked on a seventeen-year career as a local historian and educator. Muse belonged to Wright’s A.M.E. Church, served as Education Chair in the Elkton branch of the N.A.A.C.P., Vice President of the Cecil County Historical Society, and as Chairperson on the Citizen’s Advocacy board and the board of the local detention center. She personally described her work and retirement as an effort to “try earnestly to encourage young people to complete their education and take pride in their black ancestry.”
Muse began to study local history in Cecil County in the 1980s, and compiled a collection with the intention of writing a book on local African American history. The collection contains Muse’s research notes along with a broad scope of local material. Muse died in 1999, before she could finish her book, but she left a valuable collection that will be useful for local researchers and genealogists, teachers, and students from middle school grades to college courses.
Scope, Content, and Arrangement:
The ten series in this collection contain material relevant to a wide range of topics. The bulk of the material is drawn from the 1980s and 1990s, when Muse volunteered with local churches, NAACP meetings, and public schools, but series 7, Early African American History in Cecil County, contains material, primarily photocopies, concerning 18th, 19th, and early 20th century African American history in Elkton.
The first series comprises Muse’s personal notes and lecture materials. The other nine series contain mixed manuscript sources, from programs and bulletins to legal documents. A great deal of the documents are photocopied pages from other sources, but are still valuable for researchers interested in Cecil County’s African American population.
This web page contains a finding aid for the collection, which is arranged at the folder level. Individual folder names link to item-level inventories. There is also a series of activities which public school teachers may adapt for Common Core social studies and history curriculum. The activities are arranged in a table that shows how Common Core standards apply to a particular activity.
Access: Educators may borrow packets of documents and are encouraged to photocopy documents so that they may have their own master copy and can replicate documents for student use. Educators may also bring students to the society to work with the collection. The CCHS is open on Monday and on Thursday. To schedule an appointment, call 410-398-1790, or email the society.
Eva M. Muse Finding Aid 