Off the Main Street

Three visits to St. Michaels before I knew what was there.

I’ve been to St. Michaels three times before I knew what was there.

We stayed at Inn at Perry Cabin one year. Came back another year with the kids for the Christmas parade. Drove out again this summer for brunch. If you had asked me about the town after any of those, I would have told you it's pretty, it's on the water, and it's quiet. All three are true. But there's more to it.

The drive takes about an hour and a half from our house, and the change starts as soon as you turn off Route 50. Corn fields open on both sides. The big houses are there, but you don't see them. They sit back behind the trees, at the end of long driveways.

We got there around ten in July, on a day nice enough that everybody else was out too. Across the street, outdoor tables were already filling, but Bistro St. Michaels had only recently started serving brunch and still had a booth open. We ordered the Bistro Breakfast, split the brioche French toast and listened to the kitchen answer “yes, chef” as tickets came in.

By the time we stepped outside, Talbot Street had filled.

What I noticed most was the quiet.

The brunch crowd was out. People were shopping, families were walking, cars kept coming down the main street. Nobody was loud. No shouting, no music from open windows, nothing disturbed the quiet.

Everything for sale on the main street is about the water. Nautical art in the windows, sweatshirts and caps, gift stores full of small painted things. The clothing leans preppy. A small town with a hint of a resort town.

I do a thing when I go somewhere new. I look for other Black people. Some signal, in a place where I don't see many of us, that I'm welcome. Like what a town puts on its shelves and its walls. Or just how we're treated once we're in the room.

We stopped in Book Hounds, a small bookstore on Talbot Street. In the children’s room, two shelves face you as you walk in. John Lewis. Maya Angelou, illustrated by Basquiat. Baldwin. Somebody chose those. That is a marker, and you learn to read them.

Outside, I saw very few Black people on foot. Most of those I noticed were driving along Talbot Street in their Sunday clothes, coming from church and continuing past the main stretch.

Everyone we encountered in St. Michaels was pleasant.

It is a good town for a Sunday, and it knows it.

We ended up under a big tree at the water's edge near Foxy's Harbor Grille. A father and son were throwing a ball on the lawn. A few teenage girls were taking pictures under the gazebo. That's where Ms. Hattie came through in her motorized wheelchair and asked if we would take her picture to send to her sister in North Carolina. She was on her way to Foxy's for what she said was the best hamburger around. We talked for a few minutes about life. I remember the conversation because strangers don’t often stop, talk and stay long enough to tell you something about their lives.

After three hours we drove home content.

That was the St. Michaels thought I knew.

The main building covers watermen, duck hunting, and small boats, and what surprised me was that the Black history wasn't set off to one side of it. It runs through it. Black watermen knew that water, and that knowledge is what made them the guides visitors hired to fish and pull oysters. Women picked crabs for the packing houses, and they held contests to see who could pick fastest. That history is not separate from the maritime story. It is a part of it.

The one I stood in front of longest was Joseph Keene, who got out by water with his pregnant wife and seven children in a log canoe.

The Douglass exhibit is in a separate building, on the second floor, and the staff told us to start there and work our way down. It's built as a timeline you walk through, and it gave me the part I didn't have. I knew the abolitionist. I knew the older man with the white hair and the speeches. I did not know the boy, or the young man, and those years happened here.

 The floor below is Sailing to Freedom, about the water routes of the Underground Railroad. It comes down this December. The Douglass exhibit runs through the end of 2027. 

Out on the grounds is the Mitchell House, where Douglass's sister Eliza lived with her husband Peter and their family. My husband and I came out talking about the same thing, which was how small it is. Two rooms and a loft. You stand in the doorway and try to imagine a family fitting inside.

The signal I had been looking for came in pieces: Ms. Hattie under the tree, the children’s room at Book Hounds, the way we were served at brunch, the staff member who wanted us to know about the baptisms on the river, and a museum that treated Black history as part of the town’s history. That mattered to me.

How much of it will remain on view is a fair question. Sailing to Freedom closes in December 2026, and Bear Me Into Freedom runs through the end of 2027. When they close, what remains will be smaller and quieter: the Black watermen and crab pickers in the main building, and the Mitchell House on the lawn.

We’re going back for the boat tour, the Douglass driving tour and Easton, where more of this history is kept.

Three visits before I asked what else was here.