​A trusted physician fatally shoots a young man in the streets of Adamstown. Well, so much for the Hippocratic Oath. Traditionally, it is thought that the main job of a doctor is to help patients and fellow citizens in any way, or form, possible when called upon. This, of course, is in total opposition to a medical expert intentionally injuring others—hence requiring the assistance of another doctor.
​
For those not familiar with the oath of ethics historically taken by physicians, I decided to review the encyclopedic background of this widely known Greek medical text attributed to namesake Hippocrates (c.460-c.370 B.C.). Hippocrates was a Greek physician and philosopher of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is traditionally referred to as the "Father of Medicine" in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field, such as the use of prognosis and clinical observation, the systematic categorization of diseases, and the (later discredited) formulation of humoral theory. His studies set out the basic ideas of modern-day specialties, including surgery, urology, neurology, acute medicine and orthopedics, and advanced the systematic study of clinical medicine. The cover image of this story is a lithograph of a painting from 1792 by artist Anne-Louis Girodet and titled Hippocrates (c.460-c.377 BC) Refusing the Gifts of Artaxerxes I (d.425 BC).

In its original form, the Hippocratic Oath, “requires a new physician to swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards. The oath is the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, establishing several principles of medical ethics which remain of paramount significance today. These include the principles of medical confidentiality and non-maleficence. As the foundational expression of certain principles that continue to guide and inform medical practice, the ancient text is of more than historic and symbolic value. It is enshrined in the legal statutes of various jurisdictions, such that violations of the oath may carry criminal or other liability beyond the oath's symbolic nature.”

In his diary, Frederick’s Jacob Engelbrecht (1798-1878) wrote a lengthy entry regarding a local doctor on trial in Frederick for murder. This was dated March 15th, 1873 and reads as follows:

“The Thomas trial— The trial of Doctor Jacob D. Thomas (son of Levin Thomas) for the shooting and Killing John Belt at Adamstown on the Baltimore & Ohio R.R. in October 1871 was commenced on Friday of last week March 7, 1873. On Friday the jury panel was exhausted by only getting four and they got the full number only on Saturday afternoon. The trial then commenced on Monday morning & continued until Friday night when lawyers finished pleading. And the jury remained in their room until this (Saturday) afternoon when they brought in their verdict “guilty of murder in the third degree” or “Manslaughter.” The counsel for the state Milton G. Urner States Attorney assisted by William J. Maulsby Junior and George H. Peter of Montgomery County. Counsel for prisoner Frederick I. Nelson and James McSherry. The jurors were Randolph G. Barrick, George H. Rizer, David Columbus Kemp, Francis T. Lakin, Benjamin Ogle, George M. Shaw, William H. Glaze, William G. Cole, Daniel Harshman, Thomas A. Smith of T., Gowan B. Philpot, & Thomas I. Maught.” 

My first impression upon reading this entry centered on the all-star legal lineup of attorneys on both sides in the trial. This is fitting as I would learn that both the “shooting” victim, and alleged “shooting” defendant, were prominent south county residents from established Carrollton Manor families. The victim was the brother of two noted physicians, and the accused murderer was actually a leading doctor of Adamstown. Go figure!

Just over a month later, on April 25th, Jacob Engelbrecht jotted down an addendum to this particular diary passage saying, “Sentenced 2 years in Penitentiary this morning.”

This verdict was confirmed in our cemetery records as I searched for the burial of Dr. Jacob D. Thomas here at Mount Olivet. I would soon learn that an earlier trial held a year prior (March, 1872) at the Frederick County Court House resulted in a hung jury.
​
Interestingly, Engelbrecht noted nothing the previous October when this deadly affair took place in Adamstown. In my quest to learn more about the curious physician buried in Mount Olivet’s Area P/Lot 18, I went to the obvious internet sources of findagrave.com, Ancestry.com and various online newspaper archives to which I have subscriptions. I soon found "connections galore" with these two individuals to Frederick history and former stories of mine.

​The Victim and Defendant
John Lloyd Belt, Jr. could not be found in Mount Olivet, but is instead buried in a family lot in his home church of St. Paul’s Episcopal in Point of Rocks. Here, he is nestled in proximity of his parents, John Lloyd Belt (1819-1889) and Sarah Eleanor (McGill) Belt (1818-1903), and six of nine known siblings. 

John’s youngest brother is buried here in St. Paul's, Dr. Edward Oliver Belt (1861-1906). I would learn that he was a prominent eye, nose and throat doctor of Washington, DC in the late 1800s/early 1900s. He was tragically killed in a train crash with two young sons just outside the nation's capital on his way back home from a trip to Frederick to visit family over the Christmas holiday. 

​An older brother of John L. Belt is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. His name was Dr. Alfred McGill Belt (1847-1918) and he married Ariana Teresa Trail, (1852-1923). We’ve mentioned the former Miss Trail before in this blog as she was a daughter of the builder of Frederick’s Trail House (today’s Keeney-Basford Funeral Home on East Church Street), Col. Charles Edward Trail and wife Ariana (McElfresh) Trail. Col. Trail was a prominent local businessman and one of the 1852 founders of Mount Olivet. Trail’s daughters, Florence and Bertha Trail, were local leaders in the Suffrage movement here in the county in the early 20th century. Getting back to the Belts, Dr. Alfred McGill Belt practiced in Baltimore for many years and would be buried in his wife’s family plot rather than in St. Paul’s Cemetery in Point of Rocks.

​Our shooting victim, John Lloyd Belt, Jr., was born May 28th, 1848 at his family’s property of Rock Hall located just south of Sugarloaf Mountain on the east side of the Monocacy. The magnificent home survives off MD Route 28/Dickerson Road and can be accessed by using Dr. Belt Road, named for our subject’s grandfather, Dr. Alfred Belt (1788-1872). This gentleman (Dr. Belt) married into the Trundle family and, in 1836, moved here from his home of Rock Hill Farm in Loudoun County, VA. Dr. Alfred changed the original name of this property from Mt. Pisgah to Rock Hall.

I had researched this stately home a few years back in a “Story in Stone” titled “R.O.C.K in the U.S.A.” (March of 2022). Mt. Pisgah had origins going back to Gov. Thomas Johnson Jr.’s brother Roger, an early ironmaster associated with the Bloomsbury Forge that once operated in this vicinity. The home was bought from Roger Johnson’s heirs which included a few more noted physicians of the area that would have been known to the fore-mentioned Dr. Jacob D. Thomas, particularly one Dr. William Hilleary Johnson, as both men born in 1827.

I found little information about the life of John L. Belt, Jr. Understandable as he only had 23 years on planet earth. I located him in the 1860 and 1870 census records living in the Buckeystown District with his family. I take it that he enjoyed a good education, and can be found working as a farm laborer in the 1870 US census, likely poised to take over Rock Hall and possibly live the life of "gentleman farmer" as his father had done. This would not be.

Meanwhile, Dr. Jacob Dutrow Thomas was born on January 19th, 1827 in Winchester, VA to father Robert Levin Thomas (1786-1842) and mother Mary E. Duttero (1797-1832). The family appears to have moved to Carrollton Manor and Frederick County, MD, where there were no shortage of Thomas and Dutrow family members populating the vicinity. Jacob later received advance schooling at Virginia’s Marshall College.

​On May 2nd, 1848, Dr. Jacob D. Thomas would marry Anna Mary Wolff of Frederick County. The couple went on to have three known children, daughters Adelaide S. (Thomas) Thomas (1851-1895), Margaret Ellen “Nellie” (Thomas) Padgett (1856-1929), and Flora May (Thomas) Day (1858-1931).

​You will note another property owned by John Lloyd Belt on the west side of the Monocacy on Carrollton Manor. This is marked on the 1873 Titus Atlas sitting roughly a half-mile on the east side of Buckeystown Pike, southeast of the village of Adamstown. I have reason to believe that our subject, John, Jr., could have been residing here at the time of his death.

​The Affray
The brief sentence in our cemetery records says that this shooting incident happened at the B&O Railroad, and I am surmising this would be in the vicinity of the B&O Depot in Adamstown, labeled simply as “depot.” I've seen other accounts where the shooting occurred near Dr. Thomas' home a few hundred yards to the south. I believe the latter to be true, but from court testimony it seems that an argument started by the depot as John L. Belt was accompanying his brother, Dr. Alfred Belt, to the station for a departure on the train. Apparently, a young boy at the depot became sick and Dr. Thomas was summoned to offer aid. Words were exchanged between Belt and Dr. Thomas at this time. 

​Two things arose from trial testimony that could have led to the hostility between the men. Apparently, a young, black farmhand had been hired away from John Belt by Dr. Thomas. At the time of the altercation, Belt is said to have told Dr. Thomas that he was going to take him back and away from Dr. Thomas. The other interesting discovery came during the trial testimony of Belt's brother, Dr. Alfred M. Belt. Dr. Belt said that his brother had interest in attending church with one of Dr. Thomas' daughters one week before the incident. Apparently, Dr. Thomas forbade this "date" to happen. Unfortunately, there was not more clarity on both of these topics. However, eyewitnesses at the train station would say in the trial that they expected an altercation to occur when John Belt later passed by Dr. Thomas down the street (in front of the physician's home).

Articles of the incident with Dr. Jacob Thomas appeared in the local newspapers, as well as the Baltimore Sun and others around the state and region.

I will include here two accounts from the Frederick Examiner newspaper, dated Wednesday, October 4th and Wednesday, October 11th, respectively. The shooting “affray,” as it was titled, occurred on Monday, October 2nd. I’d like to set the scene better with additional insight gained by my friend John Ashbury, as he wrote about this in his 1997 book, And All Our Yesterdays.
​
"On October 2nd, 1871, a three-minute argument on a street in Adamstown led to the death of one of those involved and a conviction of manslaughter charges for the other. Witnesses reported that as John Belt rode toward his home on horseback and leading a second horse, he came upon Dr. Jacob Thomas near Thomas’ home. The two engaged in a conversation for a minute or so before it escalated into an argument over a business transaction. Dr. Thomas, who was elderly, used his walking cane to strike Belt on the shoulder, while he was still mounted. Belt jumped down from his horse and attacked Dr. Thomas. The pair fell to the ground, and Belt was said to have punched Dr. Thomas in the face several times, before Dr. H. B. Gross arrived at the scene and pulled him off the physician."

I still find it ironic that the key witness (and referee) in this whole affair was a fellow physician in Dr. Henry Boteler Gross (1848-1925). He's lucky he did not get shot, himself. Dr. Gross would serve as a doctor in Funkstown in his native Washington County, but would spend most of his career and life in Jefferson, Maryland, where he is buried in Jefferson Reformed. 

Belt had been brought into an Adamstown store located next to the railroad tracks. Apparently, the victim was bothered by the train noise and smoke that billowed into the structure. He would be carefully taken to his home residence at which place he would die six days later.

​In late October, the Frederick Examiner ran an Administrator’s Notice regarding John L. Belt, Jr.’s death as his father served as executor. Meanwhile, "the wheels of justice" began turning, albeit a slow journey. At hand was the State convincing the jury that Dr. Thomas murdered Belt in cold blood. The defense would argue that Dr. Thomas fired in self defense. Dr. Thomas would say under oath that he was too old to take a beating of this kind, and had no choice but to protect himself.

​The trial began in March, 1872, a month after Belt's belongings were sold at auction. I will include some clippings of the coverage of this at the end of the story, but want to go back to John Ashbury’s concise account of multiple trials of this crime.

“Dr. Thomas, who had surrendered immediately after the shooting and was released on bail, was rearrested, and his bail increased. A trial was held during the February 1872 term of the Circuit Court, but the jury became deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared. Thomas’ bail was continued until the September term of the court, when a second trial was postponed due to the illness of one of Thomas’ lawyers. On Friday, March 7, 1873, Dr. Thomas’ trial began again. It took two days to empanel a jury, because so many in the county had already formed an opinion in the case. Testimony didn’t begin until Monday, March 10. Throughout that week the evidence presented was the same as in the first trial a year earlier. This time, however the jury was able to reach a verdict of guilty of manslaughter, despite Dr. Thomas’ claims of self-defense. Newspaper reports at the time indicated that when the jury first retired, the vote was five for first degree murder, three for second degree murder, one for manslaughter, and three for acquittal. On April 23, Judge John A. Lynch sentenced Dr. Thomas to two years in prison, and on April 28, he was taken to the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore to serve his sentence.”

​I could find little in the papers regarding Dr. Thomas and time spent in prison and his release after serving his two-year term. This would have been in the spring of 1875. I did however find a brief article from a Carroll County newspaper which showed that Dr. Thomas was pardoned by the Maryland governor after serving just 10 months of his sentence.

​Statements in the case were made that Dr. Thomas' family would be destitute if he was sentenced to prison. Five years after his release, I found him living at home in Adamstown in the 1880 census. I presume Dr. Thomas had his medical license revoked because of the whole Belt affair. I have no idea what he did for money upon his release. Apparently, Dr. Thomas remained heavily involved in his church and politics. He was one of the original trustees of Adamstown’s Trinity Evangelical and Reformed Church which opened in 1868. The last newspaper reference I would see before his death mentioned him as a county magistrate for Adamstown and the Buckeystown area.

In the local paper, I spotted this article that seemed to help the family through the lean times, thanks to Mrs. Thomas' brother.

Dr. Jacob D. Thomas would die on November 22nd, 1894 at the age of 67. This was 23 years and 51 days after the fateful showdown which would take the life of fellow resident John L. Belt, while changing his in the process. His obituary appeared in the Frederick News. He would be buried in Area P/Lot 18 where an infant grandchild had been interred in 1891. Two more grandchildren would follow over the next two years.

​Dr. Thomas's gravestone has an inscription on its face that is a little hard to make out. After closer inspection, I found it to be the opening verse of H. A. Cesar Malan's "It Is Not Death to Die."

"It is not death to die,
To leave this weary road,
And 'mid the brotherhood on high
To be at home with God."

I'm sure John L. Belt may have felt differently.

​Dr. Thomas’ wife Anna Mary would die in 1913, and buried beside him. She lived to be 92 years of age. I guess it was good to have a physician as a husband.​

His daughter Flora and husband Richard R. Day would be buried in this plot in the 1930s, along with three fore-mentioned children, and another in 1950 named James I. Day. Interestingly, this latter grandson of Dr. Thomas would be moved to Arlington National Cemetery on June 4th, 1957. He was a veteran of World War I.

Today, January 7th is my birthday. While the number "7" is my favorite (and lucky) number, January is certainly not my favorite month. It's bitterly cold and starts with the post-holiday season letdown. January often includes a heartbreaking loss by my favorite football team (the Ravens), and I'm riddled with reminiscing and remembrances of happy events of the previous year now gone by.  

Working for a cemetery, I know the importance of birthdays, and the consequence of "deathdays." Anyone who travels through a burial ground will see birth dates of decedents proudly displayed on the faces of gravestones, monuments and plaques.

All this talk of birthdays had me wondering what notable people have said about the anniversary of a person's entry into the world through birth. Here are "7" famous quotes from contemplative authors and writers:

"Old age: A great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold, you may have escaped, not from one master but from many."
-Plato

"From our birthday, until we die / Is but the winking of an eye."
-William Butler Yeats​
 
"May you live all the days of your life. No wise man ever wished to be younger."
-Jonathan Swift
 
"Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
-Mark Twain
 
"Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed."
-Charles Schulz 
 
"The great thing about getting older is you don't lose all the other ages you've been."
-Madeleine L'Engle 
 
"You are only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime."
-John P. Grier

I, myself, share a birthday with actor Nicholas Cage, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, US Senator Rand Paul and President of the United States, Millard Fillmore (1800-1874). I've known this latter fact since I was 7 years-old, fittingly. In fact, just over two weeks ago, I found myself surprised to be driving through Millard's "birthtown" of Moravia, New York. It is a quaint little village of 3,700 residents and can be found  southwest of Syracuse in the heart of the "Finger Lake" country. For those eager to learn more about President Fillmore, and who wouldn't, he was our 13th president, serving from 1850 to 1853. Millard Fillmore was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House, and the last to be neither a Democrat nor a Republican. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in 1850. He was instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery.

My birthday wish is not to travel the Millard Fillmore Historic Trail one day, but that's not saying that it could be the dream of others. Alright, let's get back to our "Story in Stone."

​Since this blog revolves around people buried in Frederick's historic Mount Olivet Cemetery, I decided to seek out a kindred spirit who shares my birthdate. The first individual I came upon was a four-year-old whose birthday is not displayed outwardly on a gravestone, but only in our records. She actually has no grave marker and is buried in a mass grave on Mount Olivet's Area MM.

Meet Ruhamah Chapline, born January 7th, 1743/1744. Her name means mercy and compassion. This child, the daughter of Col. Joseph Chapline and Ruhamah (Williams) Chapline, is buried amongst the 286 people in Area MM's Lot 41. These individuals were originally interred in the All Saints' Protestant Episcopal burial ground that once overlooked Carroll Creek from the south. The property was located on the hill where the present-day amphitheater sits, across the creek from C. Burr Artz Library.

A reference on Ruhamah's memorial page on findagrave.com states that Ruhamah was:
"Re-interred from Old Episcopal graveyard on East All Saints Street in 1913. Stone was transcribed at time of reburial, but buried (along with body)." This was not a rare occurrence as there are likely many gravestones buried below the surface in Mount Olivet's Area MM.

​Our records show that Ruhamah was re-interred in Mount Olivet on December 19th, 1913. The date of her original burial in the All Saints' churchyard was September 6th, 1748—the year Frederick County was created.

Our cemetery record database does not show much in respect to the decedents reburied from All Saints' here in 1913, however we do have a definitive list of interments. Our cemetery superintendent Ron Pearcey has been researching these records over the last few years in an effort to learn more about these individuals. Ruhamah, and a sister Jane who is also buried here, died as children. Ron encountered a great bit of confusion months ago when he found two adult women of the same name (Ruhamah Chapline and Jane Chapline) buried with their parents (Joseph and Ruhamah Chapline) in Sharpsburg, Maryland's Mountain View Cemetery. I had to explain that we had the couple's first daughter named Ruhamah and first daughter named Jane, while later born children of those same names lived into adulthood and are buried in Sharpsburg. While rare these days, the tradition of naming children after older, deceased siblings was commonplace in days of old.

Thanks to a book, Maryland Records, Colonial, Revolutionary, County, and Church, from Original Sources: (Volume I) by Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh, we have a better sense of Ruhamah's family and vital records including those of our subject. Mr. Brumbaugh's book was published January 1915, just over a year after Ruhamah's re-interment here. On page 258, Brumbaugh includes the following records from Frederick's All Saints' Protestant Episcopal Church:
 
Joseph Chapline married Ruhamah daughter of Rev. William Williams, October 22, 1741.
 
Children:
William Williams Chapline b. Aug. 20, 1742.
Ruhamah Chapline, b. Jan 7, 1743/4.
Joseph Chapline [twin], b. Sep. 9, 1746.
Deborah Chapline [twin], b. Sep. 9, 1746.
Jane Chapline, b. Sep 18, 1748. Buried July 19, 1754.
James Chapline, b. Sep. 28, 1750.
Ruhamah Chapline, b. July 12, 1752. Buried Sep. 6, 1748.
Sarah Chapline, b. July 10, 1754.
Jeremiah Chapline, b. June 24, 1756.
Jane Chapline, b. Mar.23, 1758.
Theodosha Chapline, b. Mar. 14, 1760.
 
While I have the chance, I'd like to thank findagrave.com contributor, Michael I. Chapline (47680704), for adding this information to the memorial page created a few years back by our Friends of Mount Olivet group. Michael seems to have the credentials in studying his Chapline family lineage and includes his email of [email protected] on the memorial page as well.

Michael also added the following image to the findagrave site that helped take the confusion out of the Chapline research by Brumbaugh, as an earlier record confused vital dates for the "dueling Ruhamahs." This gives us a definite death date for the Ruhamah Chapline of Mount Olivet, and born January 7th four or five years earlier.

I cannot tell you anything about Ruhamah's brief life on earth. No obituary exists and that is par for the course when it comes to young people of that time. I do know that she was here in our area at Frederick's very beginning, as she was born before Frederick Town's founding by Daniel Dulany in 1745. Had Ruhamah lived into adulthood, I think her life would be considered one of excitement and privilege. Her parents were from prominent early Maryland and Virginia families. As a matter of fact, Ruhamah's father is known as the founder of Sharpsburg, as he built the first house in 1764. 

Thanks again to Michael Chapline for the birthday present of research as he wrote the following sketch of Col. Joseph Chapline (1707-1769), trained as a lawyer and eventually an officer of the French and Indian War in 1757, who founded Sharpsburg on July 9th, 1763. The following biography appears on the findagrave.com memorial page for Ruhamah's father.

"Not far inside the main gate to Mountain View Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland there is a simple monument marking the grave of the town's founder Joseph Chapline, his wife and some of their children.
 
Joseph Chapline was a lawyer, planter, military officer during the French and Indian War, a representative for Frederick County in the Maryland legislature, and a business man. He laid out the town of Sharpsburg in 1763. He and his wife, Ruhama Williams Chapline lived and died near there as did most of their eleven children.
 
Mountain View Cemetery was not the original resting place for Joseph Chapline and his family. In 1893 Joseph's great-great niece, Maria J. Liggett Dare (1843-1904), had the remains of seven Chapline family members moved to Mountain View Cemetery from a family burial ground on the old Chapline farm overlooking the Potomac River west of Sharpsburg. The graves were moved because the burial ground at the farm was not protected by deed, and the owner desired to use the land for a peach orchard.
 
At the base of the monument erected at Mountain View are the initials L.C.L. for Louvisa Chapline Liggett (1809-1896), Maria Dare's mother, who paid for the monument. In the preface of her book, Chaplines of Maryland and Virginia(1902), Maria Dare wrote, 'My mother and I searched the country from Shepherdstown to Hagerstown; tracked through damp grass knee deep to read inscriptions on tombstones in old cemeteries.' "

The History of Sharpsburg by Lee Barron states:

​"By the early 1700s the population was already shifting to the west and there was great interest in settling the land of the great valley beyond the Blue Ridge. So in 1730, William Chapline, then living along the Potomac just south of present day Washington, D.C., moved westward settling on 465 acres just 4 miles upstream from Shepherdstown, Virginia.
 
His son Joseph shortly thereafter received a grant of 2175 acres from Lord Baltimore to establish his own estate. This was to be along the Potomac, 2 miles downstream from his father’s Virginia estate, but on the Maryland side of the river. In 1739 Joseph Chapline began construction of his estate, “Mt. Pleasant”, moving there in 1740. (“Mt. Pleasant” is located in the area of Snyder’s Landing, just one mile from Sharpsburg). After moving to “Mt. Pleasant” Joseph’s fortunes soared, he was a part owner of the Ohio Company, which traded with the Indians manufactured goods for furs, and built a two-story log storehouse at Wills Creek on the Virginia shore. He served as Justice of the Peace, and also as elected representative of Frederick County to the General Assembly in Annapolis."
 
Pioneers of the Monocacy delves further and records that: 

​"From 1739-1747, Joseph Chapline had served as a Justice of the Prince Georges County Court, and from 1749-1751 served in the same capacity in the new Frederick County Court. ​In 1744, Joseph Chapline was appointed to help lay out the road via Richard Touchstone's place near Port Deposit in Cecil County. He registered his1742 marriage in the All Saints parish records as well as the birth dates of his children."

This included our subject, young Ruhamah, named for her mother and born in 1743/1744. It seems quite a hike, especially in those days, to worship in Frederick Town from his home roughly 20 miles away, but this was a heck of a lot closer than St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis. With the prominence of this family, it is safe to say that little Ruhamah Chapline was among the first interments in the All Saints' burial ground.

A year after her death in 1748, Frederick County would hold its first election in 1749 in which Chapline would be named be named a Delegate to the General Assembly in Annapolis. This would occur again in November 1754 and September 1758.

Pioneers of the Monocacy continues:

​"Between 1750 and 1764, Joseph Chapline took up many tracts of land, but he and Ruhamah made their home along the Potomac River about two miles west of present-day Sharpsburg. This would remain Frederick County up through the mid-1770s. When the French and Indian War broke out Joseph raised and organized troops, financed the war effort, and helped build Ft. Cumberland and Ft. Frederick along the frontier. For his war efforts Joseph Chapline received an additional 11,000 acres of land from Gov. Horatio Sharpe of Maryland and 645 acres from Lord Fairfax of Virginia."

Ruhamah's mother of the same name, Ruhamah Williams (1717-1796), was born in Wales and the daughter of a Presbyterian minister named Rev. William Williams. During the 1750s, Williams became "the resident divine" on Col. Chapline's estate after being expelled from his own church for an unknown offense. Joseph Chapline persuaded his father-in-law to become an Anglican. This gentleman was also a large landowner who had a connection with the Monocacy Valley as far back as 1739 and a 25-acre survey called "Williams Project."

​Pioneers of the Monocacy authors Tracey and Dern claim that this land "lay on the west bank of the Monocacy River near the mouth of fishing Creek and stretched two and a half miles northwesterly. It included a lengthy "shank" connecting two enlarged areas much like an enlarged dumbbell. One end lay in the vicinity of today's Lewistown, the other along the river and Monocacy Manor. This is land east of US 15, stretching south of today's Lewistown to Utica and further south to Devilbiss Bridge."

In 1761, Joseph Chapline  surveyed "Addition to Williams Project," including vacant land surrounding the original parcel. Then, in 1763, he, his wife Ruhamah and their son William Williams Chapline, conveyed 250 acres of this land for 400 pounds to Alexander Ogle of New Castle County (DE)." ​

​Jane Chapline, another daughter of Col. Joseph and wife Ruhamah (Williams) Chapline, was born in 1753 and died on July 19th, 1754. She would be buried in Mount Olivet on the same day as her sister on December 19th, 1913.

Ironically, in our cemetery records, I would find "7" more "Chaplines" buried here. Of course these were later generations and have very nice gravestones. These include Isaac Thomas Chapline (1837-1876) and his wife Laura (Schley) Chapline (1843-1922). Isaac is the great-grandson of Isaac William Chapline (1756-1810), a nephew of Col. Joseph Chapline and the first resident of Steamboat Run, a neighborhood in Shepherdstown. This couple, and a few children (Harry Eugene Chapline, Grace Latimer Chapline), are buried in Area F/Lot 41. I reveled in seeing that another son of this couple, named Thomas Augustus Chapline, married Mary Byerly, daughter of Frederick's early photographer J. Davis Byerly. They are buried in Area G/Lot 239 with son Thomas, Jr.

The Chapline family continues on and people like the fore-mentioned Michael Chapline have helped keep family history alive. He even hosts a great Facebook page on Chapline Family heritage as well. Many other resources abound on the internet, as the Chaplines are a big part of Maryland and Virginia history. And thanks to the efforts of Louvisa Chapline Liggett and Maria J. Liggett Dare, Sharpsburg's founding family rests peacefully in a place of honor at Mountain View Cemetery. Sadly, Ruhamah and Jane Chapline did not get moved to Sharpsburg from Frederick's All Saints' Burial Ground, but are in an equally honorable spot here in Mount Olivet. I hope by Ruhamah's next birthday, that we may have an interpretive panel that lists her name, along with all those interred in the All Saints' mass grave on Area MM. 

Happy Heavenly Birthday Ruhamah!, as they say, and it was an honor researching you and your family on the occasion of my birthday as well.