Join us for Heritage Days 2024, a countywide festival weekend celebrating the historic, cultural, and outdoor recreation sites in Montgomery County, Maryland. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, this year’s event will be held on Saturday, June 29 and Sunday, June 30 and features over 30 museums and parks.

Enjoy exhibits, demonstrations, live music, family-friendly activities, and sneak peeks inside some of the county’s oldest historic sites, all for FREE!

The historic Germantown Bank building will be open on Saturday, June 29 only, from 12:00 – 4:00pm. We offer walking tours of Old Germantown, an early 20th century agricultural railroad town, and tours of the 1922 Germantown Community Bank, future site of the Museum of Banking History, with exhibits on Germantown’s history, famous baseball pitcher Walter Johnson, the Civil War in Germantown, the Great Depression, and the Metropolitan Branch Railroad. Maryland TTrak will also be onsite, featuring a family-friendly model train demonstration.

King George has closed the port of Boston, dissolved the local legislature, removed the local courts, and rescinded the charter of the Massachusetts colony – We could be next! Governor Eden has already dissolved the Maryland legislature! Massachusetts has called for a union of the colonies. Even though we each have separate charters and export different products, if we all stand together as one we will be in a better position to negotiate with the crown. We must answer the call of our sister colony — boycott English goods; establish a provisional government and elect representatives to correspond with the other colonies.

Thus, in the spring of 1774 the stage was set for negotiations between the American colonies and the King, Prime Minister and Parliament of England that continued for two years before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. Here in Lower Frederick County (later Montgomery County) local leaders met at Hungerford’s Tavern on June 11, 1774 to elect representatives who would represent the residents at the first Convention of Freemen in Annapolis. The voters in attendance published what was later called the Hungerford Tavern Resolves:

Resolved, unanimously, That it is the opinion of this meeting that the Town of Boston is now suffering in the Common Cause of America.
Resolved, unanimously, That every legal and constitutional measure ought to be used by all America for procuring a repeal of the Act of Parliament for blocking up the Harbour of Boston.
Resolved, unanimously, That it is the opinion of this meeting that the most effectual means for the securing of American Freedom will be to break off all Commerce with Great Britain and the West Indies until the said act be repealed and the right of taxation given upon permanent principles.

These resolutions, when published in the Maryland Gazette, publicly announced our commitment to join forces with the other colonies in confronting England. The die was cast and there would be no turning back.

In commemoration of this momentous event of 250 years ago, the Germantown Historical Society is sponsoring a free presentation by historian Susan Cooke Soderberg, live, at the Germantown Library on Saturday, June 8 at 3:30pm. Learn about the men elected at this meeting, why they chose this place to meet, what their complaints against England were, and how they proposed to settle them when they met.