About the Webinar

Join us and Dr. Patricia Samford for a speaker event all about the James Adams Floating Theater. In the days before television and computers, residents of coastal Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina anxiously awaited the arrival of the James Adams for an evening of diverting musical and theatrical entertainment. An inspiration for Edna Ferber’s novel, Showboat, this floating theatre was the “…best entertainment going…” along the Chesapeake in the early 20th century.
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​​​​​​​Dr. Patricia Samford is the Director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. Prior to receiving her doctorate in Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she was an archaeologist at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for 13 years. Samford is the author of Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia (2007) and Below Baltimore: An Archaeology of Charm City (2023), coauthored with Adam Fracchia.