LEVICK

On September 1, Hurricane Ida dealt American Heritage a near fatal blow, flooding our offices and library with two feet of muddy water. We lost hundreds of books, magazines, research files, antique prints and photographs, furniture, equipment, carpets, accounting records, bank statements, legal documents, etc. If you haven’t done so already, please consider a donation to help us pay for professional help, buy new furniture and equipment, and replace important books and magazines. And we must mitigate the fast-growing mold that has made our offices unusable.

Disaster Hits American Heritage

The deadly flash flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida last week in Rockville, Maryland, destroyed what many families spent their lives building.When a quick wall of water inundated historian Edwin Grosvenor’s basement, it took with it many priceless books and pieces of art, which he uses to tell America’s story. Grosvenor was out of town when the storm sent almost 5 feet of water in only a few minutes into his home’s backyard on Crawford Drive. The wall of water then seeped through his basement door, filling his library and home office with over 2 feet of water. Grosvenor is the publisher of American Heritage, a 72-year-old magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States. Much of the work featured in the now-online-only magazine comes from his vast collection of books and documents, some of which Ida has now destroyed. The waters also destroyed some of the historical art he has collected over the past decades, including a 300-year-old engraving of Henry VIII on which a water line was visible…Read more