Mid-Atlantic

The national anthem was written in Baltimore harbor. In September 1814, during the War of 1812, a British fleet bombarded Fort McHenry through the night. A Washington lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched from a ship and saw at dawn that the American flag was still flying. The poem he wrote became "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Baltimore was one of the busiest ports in the country in the 1800s, and it had another first. In 1827 its merchants chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, one of the first railroads in the country built to carry passengers and freight, to win back trade from the Erie Canal. Pictures of the city show its long rows of brick rowhouses, many with white marble front steps that residents scrubbed by hand, and its crowded waterfront. In February 1904 a fire burned for about 30 hours and destroyed much of downtown. The city rebuilt fast.

The rest of Maryland is shaped by the Chesapeake Bay. Oystering, crabbing and fishing supported whole towns, and the watermen sailed wooden workboats called skipjacks. Annapolis, the state capital, has been home to the U.S. Naval Academy since 1845. Western Maryland runs up into the Appalachians, with farms, coal and the C&O Canal.

New Jersey sits between New York and Philadelphia, and it often served both. Paterson was called the Silk City for its mills. Thomas Edison set up his laboratory at Menlo Park in 1876 and later moved to West Orange. The Jersey Shore became a playground. Cape May was a Victorian resort with gingerbread houses, and Atlantic City built its first boardwalk in 1870 so visitors would stop tracking sand into the hotels. It grew into one of the most famous seaside resorts in the world.

In the Atlantic City pictures, look at the bathing costumes. Around 1900 women swam in wool dresses, stockings and caps, and men wore full-length suits. By the 1930s much of that was gone, and the change is easy to follow from one decade of pictures to the next.