Birthday Remembrances

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

Birthdays can be fun too!!!

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.

The ground is mounded up at this location of a mass grave in Mount Olivet's Area MM. Here, 286 individuals, originally buried in All Saints' burying ground, were reinterred in 1913. The three gravestones pictured prominently here (and recently adorned with flags and wreaths) are War of 1812 veterans among those buried here in the mass grave. Here lie two daughters of a very prominent pioneer in western Maryland's past.

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.

Carroll Creek Amphitheater, former site of All Saints' Burying Ground

All Saints' Church decided to disband its old burial ground in 1912 and sponsored a mass removal project in late summer of 1913. Under the leadership of All Saints Ernest Helfenstein, most of the bodies were exhumed and reburied here in Mount Olivet's Area MM, a brand new (cemetery) section at the time. Some decedents (moved from All Saints') like Revolutionary War notables Gov. Thomas Johnson, Roger Nelson and Dr. Philip Thomas have grave monuments. However, many of those moved here had no formal grave markers, or they had gone missing over time in the derelict burying ground by the creek. Other decedents who had broken, or "subpar," gravestones not worthy of presentation in Frederick's stately "garden cemetery" of Mount Olivet, were interred along with said stones. This was the fate of Ruhamah Chapline.

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.

1854 view of All Saints' Church burying ground (upper left) from a vantage point looking south with South Market street on right. This is from Sachse & Co. View of Frederick from 1854.

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.' "

Grave of Col. Joseph Chapline and wife Rumalah Williams Chapline in Sharpsburg's Mountain View Cemetery

Frederick News (April 13, 1893)

The book Pioneers of Old Monocacy: The Early Settlement of Frederick County, Maryland (1721-1743) by Grace L. Tracey and John P. Dern expanded my knowledge on Col. Joseph Chapline by saying that:

"He could trace his ancestry back four generations to the immigrant Isaac Chapline who came to Virginia in 1610. Between them stood three generations of individuals, each named William Chapline. The first of these had brought the family to Maryland to settle in Calvert County."

I found some genealogical references online that say Isaac Chapline was born in England in 1585 and became a captain in the Royal Navy. In 1606, he married Mary Calvert, daughter of Leonard Calvert (of the founding family of Maryland). In 1622, Isaac and Mary immigrated to America settling in Jamestown, Virginia. It is surmised that a son (William) would relocate to  southern Maryland on the Patuxent River near Cedar Branch.

Site of the old Sharpsburg Spring site

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."

Civil War-era photograph of Sharpsburg looking south on Main Street

Pertaining to the founding of Sharpsburg, author Barron says: 
​
"Following the restoration of peace in 1763, Joseph took a 300 acre parcel of his land surrounding a large constant spring, surveyed 187 lots, and on July 9th, 1763 founded the town of "Sharpes Burgh" naming it for his good friend Gov. Horatio Sharpe. Each lot was 103 by 206 feet and initially were sold for 2 pounds, 10 shillings. By the time of his death in 1769, Joseph had sold 84 lots mostly to speculators, but a few houses had also been built."

The William Chapline House at 109 W. Main St. in Sharpsburg is a large stone house built about 1790. William Chapline was a saddler and son of Joseph Chapline’s brother Moses. The house has shaped stonework at the front and rubble stonework on the sides with a cast-iron porch added around the turn of the twentieth century. The house was damaged during the Battle of Antietam, when it was hit with canister shot. At that time it was occupied by Dr. Augustin A. Biggs, who treated the wounded from the battle in the house.

Diagram from Pioneers of the Monocacy showing "Williams Project" survey once owned by Rev. William Williams and conveyed to son-in-law Col. Joseph Chapline.

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 memorial page on findagrave.com

​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.

Grave of Isaac Thomas and Laura Chapline in Area F

Gravestone of Thomas augustus Chapline and wife Mary (Byerly) Chapline

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.