"Shady Side, Maryland, a village of a thousand homes, lies on a peninsula of land washed by the Chesapeake Bay on one side and West River on the other; it is situated just south of Annapolis. The community is rich in history and folklore, for its people in many instances were born and raised there, as were their families before them.  More recent arrivals quickly assimilate into the neighborhood, sharing a common love of a rural felicity seldom found elsewhere.  On a spring morning one awakens to the sharp cry of gulls circling overhead, the angry squawk of mallard ducks startled by a curious dog as they waddle across a yard, crackling sounds of a jib being released as a boat comes about in the channel, a sighing of wind through tall old trees and faint echoes of earlier residents mingling in nature's sound, soft voices coming back to us through the veil of time."
-Excerpt from Spirit of Shady Side, Peninsula Life 1664-1984 by Virginia White Fitz (Available through the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society - www.averyhouse.org)