One of the most interesting areas within Mount Olivet Cemetery is labeled as NN. Here, stones are tightly packed together, many of which marking the graves of folks born before 1854—the year our cemetery opened for burials. Three local churches would buy lots in this small section that once marked the northwest extent of Mount Olivet before additional ground to the west were opened around 1910.

In 1908, bodies originally interred in Frederick’s Methodist Episcopal church graveyard were placed here, along with decedents brought from Evangelical Lutheran’s former burying ground (at today’s Everedy Square corner of E. Church and East streets) and others formerly resting in the Presbyterian burial ground on the northwest corner of N. Bentz and Dill Ave.

I have written stories on others buried within Area NN, which was neatly laid out in rows with the inhabitants of each of the three fore-mentioned cemeteries in distinct sectors according to congregation—from left to right, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian.

Adjacent our boundary fence, a non-Frederick name on a stone jumped out at me. It is in the back row, right side, of the “Methodist section.” The decedent is Sarah Galezio. The brief “story on the stone” says that Sarah was the consort of one, Charles Galezio, and that she died on October 8th, 1833 aged 46 years, 4 months and 9 days. ​

Now Galezio is my focus for this story, but while I’m here, I want to mention the funerary phenomenon of the word “consort.” One can find that many women buried in our cemetery bear a descriptor on their stones in an effort to give context to a man of note she is related to. Now, I’m not trying to “stir the proverbial sexist pot” here, but “stations in life” carved into marble and granite grave markers are abundant. These include  “wife of,” “daughter of,” “grandmother of,” “aunt of,” and “widow of.”  On much older stones, the term consort or relict was used to describe the woman’s marital status. From the 17th through 19th centuries, consort was usually used on the graves of women, although a man could also be a consort.  The word consort was normally used in this manner:

‘Sarah--consort of Charles Galezio,’ in which consort meant that Sarah was Charles’s spouse and died before her husband did.  There is no other information listed. The fact that she was married to Charles is all that’s left as a reminder of her life and identity. Oh, and our cemetery database report that she was the mother of Charles and Mrs. Margaret Hobbs.
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Again, this was a name I was not familiar with in the annals of Frederick history—so what better reason than to go “in search of,” right? Well, I didn’t expect to find much, but would be pleasantry surprised with what I did “uncover”—however, maybe not the best word use when referring to cemetery-based research of this kind.

Our records record Sarah’s birthdate as May 30th, 1787, but no parents named, and a burial date in Mount Olivet of June 4th, 1895. She actually was buried three times as the 1895 date marks her removal from the Methodist Episcopal Church’s  graveyard to Area Q, Lots 252-253. In January, 1908, the Methodist churchyard burials were removed to her present resting spot in Area NN, Lot 123.
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Thank God once again for the internet! I mean, it would have also been quite possible to find a short biography on my subject of this week’s blog (Sarah Galezio)  had I been researching, in person, within the New York Public Library, specifically the stacks within the Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. I’m sure that a work titled Ancestry and posterity (in part) of Gottfried Frey, 1605-1913 would have easily fallen in my hands. This book is a family genealogy written by Samuel Clarence Frey and published by Dispatch-Daily Print of York, Pennsylvania in 1914. Of course, the world wide web led me to an online version after a few short word/name searches utilizing the Google search engine. I have since found that Frey’s book can be found in college libraries across the country, and also a hardcover reprint can be purchased on Amazon.com for $28.95, and if you have a Prime account, shipping is free and you could have in two days time! But, I digress.

Here is what Samuel Clarence Frey had to say about his distant cousin buried in our fair cemetery:          
“SARAH ANN CATHARINE FREY, the fourth child of Godfrey, was born in Montgomery County, Md., May I, 1789. Somewhat to the surprise, if not annoyance, of her conservative German father, when she was but sixteen years old she married an Italian music teacher, Charles Antonio Cazemere Galezio, born at Turin, Italy, March 4, 1773. He was a highly educated man, having been fitted for the priesthood; but left Rome and came to America, where he secured a position of some sort in the Navy, serving under Commodore Decatur. He spoke seven languages, and acted as interpreter for some of the foreign Legations. Two years after marriage, he was ordered on a naval cruise, and their first child was born at Sandy Springs, Montgomery County, Md (presumably Godfrey's home) during the father's absence, and was three years old before she saw him. The other children were born at Frederick. Md., where, after a little over fifteen years of married life, Charles died, in 1821. His widow survived him until October 9, 1833. From this union sprang the following descendants :

MARGARET GALEZIO, b. Aug. 5. 1810; d. May 22, 1882. Married Jan. 3, 1833, Rezin Hobbs, Farmer, Frederick. Md.

ANNIE VIRGINIA HOBBS. b. Oct. 17. 1835. Married Oct. 7, 1856, Richard Linthicum Waters, b. Feb. 18, 1834; d. Sept. 6, 1884, Farmer, Howard County, Md. (*granddaughter of Sarah)

SARAH MARGARET WATERS, b. July 22. 1857. Married, May 31, 1887, Thomas Edward Denoe. b. Apr. 25. 1846. Retired Grocer, Baltimore.” (*Great granddaughter of Sarah)

Another child is mentioned a little later in Mr. Frey’s family history. This was Sarah (Frey) Galezio’s only son, named Charles after his father:

“CHARLES GODFREY GALEZIO, b. Aug. 27, 1815, at Frederick, Md.; removed to Athens County, Ohio when a young man, living first at Chauncey and later at Wapatoneka. He was the first Recorder of the county, and a prominent Mason. At the outbreak of the Civil War he went to La Porte. Indiana, and enlisted, becoming a Lieutenant. At the expiration of his term he re-enlisted as a private and served until the end of the war, under Sherman, participating in the March to the Sea and the Grand Review at Washington. Died, Oct. 9. 1882, at the home of one of his daughters at La Porte. Ind. Married Sept. 16. 1838, Joanna S. Herrold, b. Mar. 21, 1822; d. Aug. 19. 1848.

ALEXANDER HARPER GALEZIO. b. June 20. 1839; d. Aug. 16, 1846.

ADELAIDE LOUISE (GALEZIO, b. Nov. 28. 1841. Sister M. Aloysia, in Convent at Glandorf, Ohio.
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MARY VIRGINIA GALEZIO. b. May 15, 1844. Married Apr. II, 1867. Charles R. Baird, b. Apr. 1832, Farmer, La Porte, Ind.”

Wow, again, you can learn so much about a person in a cemetery when you start digging. Again, maybe not the best word use, but you catch my drift. Sarah Galezio was now coming more into view for me. Now unfortunately, the problem with genealogy, especially when researching women in earlier times, is that most available information primarily focuses on those contextual others such as parents, husbands, children, cousins as they seldom held occupation titles of note, ran businesses or performed military service. Thus, these incredible ladies are simply a reflection of the deeds/professions of their husbands, fathers and sons. This in addition to the incredible work done in keeping homes, birthing/rearing children, and supporting husbands—some of which were true “pains in the ass!” Sad but true, and more so frustrating.
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We get lucky sometimes in finding personal letters or accounts of these women. Diaries can also be helpful in shedding light on one’s family and friends, or can paint an incredible picture of the personality of a diary keeper, be him man or woman. And you can’t talk about Frederick, Maryland and diaries without a mention of Jacob Engelbrecht who kept a chronicle of life in Frederick from 1818 through to his death in 1878. This quickly became my next research destination.

I found a handful of references to the Galezio family in Engelbrecht’s diary. Best of all, Sarah Galezio was mentioned by name in an entry penned by Jacob on October 9th, 1833 at 11am on a Wednesday morning:
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“Died this morning in the year of her age Mrs. Galezio (widow), mother of Charles Galezio (at Smallwoods) & Mrs. Margaret Hobbs. Buried on the Methodist Episcopal graveyard, of which church she was a faithful member.”

Engelbrecht doesn’t give us much, but at least Sarah Galezio’s death was noteworthy enough for him to document. In looking deeper into the diary, I explored a few more entries. Earlier that same year (1833), Engelbrecht mentions the marriage of daughter Margaret to Rezin Hobbs, and two years later, another marriage, that of daughter Sarah to Jacob Yeakle.

I did revel in two additional posts made by Engelbrecht in the previous decade, as he recorded the death of Sarah’s husband, or should I say—consort?

“Died yesterday (at the Almshouse) in this town, Charles Galezio (barber) a native of Italy and a citizen of this town about six years. Whisky principally occasioned his death. He used to say “if a rich man dies, he died with the consumption but if a poor man dies, then whiskey killed him.” So report says.”
Sunday, March 11th, 1821

Jacob Engelbrecht, a tailor by trade and son of a German Hessian mercenary soldier captured and brought to Frederick during the Revolutionary War, recalled one of Frederick’s earliest southern Europeans four years later in 1825:

“There was a barber living in this town, 4 or 5 years ago named Charles Galezio (an Italian) who once advertised, for employment, and at the end of the advertisement he had, ‘Call when you will, there’s Charley on the spot with razors keen, and water boiling hot.’
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He used to say too, during his lifetime (recollect, he’s now dead). “When a rich man dies, (they say) he died with the consumption, but when a poor man dies, why then whiskey killed him. The latter of which, Charley was tolerable fond of; but there are many more in the world who are fond of the “creature.”

March 25th, 1825.

We all know what a barber is, but men of this profession were once called Tonsorial experts. These individuals have an occupation with responsibilities to cut, dress, groom, style and shave men's and boys' hair or beard. Barbering was introduced to Charles Galezio's native home's capital city of Rome by the Greek colonies in Sicily in 296 BC. 

​Barbershops quickly became very popular centers for daily news and gossip. A morning visit to the tonsor became a part of the daily routine, as important as the visit to the public baths, and a young man's first shave (tonsura) was considered an essential part of his coming of age ceremony. A few Roman tonsores became wealthy and influential, running shops that were favorite public locations of high society, however, most were simple tradesmen, who owned small storefronts or worked in the streets for low prices.
 
Starting in the Middle Ages, barbers often served as surgeons and dentists. Some readers, of a certain age, may remember the popular early Saturday Night Live skit featuring comedian Steve Martin as "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber." In addition to hair-cutting, hairdressing, and shaving, barbers performed surgery, bloodletting and leeching, fire cupping, enemas, and the extraction of teeth; earning them the name "barber surgeons".

​ Barber-surgeons began to form powerful guilds and received higher pay than surgeons until surgeons were entered into British warships during naval wars. Some of the duties of the barber included neck manipulation, cleansing of ears and scalp, draining of boils, fistula and lancing of cysts with wicks.

Well, the varying descriptions of Sarah’s consort paint  Mr. Galezio as a bilingual music scholar who could quote scripture while giving you a shave and haircut. But a word to the wise, it sounds as if scheduling an appointment with the tonsorial expert would be better before he hits the booze, because he was well- armed with a sharp blade and boiling water.
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I have no idea what became of Charles Galezio (burial-wise) as he is not accounted for in our records. The old Methodist burying ground was located between East Third and Fourth streets in Frederick, off Maxwell Alley as photographed earlier in the story. I would assume that Sarah would have been buried by her husband's side if he was laid to rest there. The two would have been re-interred together here. If anything else, perhaps he didn’t have a stone, or it was in bad shape and rejected by cemetery authorities which did happen with some of these removals. In any case, he would still be here.
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My theory is that he was buried at the old Frederick Almshouse, the predecessor to the Montevue Home. This facility was located on the north side of West Patrick Street, just beyond Bentz Street. An old burial ground for the indigent inmates of this asylum was located behind the structure. I don’t know the exact whereabouts of those buried there as the area eventually became the place of residential housing and small businesses like automotive garages. This seems like it could be the most logical answer. 

Sarah Galezio is here in Mount Olivet, and so are her daughter and two granddaughters. Margaret (Galezio) Hobbs (1810-1881) is buried in Area H/Lot 139, and so is Annie Virginia (Hobbs) Waters (1836-1913). (NOTE: Annie even had a brush with greatness during the Civil War by hosting Robert Gould Shaw in her home. Shaw took command of the 54th Massachusetts "colored regiment" that was heralded in the movie "Glory.")

A five month-old namesake granddaughter, Sarah E. Hobbs, died in December, 1834 and was buried at the Methodist Church originally. She resides a few yards from Sarah Galezio in Mount Olivet's Area NN.
​​Sarah’s son is buried in LaPorte, Indiana. The Civil War veteran attained the rank of 2nd lieutenant with Indiana’s 35th Volunteer Regiment.

Although it has been on my own personal, radar for years now, I was pleased to find a vintage newspaper article with a mention of a particular, outstanding burial monument here at Mount Olivet, often overlooked. The anecdote can be found within the Sidelights column from the Frederick Post’s edition of August 7th, 1962. The weekly feature highlighted local history and culture with a strong bend toward preservation.
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“An interesting memorial to Capt. George Late Tyler, 2nd Cavalry USA who died October, 1881, aged 48, has a stone with a column from which is suspended a sword and belt, above the helmet, gloves and spurs.”

The author was reporter Elsie White Haines, a seasoned journalist who started with the Frederick newspaper in the early 1950s. Soon, Ms. Haines had a recurring column on Fridays. She did a great job in bringing historic preservation to the forefront at a time when many old structures here in the city (and county) were being demolished. Her past experience hailed from a similar column written for a newspaper in her native home of Montgomery County.
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After my impromptu introduction to Ms. Haines (1891-1970) and her artfully-penned writings, I experienced an immediate connection, and also a tinge of guilt and embarrassment because I hadn’t know her name earlier. In addition, I felt regret that Ms. Haines died in 1970, not having the chance to see incredible strides toward preserving so many structures within Frederick's 40-block historic district, not to mention the efforts of the Frederick County Landmarks Foundation in saving buildings such as Schifferstadt and Rose Hill Manor in the immediate decade following her death. If she could see the adaptive re-use mentality in play with local shops, restaurants, and even government and non-profit entities like my old stomping grounds of the Frederick Visitor Center, she would be very proud. 

What resonated most with me was a poignant quote that Ms. Haines used to start off a Sidelights column dated June 4th, 1965. This line was attributed to a gentleman named Fred Gebhardt who wrote an article the previous year in DAR Magazine:
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“Tomorrow is built upon yesterday,
Therefore let us save America’s yesterday—today.
Let us not wait for tomorrow,
For tomorrow might be too late.”
 
Oh, how important and powerful this quote is today, looking back at the activity that saved much in our little town, while the county seat of Ms. Haines home county, Rockville, lost so much of its heritage through historic structures. Ever since I’ve lived here in Frederick (1974), I’ve always heard the expression: “Don’t let happen to Frederick, what happened to Rockville.”

​I use this brief parlay into Ms. Haines’ life as a grand introduction into my main subject of this week’s “Story in Stone.” This is the decedent buried under the fine monument Ms. Haines described in the above-mentioned passage from 1962--George Late Tyler, a man from a prominent Frederick family who would transition in life from selling sewing machines in 1860, to receiving commendations for gallantry in the Battle of the Wilderness four years later, to fighting Indian tribes in the wild west over the next 17 years until his untimely death in 1881 at the age of 42.

​George Late Tyler
Born February 12th, 1839 in Frederick City, George Late Tyler was one of five children of the marriage union between George Murdoch Tyler and Ann Maria “Mary” Late. George Late Tyler’s grandfather was Dr. William Bradley Tyler (1788-1863), a prominent physician. Dr. Tyler, the son of an English immigrant, made his way to Frederick in 1814 from his native Prince Georges County after stints in Baltimore and Leesburg, VA .  In addition to medicine, he served as clerk of the county court and would serve in politics on the local and state level including a run for governor in 1825.

George’s namesake father was a merchant of shoes and boots here in town, with a shop located at in the first block of North Market Street on the west side of the street. The family lived next door his father, Dr. Tyler, on Record Street. 

​Our subject attended local school for his early education. He didn’t have far to go, as he attended the Old Frederick Academy located across Record Street from his home. A few of his classmates included future military men who would make names for themselves in the coming American Civil War. Two of these were Alexander Swift “Sandie” Pendleton, son of All Saints Church rector William N. Pendleton who would serve as the youngest officer on Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s staff; and Winfield Scott Schley, who went on to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and participated in the Vicksburg Campaign.

​George, himself, and brother Ira, would serve in the Civil War under the Union flag. The Tyler family, however, was one of those families that was split in allegiance. George’s paternal uncle, local lawyer Bradley Tyler Johnson, would serve as Maryland’s highest-ranking Rebel, promoted to brigadier general and responsible for commanding the 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA.

​Frederick history buffs in the know may recall that Dr. William B. Tyler owned slaves, but was also a major Union supporter who hosted President Abraham Lincoln for a meal in his home on Lincoln’s brief visit to town on October 4th, 1862. More confusion from the war that featured Southerners (including many Confederate soldiers) that didn’t believe in slavery and thought their rights were being trampled by a “collusion of northern states,” and die-hard Unionists in the north who maintained slaves, somehow convinced that it was their right within the Union, which it was in border states. So complicated, even for seasoned historians like myself to attempt to comprehend.

​George Late Tyler’s life would be defined by the United States military, hence the gravestone depicting this fact. Before I get to that history, let me “sew” some seeds of what his life may have been had the American Civil War not come about.

As would be expected, George worked as a clerk in his father’s store, with the intent of taking over the business one day, or at the least breaking off with his own. In 1860,  an article in the Frederick Examiner newspaper talks of 21-year old George as Frederick’s agent for a newfangled invention that would help define the industrial revolution.

​The first sewing machine to combine all the disparate elements of the previous half-century of innovation into the modern sewing machine was the device built by English inventor John Fisher in 1844, a little earlier than the very similar machines built by Isaac Merritt Singer in 1851, and the lesser known Elias Howe, in 1845. However, due to the botched filing of Fisher's patent at the Patent Office, he did not receive due recognition for the modern sewing machine in the legal disputations of priority with Singer, and Singer reaped the benefits of the patent. 

​Meanwhile, a man named Allen B. Wilson developed a shuttle that reciprocated in a short arc, which was an improvement over the sewing machines of Singer and Howe. However, John Bradshaw had patented a similar device and threatened to sue, so Wilson decided to try a new method. He went into partnership with Nathaniel Wheeler to produce a machine with a rotary hook instead of a shuttle. This was far quieter and smoother than other methods, with the result that the Wheeler & Wilson Company produced more machines in the 1850s and 1860s than any other manufacturer. Wilson also invented the four-motion feed mechanism that is still used on every sewing machine today. This had a forward, down, back and up motion, which drew the cloth through in an even and smooth motion. 

George Late Tyler was on the cutting edge and likely the apple of local seamstresses’ eyes—sales were booming. But there was an ugly side to the business. Throughout the 1850s, more and more companies were being formed, each trying to sue the others for patent infringement. This triggered something known as “the Sewing Machine War.” A former law student at George Mason School of Law wrote the following in a 2009 research paper: “The invention and incredible commercial success of the sewing machine is a striking account of early American technological, commercial, and legal ingenuity, which heralds important empirical lessons for how patent thicket theory is understood and applied today.”
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In 1856, the Sewing Machine Combination was formed, consisting of Singer, Howe, Wheeler, Wilson, and Grover and Baker. These four companies pooled their patents, with the result that all other manufacturers had to obtain a license for $15 per machine. This lasted until 1877 when the last patent expired.

​The winds of another war swept up George. He joined the ranks of the 4th regiment of the Potomac Home Brigade. An effort had been made to raise this outfit during the winter of 1861-62.  Only three companies (A, B & C) were organized for a term of enlistment for three years. Company “A” was raised in Hagerstown, Company “B” in Baltimore, and Company “C” in Frederick County. Initially these three companies were assigned to guard duty along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, between Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg. 

​On August 11th, 1862 George L. Tyler’s company was incorporated into the ranks of the 3rd Potomac Home Brigade. This infantry outfit was also assigned to duty as railroad guard on Upper Potomac in Maryland and Virginia. Less than a month later, the war came to Frederick as Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Confederate troops camped in and around Frederick City from September 5-10th.

​The invaders (or liberators for some families) headed west and were eventually engaged by the Union Army at South Mountain and Sharpsburg (Battle of Antietam). George L. Tyler participated in the Rebel siege of nearby Harper's Ferry with the Battle for Maryland Heights (September 12th-15th) led by Gen. Stonewall Jackson with help from Tyler’s old schoolmate, Sandie Pendleton.

​The Potomac Home Brigade’s 3rd Regiment surrendered on September 15th. They were paroled September 16th and sent to Annapolis. George would be transferred into Company F of Maryland’s 7th Volunteer Infantry unit and was promoted to the rank of adjutant. For those not familiar with this rank, an “adjutant” is a military appointment given to an officer who assists the commanding officer with unit administration, mostly the management of human resources in army unit. I’m thinking there was some “family pull” somewhere that got these guys into higher-end duties. Meanwhile, around this same time, George’s younger brother, Ira, would be commissioned a 1st lieutenant in the 6th Maryland Volunteer Infantry.

As for the 7th Maryland, who had served guard duty in the defenses of Washington, the regiment was sent to the Shenandoah Valley for operations. Their first combat came on March 13, 1863, when they repulsed a charge by the 5th Virginia Infantry regiment. They were sent to V Corps, Army of the Potomac. At the Battle of Gettysburg, they were forced to withdraw from the Peach Orchard early on the second day. They were among the units who repelled Pickett's charge. The unit was stationed for garrison duty in southern Pennsylvania and was involved in skirmishes against some of Confederate Gen. Jubal Early's infantry units.
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George Tyler would participate in the Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5th–7th, 1864, the first battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, around 5,000 men killed in total, a harbinger of a bloody war of attrition by Grant against Lee's army and, eventually, the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. The battle was tactically inconclusive, as Grant disengaged and continued his offensive.

​Tyler would suffer a gunshot wound that would severely injure his right hip while in combat at the Battle of the Wilderness. He would later be breveted captain for gallantry and meritorious service.

Tyler would go unassigned during reorganization of the army in 1869. Late in 1870, he was appointed to the Second Cavalry, and was a member of F Troop. He would soon make his way west to the Montana Territory and Fort Ellis located at today's Bozeman, Montana.

​The story of the US Cavalry in the west is not a pretty history in hindsight, however, it is our unblemished history, nonetheless. Here are some highlights of the unit’s major activity during the decade:

On 23 January 1870, elements of Companies F, G, H, and L participated in the Marias Massacre in the Montana Territory, where 200 Piegan Blackfeet Indians were killed. After this massacre, Federal Indian policy changed under President Grant, and more peaceful solutions were sought. On 15 May 1870, SGT Patrick James Leonard was leading a party of 4 other troopers from C Company along the Little Blue River in Nebraska attempting to locate stray horses. A band of 50 Indians surrounded this detachment and the men raced for cover and made a fortified position with their two dead horses. One trooper, PVT Thomas Hubbard, was wounded, but they managed to hold the Indians at bay and inflicted several casualties. When the hostile band retreated after an hour of fighting, the troopers left, took a settler family under their charge and returned safely. All 5 men were awarded the Medal of Honor (SGT Patrick J. Leonard, and PVTs Heth Canfield, Michael Himmelsback, Thomas Hubbard, and George W. Thompson). Today, junior NCOs in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment compete for the Sergeant Patrick James Leonard award.

​​On 18 September, a force of 600 men under General Oliver Otis Howard and Colonel Nelson A. Miles, including Troops F, G, and H of the 2nd Cavalry, marched to stop Chief Joseph's band from reaching Canada. L Troop was sent back to Fort Ellis to gather supplies but would join the expedition later. On 30 September 1877, the Battle of Bear Paw Mountain began. The three Troops of 2nd Cavalry were dispatched to drive away the Indians' ponies by attacking their rear. G Troop, under LT Edward John McClernand, caught up with Chief White Bird as he and his band tried to escape to Canada. The ensuing engagement was brief, but violent, and resulted in the capture of the Indians and their mounts. Lt McClernand was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallantry. After a four-day siege, Chief Joseph surrendered his band to General Howard on 4 October 1877.

​The following newspaper article praises Capt. George L. Tyler "who bore an honorable part."

​In the fall of 1878, the 2nd Cavalry was posted in two forts in Montana; Fort Custer and Fort Keogh with the mission of preventing Chief Sitting Bull from returning to US territory after escaping to Canada. In early winter, Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf left their reservations in Oklahoma and began moving northwards. Dull Knife was intercepted and surrendered at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, but Little Wolf sought shelter in the Sand Hills of Wyoming. Elements of E and I Troop under LT William P. Clark (who had earned a special rapport with the Indians) were sent to negotiate with these stalwarts. The band was located near Box Elder Creek, Montana on 25 March 1879, and was persuaded to accompany the troopers back to Fort Keogh. During the march back, on 5 April, several Indians escaped and attacked the soldiers. SGT T.B. Glover took 10 men of B Troop and charged the numerically superior enemy, forcing them to surrender, and SGT Glover received the Medal of Honor for this action. Chief Little Wolf eventually surrendered his band when the party returned to Fort Keogh.

(NOTE: The above info came from editor Chris Golden’s "History, Customs, and Traditions of the "Second Dragoons" (2011). 

The summer of 1880 featured another trip home to Frederick by George L. Tyler. I don't know how his military leave worked, or whether his trips back home were add-ons to visits to superiors in Washington. Regardless, he can be found in Frederick within the 1880 US Census.

​George Late Tyler died in town on October 20th, 1881. He was buried in the Tyler family lot in Area E/Lot 184. A remarkable monument was erected in his honor--a true masterpiece. 

Some years ago, I stumbled upon a grave in Mount Olivet’s Area H/Lot R. It was that of Rev. Thomas Scott Bacon. I paused for the second as the name resonated with me. Not because of the savory, pork-related surname, but for history's sake. I searched my brain, full of infinite Frederick-oriented history, names, dates, sordid trivia, and random tidbits to make the connection. The light bulb went off as I eventually associated with the early days of All Saints Episcopal Church. The incident did little more to embed a potential idea in my brain for a future story.

Back last summer, I was talking with a friend (and member of the All Saints congregation) about a beloved later minister of the same church, Rev. Osborne Ingle, who lost his wife and six children between 1881-1883. We somehow got talking about other faith leaders in the church’s illustrious history, inspired by a gallery of photos that exists in a hallway outside the church office within their worship center complex between West Church, North Court and West Patrick streets.
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I pronounced to said friend that some of these ministers on the wall were buried in Mount Olivet, and somehow mentioned Rev. Thomas Bacon being in the mix. My friend reprimanded me saying, “Well that’s a different Rev. Thomas Bacon you have there, perhaps a relative, but not the legendary man who lived during Maryland’s Colonial Period, led our church and was responsible for a compilation work commonly referred to as “Bacon’s Laws.”

I was certainly taken aback but when I came back to the cemetery that afternoon. I stopped by the Rev. Bacon grave and realized my "grave mistake" because this Rev. Thomas Scott Bacon was born in 1825 and died in 1904. This was in no way my famous Rev. guy—case closed.

The other day, my boss (Ron Pearcey) was researching individuals within an unmarked mass grave here in Mount Olivet that belongs to the All Saints Episcopal Church within Area MM. In our records, this particular parcel is labeled as sub Area N/Lot 71—one of ten lots bought by the church in the early 20th century. This mass burial holds the unknown remains of 286 people brought here in 1913, and formerly buried in the All Saints Burying Ground, once located between East All Saints Street and Carroll Creek. As Ron was rattling off names, my ears perked up on one that was eerily familiar—Rev. Thomas Bacon.

I did a doubletake and asked Ron again about this, saying that I was told “the famed reverend” was not here, but we only had another, later Thomas Bacon. How was I, or anyone else of today, aware of this fact because we don’t have a tombstone with appropriate birth and/or death dates?
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So, we have two Rev. Thomas Bacons here in Mount Olivet. My quest here with this story is equally two-fold: 1.) Who were these guys; and, 2.) How many degrees of separation are either Rev. Bacons to each other, and more importantly, Kevin Bacon.  

Rev. Thomas Bacon (1711-1768)
The first of the Thomas Bacons we will cover is the more famous of the two. Much has been written about this Episcopal clergyman, musician, poet, publisher and author. Rev. Bacon was considered “the most learned man in Maryland of his day,” and is still known as the first compiler of Maryland statutes. His career path was much different than his father and grandfather who were ship captains in the coal trade bringing the resource between England and Ireland.

Rev. Bacon and his brother would come to Maryland after the death of their parents and lived on the Eastern Shore with maternal uncles Thomas and Anthony Richardson who were tobacco plantation shipping magnates back to England. Young Anthony Bacon would captain a ship at a young age, return to England at age 22 and become one of the greatest merchants and industrialists of the 18th century in that country coming from humble beginnings to becoming a Member of Parliament and one of the richest commoners in England. His brother Thomas, our subject, didn’t do all that bad either in his own chosen vocation.
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I found the following information regarding him from a biography found on the Maryland State Archives website (msa.maryland.gov) and Geneaology.com:

The eldest child of mariner William Bacon and his second wife, Elizabeth Richardson, Thomas was probably born a year or so after their 1710 marriage. He had an elder half-brother William and a younger brother Anthony (baptised in 1716). Thomas Bacon was either born on the Isle of Man, or at his parents' earlier home in Whitehaven, a port town in Cumberland, after which they moved to the island.

​Frederick Town was established in 1745, then part of Prince Georges County. Frederick County would come three years later in 1748. Early English settlers called for the establishment of a second parish in the northern reaches of Prince Georges County. This would become a reality in 1742 with the establishment of the All Saints’ Parish. Rev. Joseph Jennings would be the first to serve the parish, which became seen as the most lucrative and extensive parish in the colony which included most of Western Maryland and today’s area of Montgomery County.
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Records are scarce but Jennings was replaced at his post by Rev. Samuel Hunter, formerly of Christ Church, Kent Island. In 1748, an Act of Assembly directed the erection of the parish church at Frederick Town. Justices of the Peace of Frederick County would levy a tax to raise 100 pounds in 1750 to complete a worship structure to be placed in Frederick Town. They built a stone and brick structure as the area’s first Anglican Church. It was located atop a hill between Carroll Creek and the aptly-named All Saints Street.  The specific location has long-since been redeveloped as it was atop the hill that hosts the Live at Five concerts on the creek, between East All Saints and the amphitheater adjacent the creek and across from the C. Burr Artz Public Library The brick was allegedly imported from England. 

​An old description of the structure says: “It was approached by a paved walk leading from the gateway. It was built east to west. One arm, pointing north where it joined the main aisle held the pulpit so that the rector could face all the congregation. There was a brick floor and high back pews. There was no fire. People carried their foot warmers—wooden boxes lined with tin, some with an iron drawer which held about a tin cup of coals; these to keep the feet warm. We suppose the body was comfortably clad.” The first minister to preside here was the fore-mentioned Rev. Hunter.
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Not much more is known about Hunter, however he is mentioned in parish histories as being a driving force in completing the church and two other chapels in the vast county of the day. He would die in October of 1758 and was laid to rest in the burying ground next to the church. In checking the records associated with our All Saints’ mass gravesite, I found Rev. Hunter here in Mount Olivet as well in the mass grave with his church successor, Rev. Thomas Bacon.

​Rev. Bacon came to Frederick from Talbot County. The History of All Saints’ Church states:

​ “Although Mr. Bacon was in impaired health at the time of his arrival in Frederick, his administration showed marked activity, not only in his ministerial duties but along philanthropic lines. During his entire ministry he labored untiringly for the cause of education and for improving the condition of the poor.”

Rev. Bacon’s reputation in regard to personal life had preceded him, having been twice married. He sailed from England with his first wife and son John, probably born in the early 1730s. After her death, in the mid-1750s, the widower clergyman was involved in a scandal, with a spinster mulatto woman named Beck, who accused him of being the father of her child. That was not proven, and he filed a defamation suit, which plodded through the courts. In 1756, Bacon remarried Elizabeth Bozman, the daughter of Col. Thomas Bozman, a prominent Talbot County resident. However, that too caused scandal, for Rev. Bacon had earlier married this woman to Rev. John Belchier, and after the couple moved to Philadelphia, Elizabeth learned that her husband was an adventurer and bigamist (having left a wife in England) so she returned home to Maryland and married the widower Bacon. Bacon would be fined for not properly reading the marriage bans beforehand, but could not pay, so this would be another legal situation that would follow him for years. Thomas Bacon’s only son, John, served as a lieutenant in the French & Indian War who commanded troops hailing from Annapolis. He was killed and scalped near Fort Cumberland.

​The talented music composer and flautist used his time at All Saints in Frederick “to finish his great work chronicling all Maryland's laws since the first in 1638.” He would also include the Maryland Charter and other useful appendices. It was 1762 before the manuscript had been verified with the original statutes and was ready to print although printing was apparently delayed by lack of suitable paper and the quality type, incidentally being supplied by his brother Sir Anthony from England. It was 1765 before “The Bacon Laws” was printed by the Maryland Gazette’s publisher, Jonas Green, in Annapolis. Bound copies would be available the following year, and in finished form consisted of 1000 pages on the largest paper and was of a quality unsurpassed in America at that time. Bacon’s creation, entitled Compilation, would become a very important historical document of the formation of Maryland.

​The close connection between Church and State, and the influence of many laws upon the rights and relations of the clergy, had influenced Bacon in undertaking this work. At the same time, the endeavor also required his presence at Annapolis a great part of the time which required the need for an assistant to help him in the discharge of his parochial duties. Bacon's abridgement of the Laws of Maryland became celebrated. The Lord Proprietor of Maryland, Frederick Calvert, who originally subscribed to 100 pounds, gave Rev. Bacon a gold snuff box, which was later noted in the inventory of his estate.

I learned that Bacon also penned Maryland’s response to Benjamin Franklin’s complaint on behalf of Pennsylvania regarding an ongoing border dispute with its southern neighbor. These writings appeared in London and helped bring resolution through the marking of the Mason-Dixon line by English surveyors of the same name. The above-mentioned internet sources also shared more about Bacon and his work with the church in connection to the institution of slavery:

“Rev. Bacon also became known for his concerns with the education of children in his parish, and especially the religious education of African Americans. Himself a slaveowner, beginning in 1749, Bacon published several sermons lecturing masters about the benefits of extending religion to their slaves, and grave consequences should they fail to fulfill their duties. Like Alexander Garden and George Whitefield, Bacon reassured slaveowners that religious principles upheld their earthly authority over their slaves. Bacon started a school to instruct African Americans, and received books from the Anglican organization of Dr. Thomas Bray. Two collections of his sermons were republished in London: Two Sermons Preached to a Congregation of Black Slaves at the Parish of S.P. In the Province of Maryland, By an American Pastor (London, 1749), and Four Sermons upon the Great and Indispensable Duty of All Christian Masters and Mistresses to Bring up Their Negro Slaves in the Knowledge and Fear of God (London, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 1750).
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In 1750, Bacon published a pamphlet and began a subscription to provide a school for free, manual training for children without regard to race, sex, or status. He solicited subscribers from other colonies, giving several concerts in Maryland and Delaware and even traveling to Williamsburg, Virginia the following year to raise funds. The Charity Working School was built in 1755 and operated for a time, including under Rev. Bacon's successor as rector, but Talbot County officials ultimately converted it into a poorhouse.

​Rev. Thomas Bacon died in Frederick on May 24th, 1768 at the age of 57, leaving his widow Elizabeth and three daughters (Rachel, Elizabeth, and Mary). His daughter Elizabeth moved to England to become a servant to his brother Anthony's wife, and both Rachel and Mary ultimately married and remained in the colony. The reverend was buried in the All Saints’ churchyard.

I found an interesting anecdote regarding Rev. Bacon in my friend Nancy Bodmer's "Buckey's Town: A Village Remembered" published in 1984. The definitive history on the southern Frederick hamlet contains a series of diary entries by former resident William H. Thomas (1878-1938) towards the end of the book. The particular passage is dated January 15th, 1890:

"This afternoon after school, a bunch of us were coasting down the big hill trying to see who could coast the farthest. All had come down but John Dutrow who was waiting for a sleigh to cross over the bridge so he could have a clear road. Just as John's sleigh whizzed over the bridge, old Dr. Bacon who was walking to the store, stepped in front of the sled. He landed on top of John and John's sled in the deep snow alongside the road. Dr. Bacon was furious and gave him a scolding and told him how terrible it was to knock people down on a public highway."

​Six Degrees
So there you have it, two slabs of heavenly bacon for you. But I did promise one more quest….the connection, if any, of our Mount Olivet subjects  to actor Kevin Bacon. I went back nine generations on the star of “Footloose,” and found the commonality of recent generations living in Kevin’s hometown of Philadelphia, and being Quakers in faith.

​Going back to early Colonial times, immigrant Samuel Bacon (1636-1695), Kevin’s seventh great-grandfather, hailed from the village of Stretton in Rutland County, England, located in the East Midlands of the country. It is thought that he came to America with his parents William and Ann, and siblings including a brother Nathaniel. 

​As for Rev. Thomas Scott Bacon, his immigrant ancestor was Michael Bacon (1579-1648), a native of Winston in Suffolk County, England. Like Kevin Bacon’s ancestor (Samuel Bacon), Michael Bacon came to Massachusetts during the Great Puritan Migration (1620-1640). He arrived somewhere around 1636 as well, but settled in Dedham, Massachusetts, a town southwest of Boston and located in Suffolk County.

​The family stayed in Dedham through several generations before our subject Thomas Scott Bacon’s grandfather, Capt. Abner Bacon (erroneously called David in the earlier bio) relocated to Oneida, New York in the early 1800s. In fact, Capt. Abner (1758-1832) participated in the American Revolution and was among the combatants who fought in the famed Battle of Bunker Hill. Rev. T. S. Bacon’s father William (1789-1863), as mentioned earlier, was a man of the cloth as well, however he served as a Presbyterian minister. 

Finally, Rev. Thomas Bacon of All Saints Church came from Whitehaven, Cumberland County, England on the northwest coast of England. He arrived in Maryland in 1745. I could only get back as far as the reverend’s grandfather, Thomas Bacon.

​​I didn’t find any true relative connections between the three gentlemen in question. I also tried desperately to find a common thread to the famous English philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), and Nathaniel Bacon (1646-1676) who led Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676-1677 against Virginia’s governor, William Berkeley. 

Now if I had the time and resources available, I’m sure that there is likely kindred blood as you go back further in time. Family tradition between all three individuals above has surely conjured up thoughts that the Bacons were descendants of a Norman invader, Grimbald,  who settled near Holt, Norfolk (England) soon after the 1066 invasion. Either he brought the Bacon name with him, or he took it from old English (perhaps from the Saxon word for beech tree, "buccen" or "baccen"), or perhaps Grimbald took it on as an existing local placename: Beaconsthorpe or Baconsthorpe (which means Bacon's village). The ancient manor home is in the village of Baconsthorpe (Baconsthorpe Castle).

In this whole exercise, I did discover an interesting, personal connection, afterall. I am related to Kevin Bacon through my father's great-grandmother, Emma (Hall) Cook whose own grandfather hailed from Cumberland County, New Jersey and was descended from the Bacons.

I never thought I’d be tired of bacon/Bacon, but at this point, I'm getting fried. I will leave you with two last thoughts:

1.) "It is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle not in decay, but how much more is it to behold an ancient noble family which has stood against the waves and weathers of time." 
-Sir Francis Bacon

​2.) see below

Well, this was a spring to forget. It officially began on Friday, March 20th—the day a state quarantine was issued due to the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing and self-hibernation took the place of baseball games, public Easter Egg hunts and church services, and graduation ceremonies. Most mom’s got short-changed on their very own day (Mother’s Day), and we even lost the opportunity to enjoy Spring Break! At least there was no excuse for us not to get spring cleaning chores completed.

In doing some research of late I got to thinking about the confusion inherent with our English language and those pesky words with multiple meanings. In particular, I thought of the word spring which above I have used according to the definition as the season after winter and before summer, in which vegetation begins to appear, in the northern hemisphere from March to May and in the southern hemisphere from September to November.

But what about “the resilient device, typically a helical metal coil, that can be pressed or pulled but returns to its former shape when released, used chiefly to exert constant tension or absorb movement.”
Ironically, I always received a Slinky® in my Easter basket as a kid, what does that say about the universe? Back to the word spring, what about its usage as a verb? —“To move or jump suddenly or rapidly upward or forward.” Last, but not least, we can’t forget spring as an origin of water, a point at which H2O flows from an aquifer to the Earth's surface. 

​Hey, you don’t have to tell me about the latter springs! In addition to the multitude of Slinkys® obtained in the Aprils of my youth, I couldn’t avoid them from a geographic reference. I grew up in what is officially known as Bootjack Springs northwest of Frederick City, in a house located 100 yards from the intersection of Indian Springs Road and Rocky Springs Road. I even went to Yellow Springs Elementary School.

​My Dad actually took me once a month to “The Spring,” at which place an iron (or dare I say lead) pipe emitted from a rock outcropping located somewhere off Hamburg Road where we would diligently fill empty milk jugs with salubrious “spring” water. Sadly, something that cannot be enjoyed today in the same fashion, but back then was there even such a thing as bottled spring water outside Perrier?

​This week’s “Story in Stone,” connects a person/family with one of the more famous springs in our area. Known as Riehl's Spring, it does not exist today, but it was a focal point of town for centuries.

Riehl’s Spring was a Godsend for the people of downtown. It lay directly beside two downtown landmarks: Carroll Creek and the original Barbara Fritchie house on West Patrick Street. It was used by locals since the 1700s for its seemingly endless supply of cold, clean refreshment. According to myths and legends that were bantered around in the early 20th century, the spring was said to have possibly been the location for everything from Native American treaty signing ceremonies to a watering hole for George Washington and patriotic militiamen. Neither of these happenings have been proven so far.

Frederick diarist, Jacob Engelbrecht (1798-1878) lived diagonally across the street from the aqua-source and gives us a good description as a journal entry from July 13th, 1825:

“Riehl’s Spring” The spring about 200 feet south from the Bentztown Bridge, was until the last 4 years called “Zimmeryergel’s Spring.” It first derived its name from the original proprietor George Schneider who was a carpenter by profession and small in stature. Carpenter in German is “Zimmer” and “Yergel” means “Small George” & he was generally called “Zimmeryergel.” Mrs. Riehl is the present proprietess, is his daughter.

The “Mrs. Riehl” that Engelbrecht refers to here passed away the following November (1825). She was Elisabeth Schneider Riehl (b. 1763), the wife of Johann George Riehl (1763-1801). I want to think that the spring is named for her, and not her husband, since it dates back to her family’s ownership which began in 1778. It could have taken the moniker of Schneider’s Spring, but let’s face it, Riehl’s Spring rattles off the tongue much easier than Zimmeryergel’s Spring. I can’t tell you much more about the Schneider family, but I did find that Elisabeth apparently bought the property from her father in 1812.

The property began 12 feet west from the west end of the West Patrick Street Bridge over Carroll Creek, fronted 25.5 feet on West Patrick and ran back 268.5 ft. This is the easternmost portion of a property George Snider bought from John Hanson Jr in 1778 (the entire property stretched 181.5 ft along what is now West Patrick).

As for her husband’s family, Mr. (George) Riehl descended from Johann Fredrich Riehl (or Ruhl to begin with) who originally came to America from the area of Strasburg, Germany. The Riehl family can be found settled in the area of Middletown by the early 1760s and are found to be early parishoners of the fabled Monocacy Lutheran Church. Other sons appear to be Frederick Riehl (1760-1828) and Johann Jacob Riehl died at the age of 14 in 1792.
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George and Elisabeth married in 1788 and from this union came four children: Sophia (1789-1792/died of Typhoid Fever); Johannes (b. 1791); Anna (1791-1794); and Jacob (b. 1795). This youngest child would be the only one who would grow into adulthood and assumed the family property in question.

Jacob Riehl
Jacob Riehl was born on October 5th, 1795 in Frederick, and baptized at Evangelical Lutheran Church. His father died when he was only six. If this didn’t force an early adulthood, I’m sure warfare did as he would participate as a soldier in the War of 1812.

Private Jacob Riehl served in the 1st Regiment, Maryland Militia under the command of Captain John Brengle from August 25 through September 19, 1814 when the unit was discharged. He was among those “minutemen” gathered hastily when Capt. Brengle and Lutheran minister David F. Schaeffer rode through the streets of town that late august of 1814 in an effort to pull together a company to help rescue Washington under attack by the British. Plans quickly changed, and these volunteers helped secure victory with the successful defense of Baltimore on September 13-14. In the process, Mount Olivet’s front-gate greeter won fame by doodling a little ditty while held in captivity within eye and earshot of Fort McHenry—a story for another day of course.

Jacob married Catherine Boswell on December 9th, 1821 in Frederick. The couple had four known children, but only two would live into adulthood: George Valentine Riehl (1822-1824); John Henry Riehl born January 9th, 1824; Charles William Riehl born September 3rd, 1825; and George Henry Riehl (1829-1831).

Elizabeth Riehl willed the family property on West Patrick Street, including the spring, to son Jacob in 1825. Outside of that, I didn’t glean a great deal about Jacob’s early life, however he was the talk of the town in fall of 1826. Again, we can learn a great deal from Mr. Engelbrecht and his diary:
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“Cactus Triangilaris or night blooming Cerius” belonging to Mr. Jacob Riehl of this city was in bloom last night. 14 flowers opened & there are several other buds that will open this or tomorrow evening. Mr. Riehl had it beautifully illuminated and exposed in his yard for the inspection of the public.

​In fall of 1830, a fund drive was taken up for repairing Riehl’s Spring including the paving of walks and reconstruction of steps. Apparently the Corporation of Frederick City would attempt to acquire this site for decades as a source of clean water for the town. The superintendents were John Ebert, John C. Fritchie (husband of Barbara), and Jacob Engelbrecht. The corporation chipped in $10 and a host of citizens put forth money for the site holding the position as city spring. Others in town donated needed building supplies instead of money such as flagstone and bricks.  

​In that same 1860 census, Jacob is listed as a confectioner. Jacob served his country, or at least city, with the call to arms in spring 1861, shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter. He became a member of the Brengle Home Guards, formed in April of that year. The unit named for his old commander in 1814, the 65-year-old performed local militia duties on behalf of the Union Army during the American Civil War such as providing protection for state legislators and guarding supplies, etc.

In 1861, a fire destroyed the second Frederick County Courthouse. Some speculate that it could have been Southern Sympathizers but that has never been proven.  Regardless, it would take two years to complete demolition as it was wartime and Frederick played an active role.

​On October, 1863, the Frederick County Court commenced for the first time in a new courthouse, the one we know today as our home to Frederick City’s mayor and municipal staff. A new bell had been installed in the cupola atop the structure. The honor of ringing the bell that day to signify that court was once again in session was given to Jacob Riehl as he was titled, the keeper of the court-house.

​The vicinity of Riehl’s Spring was the scene of Civil War legend as it was adjacent to the famed home of Barbara Fritchie. One of the many stories of Frederick’s patriotic dame says that at least on one occasion, Barbara hastily swept out Rebel interlopers who decided to hang out enjoying the delicious, cool libations the spring had to offer. Adding insult to injury, these Confederates were “spouting” off derogatory talk about Ms. Fritchie’s beautiful Union, and this did not sit well to the nonagenarian flag-waver. Although it is highly unlikely that famed Gen. Stonewall Jackson took notice of Riehl’s Spring, we are likely to have an illustration dated from the late 1870s that shows the Riehl’s home on the west side of Carroll Creek.  

​Catherine Riehl died on January 1st, 1873 at the family home on West Patrick Street. Three and a half years later on August 28th, 1876, Jacob died at the family home on West Patrick Street. They are buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Section H, Lot 52.

​The Riehl family home went to Jacob’s son, John Henry (of plastering fame) and daughter-in-law Catherine (Stone) (1826-1909). The Riehl’s still lived here in 1880. They had four children:  Charles and William Riehl; Pricilla (Riehl) Brust, of this city; and Miss Bessie Riehl, later of Cincinnati, Ohio.

​John Henry Riehl died in 1895, and I’m not quite sure what his widow was doing in the decade before his death. Catherine (Stone) Riehl would die over a decade later. Known as "Aunt Cassie," we are fortunate to have a photo of her at the spring as a reporter included her in a story touting Carroll Park.  She would pass in 1909.

 In 1901, the Riehl heirs sold the property to Arabella Faubel. She sold it to Georgianna Simmons in 1907, who then sold to the City of Frederick. 

​​It was a long wait, but set the stage for a municipal park. As an aside, Miss Simmons donated two other city lots to Frederick City Hospital which would become the site of the aptly named Georgianna Simmons Nurses Home. 

​Carroll Park
This was the original, “old school” portion of the Carroll Creek Linear Park. In 1907, Frederick alderman, and successful downtown merchant, David Lowenstein suggested putting a monument in the vicinity of where the Barbara Fritchie house had once stood. The legendary home had been partially destroyed in the Great Flood of 1868, and subsequently removed completely a short time later in an effort to widen the creek. 

Alderman Lowenstein went one step further by suggesting that a park be built on the west side of Carroll Creek surrounding Riehl’s Spring.  This would become known as Carroll Park, a frequent scene of band concerts, camp meetings and unruly teenagers. Colloquially it also had the name of “Barbara Fritchie Park.”

The Barbara Fritchie Home Association, which was responsible for building the nearby recreation of the heroine’s home, installed the wooden canopy. An article in Frederick Magazine years ago states: “The park itself welcomed residents and visitors for decades, though the once-vibrant spring became little more than a trickle over the succeeding years.” The article concluded by saying that by the 1980s, the once abundant spring was nothing more than “a small pool of dirty water which had collected in the spring pit, and had become a target for litterers.”
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The spring was then redirected and became part of the Carroll Creek Linear Park project, which was built to thwart any future flood devastation from Downtown Frederick. Riehl’s Spring was perfect inspiration for what would come decades later. Pedestrian sidewalks today skirt the town creek and have become a pedestrian friendly asset in recreating and exploring the creek as it winds through downtown. 

So, when you work at a cemetery, there are certain monuments that catch your eye on a daily basis. Yes, some are utterly unique or incredibly artistic. Others may be marking the grave of an outstanding citizen from our past, or have a familiar, Frederick-centric name carved on their faces.

For this week’s “Story in Stone,” I chose a monument that always jumps out at me, solely for the fact that I have never seen the family surname anywhere locally, or in our local history books. I was intrigued because the memorial in question is quite large, and I was particularly curious as to the decedent’s background, having died in 1901 and not recognizing the name at all.
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The gravestone in question is that of James Marion Tetrick and wife Hannah “Jane” (Huey) Tetrick. I would soon learn that neither individual ever lived here in Frederick, or Maryland for that matter. When I first saw their grave, I actually thought it said Detrick but had to do a double-take. Interestingly, I would find a couple connections to Detrick in name and place.

It is fashioned in the style of a sarcophagus, a popular style of the late 19th century and found throughout Mount Olivet. A sarcophagus is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. Although not as ornate as others of this ilk found here, the final place is certainly well-marked with a substantial piece of granite. 

​From time to time, I get asked if bodies are actually placed within these monuments as was done in ancient times. The answer is a resounding no, as these are strictly ornamental. And speaking of ornamental, my research on the couple buried beneath this stone did not reveal as much as I had hoped, however, along the way, I would find another vintage memorial in stone to the Tetricks—one which I never expected to stumble upon.

​The Search
I’ve started research from scratch like this plenty of times before, and am fortunate to have cemetery records at my fingertips. In our Mount Olivet database, I found the Tetricks and corresponding information as to vital dates, parents’ names and exact grave location. I next pulled the lot card for Area MM/Lot 169 and found the original owners to be Mrs. Tetrick and a daughter (Sallie) and a son-in-law named Dr. Rudolph M. Rau. The threesome also owned the adjoining Lot 168, both properties having been purchased in May of 1924. I next located the all-important interment cards for both Mr. and Mrs. Tetrick. 

​The interment cards usually provide “place of death” and “cause of death.” Things now ramped up as I cut to the chase by looking for obituaries for Jane and James (Tetrick). Starting with James, I learned he had died of cancer in August, 1901. I, however, only found a scant mention of death in a Wheeling, West Virginia newspaper from 1901. 

​In the case of Jane Tetrick, I successfully garnered a local obit in the Frederick paper from February, 1931. Although she was living in Parkersburg, WV at the time of her death, the sole reason for local coverage was due to the fact that daughter Sallie (Tetrick) Rau was living in Frederick at 212 Rockwell Terrace at the time. Dr. Rau was listed as a medical surgeon and mental therapeutist. The newspaper makes mention of how Mr. and Mrs. Rau abruptly left town to be with the ailing Mrs. Tetrick in West Virginia.

​I checked for info on the Tetricks in online newspaper archives, Findagrave.com and Ancestry.com. I netted various census records showing both husband and wife to have lived most of their lives in north-central West Virginia. Mr. Tetrick was born in Virginia, as this particular area (Marion County) was not West Virginia until the new state was established during the American Civil War in the year 1864.
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James was born on September 2nd, 1852. He was the son of Peter Tetrick and wife Matilda Nay and grew up on the family farm located along the Buffalo River outside of Mannington in a nearby hamlet named Worthington. His father served as a county justice in the 1850s and was descended from a German immigrant named Henry Christoph Tetrick, born between 1720-1730 in Bavaria, Germany. Henry (d.1814 in Harrison county, VA), our subject’s great-grandfather, immigrated to Virginia sometime around 1740, possibly with brothers named George and Jacob, and his name was Anglicized from De Ryck.

Jane’s Huey family had come from Pennsylvania a few years after her birth in about 1854. She first appears in the 1860 census with her family living in Mannington and her father listed as a shoemaker and grocery store merchant. 

As said earlier, Mannington is located in north central West Virginia and is within Marion County. This town, northwest of Fairmont, has a current population of 2,124 and was originally known as Forks of Buffalo due to its location on Buffalo Creek. The town site was first settled around 1840, and in 1856 it was renamed Mannington in honor of Charles Manning, a civil engineer with the newly constructed Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad.

A new chapter in Mannington's history began in 1889 with the first oil drilling, following recommendations made by Dr. I. C. White, a geologist from Morgantown. Although many felt that the area was unfavorable for oil reserves, White persisted and soon gained enough local support to drill. Following the first strike, late in 1889, real estate prices soared 100% in two days in a boom-town mentality. Dr. White pushed for natural gas exploration. It was this venture, more successful than any before or since, that was most responsible for Mannington's growth.
​
Of course, we are not aided by the presence of an 1890 census record because all were lost in a horrific fire. I did find a small advertisement that listed J.M. Tetrick as a druggist in Mannington that same year. As the town grew, so did the need for banks and Mr. Tetrick can be found on the board of directors for a third bank in the vicinity organized in 1896. James Marion Tetrick was duly elected the bank’s first president.

​Oh, what an exciting time to be in Mannington! The population would increase from approximately 700 people in the late 1800s to over 4,000 by 1917. By 1900, Mannington was a thriving town, complete with its own trolley system, electricity, theaters, schools, fire department, telephones and other amenities. James M. Tetrick even ran for the state’s House of Delegates, but came up short of election.

​Of the many things in death, missed by Mr. Tetrick, was the discovery of oil on his former farm, as evidenced by this news clipping from 1907.

​The body of James Marion Tetrick would repose in Mannington until the year 1924. For one reason or another, his widow would make plans to have his body moved to Mount Olivet in Frederick, Maryland—some 194 miles away. The reburial here in Area MM was performed on June 26th, 1924. This info is clearly written on the back of the interment card, in bold blue pencil, I may add.

​As for the rest of the Tetrick family, Jane would join her husband here in Mount Olivet upon her death in 1931 as referenced earlier. Daughter Willa (Tetrick) McGregor (1884-1944), a resident of Parkersburg, WV, would be buried here in the family plot upon her death in February, 1944.

The Tetrick's other daughter, Sallie, has an interesting story herself. As a Frederick resident since 1911, she and her husband, Dr. Rudolph Rau (1871-1948), have left us some interesting proof of their habitation here in Frederick. Mr. Rau met Miss Tetrick, said to have been quite a beautiful young lady, in West Virginia. He was a native of nearby Bolivar, (WV) in Jefferson County but practiced in Wheeling at which place he and his wife resided before coming here. The physician apparently suffered paralysis while conducting a surgery.

​Forced into an early retirement, the Raus came to Frederick after purchasing a property northwest of the city which once contained the former St. Joseph's Villa located east of today's Rosemont Avenue/Yellow Springs Road near the intersection with Rocky Springs Road. The Jesuits had used this site as a retreat center for aspiring priests and their teachers associated with the Frederick Novitiate Academy, once located on East Second Street. The two-storey, 80 by 60 ft villa they built included a small chapel, recreation room, kitchen, and dormitories.  A porch extended around 3 sides, and occupants could sit on chairs and enjoy the cool mountain breezes.

​The Jesuits stopped using the villa in January 1903, when the Novitiate Academy moved to New York. St. Joseph’s Villa was torn down sometime afterwards. In 1911, Francis T. Lakin sold a 99-acre parcel to Rudolph and Sallie Tetrick Rau. Rau built a 3 storey, Greek Revival-style mansion and carriage house, and also extensively landscaped the property. The imposing mansion had two storey columns and a ballroom on the third floor. The garden and estate fit with the early 20th century gardening trend away from ornate Victorian designs. The Raus would rename their country home Villa Rau.

​According to his obituary, Rau was interested in farming and owned several large farms in Frederick County. Dr. Rau and his family sold the property to Robert S. Bright on January 31st, 1929. Bright used the house as a summer residence until his death in 1943. The 4.5 acre site of the mansion eventually was sold to Macie S. King, and Bright sold the surrounding property to Harry M. Free. The United States government obtained both properties in 1946 as they became part of Fort Detrick. The Rau mansion housed post commanders until it was demolished for safety reasons in 1977. The carriage house was demolished in 1993. 

​Old Mannington
The 1929 stock market crash and the Depression severely affected Mannington's economy. The trolley ceased operation in 1933, factory workers left as demand for products decreased, and the town's population began to decline. The oil and gas boom has long passed, but coal mining became a principal industry in the 1950s. Although many of these industries left the area, the wealth that they brought to the community is still reflected in its handsome historic homes and public buildings. Many are included in the Mannington Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

​While doing some online sightseeing, one building certainly caught my eye, much like the Tetrick sarcophagus burial monument had done to me in the first place. I found a beautiful photograph found on the Flickr website, taken by a Joseph A. from Pittsburgh. It was a streetscape scene which prominently included the former sight of the Mannington Bank, more commonly known as the “Tetrick Building.” The 1898 building located on 102 Buffalo Street has seen better days, as it is in deplorable condition. High atop its face, within its gable, one can see a memorial to the bank’s first president, elected in 1896— J. M. Tetrick. 

​Just as the name Tetrick caught my eye here in Mount Olivet, inspiring me to write this story, I’m betting it has caught countless more as it sits high atop Mannington, WV. A true testament to a life once lived.

It’s mid-May and we are in the throes of graduation season, primarily celebrating the final step toward receiving a high school or college diploma. The earliest institution in Frederick’s rich educational history was Frederick College, once located on the corner of Counsel (Council) and Record streets in the Court Square neighborhood of downtown Frederick. It played a pivotal role as a model for the nation’s early educational facilities. The school represented both a college and high school, as few people would ascertain this higher level of learning at the time of its founding in the late 1700s. The school's first principal is buried here in Mount Olivet, along several other former administrators and teachers. His name is Samuel Knox

With its publication in 1910, T.J.C. Williams’ History of Frederick County chronicled the background of this school, affectionately referred to as “the old Academy” by former students and townspeople alike.
​
“As early as 1763, when this territory was largely wilderness, the (Maryland General) Assembly granted a charter to the Frederick County School and College. Thomas Cresap, Thomas Beatty, Nathan Magruder. Capt. Joseph Chapline, John Darnall, Colonel Samuel Beall and Rev. Thomas Bacon were named as the first Board of Visitors. Strenuous times followed in an effort to realize practically the good sought in the establishment of this pioneer institution. The years of the Revolutionary War put an effective stop to much effort in this direction, and it was not until 1796 that appreciable headway was made, when, partly through the aid of a lottery (a recognized means in those days), the public-spirited generosity of the community was rewarded by seeing erected the first building which is still used as the College.

The records of the early hours of work (as early as 6 A. M. in the Summer months) with the three sessions a day, the almost continuous course from the last of August to the last of July, the daily exhortation to right living and the hour of prayer would make many of our boys of today glad that they did not live in those times, and yet some of the strongest men in the State and Nation came from the walls of the old Academy equipped for life's battles as many of our day are not. Duels were fought and punishment inflicted in the early years of the last century, and the boys took what came to them like men.
​
A fact not generally known is that in 1824, a place on the faculty was sought by a young man from New Hampshire, who was on his way to Ohio; he failed to secure the desired position and continued on his way West and years afterward came East and became known to the Nation in many capacities as Salmon P. Chase.  

​(NOTE:  Chase (1808-1873) was a U.S. politician and jurist who served as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States. He also served as the 23rd Governor of Ohio, represented Ohio in the United States Senate, and served as the 25th United States Secretary of the Treasury.)
​
In 1830 a Collegiate charter was granted by the Assembly, and under it ever since good work has been done. Eight scholars are educated by the College absolutely without charge and ministers and missionaries, physicians and lawyers, merchants and farmers have here secured at no cost to them, the education and training that gave them their place in the world. During the Civil War, the buildings were used, as were most of our churches, for a hospital after the battle of Antietam.

For years Jesse Stapleton Bonsall was Principal, and was known probably to more students than any one teacher that filled that position. Severe, stern, unsparing of self, devoted to his work, the very soul of a high honor, he instilled into his boys the very essence of his life, and by his life and teaching imbued them with the spirit of the School as set forth in its motto: “Non scholae sed vitae; vitae utrique,”—Not for school but for life, both lives.

To call a roster of the boys trained here would read like a census list of this place, and the surrounding country, and would include the names of many long since scattered to the uttermost parts of the United States. The old institution, a pioneer in 1797, a vigorous factor for sound education and morality for more than one hundred years, a blessing and a pride to our community, still wears its venerable smile as it hears of the well-doing of its children, and listen with concern as they come back to tell of the buffetings they have received from the hard, material world. Frederick with its rich historic heritage of great men and stirring events, serenely resting amid the rush and clamor of present day strenuous endeavor, is a fit setting for this old School, grown hoary with the accumulated memories of more than three generations of men.

Frederick College would be supplanted by Boys’ High School as the area’s top place for education in the early years of the 20th century. In 1916, the old Academy structure became the new home of the Frederick County Free Library which had opened in 1914 and moved in here in 1916. The library would operate at this location for the next 23 years before donating its collection to the town’s new C. Burr Artz Library which opened in 1938. In building the new library, the Academy building would be razed in 1936.

​Rev. Samuel Knox
Samuel Knox was born in the year 1756 in County Armagh, Ireland. Apparently, he was from a poor Scotch-Irish Presbyterian family and little else is known about his childhood. He married Grace Gilman in Dublin in 1774. The couple were the parents of four daughters.

The Knox family arrived in Maryland by 1786 and was known to be living in Bladensburg. Here, he taught at a grammar school from 1788-1789. Knox returned to Europe in 1789, and received a Master of Arts from the University of Glasgow in 1792. While there he received Greek and Latin scholarships. After the Presbytery of Belfast licensed him for the ministry, he returned to the United States and was assigned by the Baltimore Presbytery to the Bladensburg pastorate (1795–1797). 

​In 1796, the American Philosophical Society held a contest to design the best system of education for the United States. Samuel Knox entered, proposing a system of national instruction particularly designed for this “wide extent of territory, inhabited by citizens blending together almost all the various manners and customs of every country in Europe.” Providing elementary education for both girls and boys, uniform training and salaries for teachers, standard textbooks produced by a national university press, with a college in every state each charging the same fees and tuition, and at “the fountain head of science” a national university, Knox’s ambitious plan won second prize.

​Rev. Knox performed the dual duties associated with rural Presbyterian ministers of the time. He was a schoolteacher and a “supply pastor,” charged with the religious congregation in Frederick, which he served from 1797–1803. Old papers are full of wedding announcements performed by the Irish clergyman.

​At first, Knox was a heralded figure in Frederick. His reputation preceded him. He was accomplished as a writer of not only award-winning essays and published works. In addition to his religious and educational duties, Knox engaged in the political debates of the day, writing pamphlets in 1798 on English Separatist theologian Joseph Priestley’s “avowed Religious Principles.” In 1800, Knox wrote A Vindication of the Religion of Mr. Jefferson and a Statement of his Services in the Cause of Religious Liberty. Herein, Knox approved of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
​
Speaking of founding fathers, Knox exchanged correspondences with other men of mark including our George Washington. The following is a letter penned by Knox to President Washington in October 1798. 

​Sir,
​
Being About to publish, by subscription an Essay on the best Method of Introducing an Uniform System of Education adapted to the United States, I Beg leave to solicit the favour of your permission to prefix to it an Introductory address to you.

Though I own this Request is dictated by a share of vanity in presuming to be ambitious of so high a recommendatory sanction to my Essay; yet I truly declare that, what has chiefly prompted me thereto arises from a desire to express, on a Subject of that Nature, How much I Consider the Cause of Education indebted to your patronage through the whole of your publick Character.

The Essay I am about to publish, obtain’d the premium offer’d by the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, on that subject, together with one written by a Mr Smith of that place. The Society passed a Resolution to publish them; but were disappointed by the Printer who had Undertaken that Business.

On being inform’d of this by their Secretary, And that the publication would be, on this Account, long retarded, by the advice of some friends I was induc’d to publish it, by subscription, in this State—from the view of its, probably, having some effect in turning the attention of our State-Legislature to that Subject. From this view I have Received the Manuscript from the Secretary of the Phil[adelph]ia Philosophical Society; And shall proceed to publish [as] soon as I Can ascertain whether I am to Have the Honour of dedicating or addressing it to you.

Two or three weeks since I was at Alexandria, designing to have personally waited on you; And if necessary to have given you some view of the Essay—Doctor Steuart near that place who has long known me, promised doing me the favour of introducing me to you; But learning that the State of your Health, at that time, forbade any such trouble, I flatter’d myself that this mode of application might be equally as proper—especially, as I have had the pleasure of seeing it announc’d to the Publick that your Health is again perfectly restor’d.

I Have Spent more than twenty years of my Life in the Education of youth. A considerable part of that time I Resided at Bladensburgh in this State—and remember having once had the Honour of being Introduc’d to you by Coll Fitzgerald of Alexandria—at a publick Examination of the youth in that Academy. Since that time I Study’d four years at one of the most celebrated Universities in Britain—and recd a Master of Art’s Degree, from the view of being Useful to Myself; this Country in particular; and Society in general—in the line of my profession as a Teacher of Youth—and a Minister of the Gospel. On my return to this Country I was offer’d the Charge of the Alexandria-Academy by its Visitors or Trustees with a Salary of 200 pounds Currency per Annum. But having a family to Support, I did not Consider their terms sufficiently liberal; or promising me a sufficient Compensation for the preparatory expence I Had been at in qualifying Myself for the Business.

I take the Liberty of Mentioning these circumstances merely from the view of informing you that in presuming to Solicit the Sanction of your Name to my Publication; and in venturing to lay My thoughts before an enlighten’d Publick on so important a Subject, It has not been without long experience in, as well as mature attention to the most improved Methods of publick Education.

Joining in the general tribute of sincere Congratulation; and thanks to Divine Providence for the restoration of your Health, I am, Sir, your Most devoted Obedt Hble Servt,
​
Saml Knox

(Source: National Archives’ Founders Online website - www.founders/archives.gov)

​Upon Washington’s death in December, 1799, Knox was held in esteem here locally along with others like Thomas Johnson, Jr., a longtime friend of our first president. In March, Knox and his students from the academy would take part in a memorial funeral procession for George Washington through the streets of town and culminating at Frederick’s Presbyterian Church, once located at the southwest corner of North Bentz Street and Dill Avenue. Knox would deliver the funeral oration.

​In late May, 1800, Knox would have the distinct honor of delivering a sermon for a church service with our second president of the United States—John Adams. Adams was traveling through Frederick County and stayed the night. Rev. Knox home church structure being too small, services were conducted in the more spacious Lutheran church in town here. 

Rev. Knox was no stranger to speaking his mind and ruffling feathers. Late in 1802, Knox wrote an open letter to the 16 trustees of the Frederick Town Academy lamenting the fact that none of them had attended the December 23rd examination at the school. He went on to give the full results of the exams and attributed the absence of many trustees to political party spirit. In this letter that was published in the Dec 31st edition of Bartgis’s Republican Gazette, Rev. Knox also gave himself a big pat on the back by including a December 14th letter from the faculty of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) affirming that the performance of Knox’s former students who had enrolled at the college was “creditable to themselves and honorable to their instructor.”

​Knox would move on from Frederick to a place called Soldier’s Delight Hundred, near present day Owings Mills in Baltimore County as the principal of a private academy which would merge with Baltimore College.  This school would apparently merge with another academy and become Baltimore College.

​Rev. Knox had established a firm reputation of one of the country’s top academics. He had a correspondence with Thomas Jefferson’s proposed system of education for the state Virginia. Knox had proposed a similar system for Maryland, with the same lack of success that Jefferson had across the Potomac River. However, Jefferson may have been influenced by Knox’ essays when he designed the University of Virginia in 1816. One year later, the Frederick Academy’s former principal was offered a professorship in languages and belles lettres at the University of Virginia, but the plans fell through. Knox would stay at Baltimore College until 1819.
​
In personal life, Rev. Knox’s wife, Grace, died in Baltimore in November, 1812. Ten years later, the feisty minister married a woman with a biblical name in Zeruiah McCleery. Zeruiah, whose name crudely translates to “pain,” was the daughter of Henry and Martha McCleery. Mr. McCleery and Zeruiah’s brother, Andrew, were accomplished architects with lasting connections to noted Frederick structures such as the second Frederick County courthouse, the second All Saints Church building on N. Court Street, and the Ross and Mathias mansions on Counsel (Council) Street. Knox and Miss McCleery were married on April 17th, 1822—the good reverend was 66 at the time and she was 39. Rev. Knox and Zeruiah would have no children. 

​Perhaps the former Miss McCleery’s influence brought back to her hometown as Knox would return to Frederick and Frederick College in 1823. 

​Rev. Knox continued his publication work and that with the church as well. However, his stay at Frederick College would be short as he was fired in 1827.

Unfortunately, his demise here in western Maryland came because of a dispute with the trustees over retention of the Lancastrian method of instruction, which he had been utilizing. The Lancastrian, or "Lancasterian," system was devised by Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) and has also been called the monitorial method in which more advanced students taught less advanced ones, enabling a small number of adult masters to educate large numbers of students at low cost in basic and often advanced skills. From about 1798 to 1830 it was highly influential, but would be displaced by the "modern" system of grouping students into age groups taught using the lecture method, led by such educators as Horace Mann, and later inspired by the assembly-line methods of Frederick Taylor, although Lancaster's methods continue to be used and rediscovered today. 

History summarizes Samuel Knox as a dedicated reformer with visionary plans for America’s future, however his downfall lay in the fact that he was also a despotic teacher and unable to bring his grandest schemes to fruition. Ideas of his, such as standardized textbooks, are things that are still with us today.

Knox made final waves in early 1828 when he memorialized his trials by submitting to the state legislature an account of the treatment he received from the school's board of trustees with reference to his termination as principal.

​Knox retired in 1827 and busied himself with local activities such as leadership given to the Frederick County Sunday School Union. In trying to find a retirement home, my assistant Marilyn found that Mrs. Knox bought a property formerly owned by her father and today numbered as 29 East Second Street. Rev. Knox lived in Frederick until his death on August 31st, 1832. He was originally buried in Frederick’s Presbyterian burial ground once located at the southwest corner of N. Bentz Street and Dill Avenue. His wife, Zeruiah died in 1839 and was placed by his side.

​In September, 1863, both Rev. Samuel and Zeruiah Knox would be re-interred to Mount Olivet in the McCleery family lot, number 374  within Area H.

For your reading pleasure, the following letter was written by Rev. Samuel Knox to Thomas Jefferson in November, 1818 while the former was still in the employ of Baltimore College.

                                                                                                                                                          Baltre College Novr 30th 1818.
​Sir,
A gentleman of this city, and friend of mine, in passing, some time since, thro’ Virginia, and Near to your Seat, Informed me that he fell in with your Nephew Mr Carr, who kindly enquir’d after me—And also Inform’d him that he had Recently heard you expressing a wish, that if I was not otherwise engag’d, some place Suited to me, might be found in your intended University. Owing chiefly to that casual circumstance, as Related to me, and the idea also, that I shall soon be disengag’d I have presum’d on the Liberty of writing to you on that Subject.
 
Ever since the popular ferment, previous to your Presidential Election, I have been the victim of Party Persecution. At an Annual Meeting of the general Assembly of the church to which I Belong, at Winchester in Virginia, in the month of May preceding your Election, I happen’d to be a Delegate from the Presbytery of Baltimore. In the Course of that Session it was Render’d manifest to several members from Pennsylvania—And from Virginia, of the same principles with myself, that thro’ the Influence of Jedadiah Morse, Near to Boston—and a few other influential men, then at the Assembly—it’s Sitting there, that year—Connected with some matters, then under discussion, was intended to prejudice the Southern Members, who Attended, against your Election. This, I Set myself Against with all the energies in my power And for which, however humble or limited the sphere of that power, or any personal Influence I possess’d, I was not soon to be forgiven.
 
On the same Acct a hostile spirit was taken up Against me by the Trustees of Fredericktown Academy, at that time Under my Direction. The Messrs Potts—And other highly Fedl Gentlemen of that place Remov’d their Sons And plac’d them at Princeton college—Assigning as their Motive that they had been improperly Instructed by me. To counteract a procedure so groundless and malignant—I was forc’d to Send on an Address to the Faculty of Princeton college, Requesting, in the most earnest manner, an examination of the Youth from Fredericktown—And the favour of a certificate of the manner in which They had acquitted themselves on that Examination, on being admitted to their college. The Result was very flattering to me—I Receiv’d a certificate, which the circumstances mentioned Induc’d me to publish, “that no Youths had ever Entered that college, who Done more credit to themselves, or to their Instructor.”
 
That, however, and the Desire of being disconnected from such Patrons of public Education—and parents who could so treat the Instructor of their Sons, Soon afterwards Induced me to Resign the charge of that Institution, at which I had previously a greater Number of students from the different counties in Maryland—and some from the adjacent counties in Virginia than was at that time, in the State college at Annapolis, tho’ Endow’d with an Annuity of Seventeen Hundred pounds—And Conducted by a Faculty of considerable Reputation as to literary Acquirements.
 
After some disappointments, I was Induc’d to Settle in this City. Several friends Had Influenc’d me to Believe that I would Her[e] Breathe, in an Atmosphere, more Congenial with my principles and habits of thinking, than that which I had last experienc’d. At that time, a Number of the Respectable citizens of this place Had obtain’d from the Legislature of Maryland a charter for a college, on liberal principles; but without any Endowment, but such as might be Rais’d by a Lottery; or Voluntary Donations. The first Principal of this New Establishment was a Mr James Priestley—Now, I Believe, of Cumberland college, State of Tennesee. He Relinquish’d Baltre college on Acct of a Differenc[e] with it’s Trustees, Respecting the quantum of his Emolument. The College was Suspended for some time—And afterwards Resum’d Under my Direction. The tide of Party-Spirit, however, still Ran high against me—Not a Fedl Gentleman would put a Son under my tuition. The college of St Mary, in this place, was much more Congenial with their principles—And the Jesuitical Spirit of which, I had first the Honour of developing to the public.
 
At present, tho’ Baltre College, without funds or Endowment, Still maintains an Existence—And tho’ many Youths of Considerable promise of Usefulness to their country Have here finish’d their Course of Education—And tho’ a few Patrons also particularly William Pinkney Esqre Late Envoy to Russia, still afford Us all their Countenance; Yet, the Institution is unable to Support itself, Against such discouragement, in any proper Consistency with it’s designation as a College.
 
Indeed I Regret much, Having it to Say, that the Gentlemen of Any Influence, in this place, from whom I had Reason to expect most—Have Never Been liberal as to the patronage of public Education. Several of them think it, on a liberal scale, an Obstruction to Mercantile Success. Previous to the late war when those principles, for a time, Had the Ascendency in this State, Which I had, without Regard to persons or parties, always Considered, as most salutary to civil and Religious Liberty; I hoped to Obtain some Aid to our college from the Genl Assembly of the State—But the application was in Vain—The State Treasury, it was Said, could afford Nothing to colleges. Indeed, Several of the Fedl Gentlemen, then at Annapolis, frankly told me that Nothing would be Done for public Education, while that Party, to which I had attach’d myself, was in Power.
 
Since that time, a Sectarian Spirit, still more Injurious to Liberal Education, has Arisen in Baltimore. The Catholics have their favourite Seminary. The Episcopalians theirs’—And the Methodists, the most Numerous of any, at last Session of Assembly, obtain’d a charter, for their Ashbury college, for which they Manifest their Usual Zeal and Exertion.
 
In addition to all these obstructions to the Success of Baltre College, I was so Unhappy as to have a serious Difference with one of our Trustees, a Revd Gentleman of this city, on Account of Some Discipline to which his Son was Subjected at college. His Conduct to me, was most malignant and Unwarrantable, Tho’ a countryman of my Own, Himself too a persecuted man, Yet Neither the Sacred Investiture he Bore, Nor Any other motive that ought to Have Influenc’d his professional Example and character, Restrain’d him from a conduct toward me and my professional Standing and Interest, as unjust, and as malevolent, as Any Individual ever Resorted to, or adopted against another.
 
I could not Justify myself in intruding on your attention, an Occurrence so disagreeable, Only that I have heard that man vainly Boast of the Interest he had in your Esteem—as also in that of Mr & Mrs Madison—And Judging from other circumstances in his conduct to me, equally as improbable, Did not know but the Breath of his malignity might, on some Occasion, such as this, Extend itself even to You
 
A Consciousness of Integrity; And also an Open and impartial And Unanimous Decision of the matter at Issue, between us, by the Board of Trustees, in my favour, Have fully Convinc’d the Public, where it was known, of the ground of that Revd Gentleman’s Malignity—And that he Injur’d himself more by it, than he Did the Victim whom he so wantonly and perseveringly Sought to Overwhelm.
 
Having thus, I fear disagreeably, Introduc’d myself—The only apology I can make for it is, That I Deem’d it necessary for your Information, in Judging Correctly of the following Overture, which I now take the Liberty, very Respectfully, to Submit.
 
Having Observ’d in our public papers, that you Are particularly and Zealously Engag’d in founding an University in your Vicinity for the State of Virginia—And Judging that you will, consequently, Have to Employ a Variety of Professors or Instructors, to Supply the Different Departments in that Institution, I have thought that it might be possible that I would Succeed in Obtaining, thro’ You, Some place in it, Suited to My qualifications; And where my Services Migh[t] find also a more extensive Sphere of Usefulness, than Under existing Circumstances, my present Situation affords.
 
Being a Widower—And my children, four Daughters, all Respectably and comfortably Settled in the world—And [m]ore independent, in that respect, than their father, my Views, I beg leave to Assure you, are not so much turn’d to Emolument—As to a sincere Desire of being more generally Useful to Society.
 
At the University of Glasgow, where I finishd my course of Education—and there obtain’d the highest Degree Conferr’d on a Student, I pass’d thro’ a course of Genl Science and Literature—But as well there, as in my professional practice since, Have been most conversant with the ‘Literæ humaniores,’ or classical Learning. In that Department, I think I could still Render essential Service to Any Seminary founded on an extensive Scale of Usefulness—And tho’ Principal of a college, where I now Reside, would have no objection to Serve as a member of any faculty, in a University, in Any Department I thought myself qualified to fill with credit And Usefulness. Though considerably Advanc’d in Life, I Bless God I continue to enjoy good Health, And a capacity for Industry And exertion—And the smallest Greek print I meet with, I can yet Read without Spectacles—Notwithstanding all this, However, I fear I shall Stand Condemn’d, as to Age—by the garrulous egotism of this Letter, if on no other Account.
 
In every Establishment, Such as that which I Suppos[e] You Now contemplate, much Depends on the talents, Zeal And Industry of the Faculty employ’d. Without these combin’d—It cannot Succeed. Without these, however liberally endowed It cannot be lastingly Useful. The greatest Characters for Scientific and literary attainment, Seldom make the best Instructors—And yet without Such characters, at least as part of the Faculty, No University Could be Reputable.
 
Much Depends, also, on proper Accommodations. I have Seen Some few of the best colleges And Academies in Europe—And Several also in this country—But I have Seen none as well Calculated for preserving good Order and Discipline As I think they might be. When the Building and Accommodations of that in which I now Instruct, was in a state of preparation, I endeavour’d, to Have them adapted to my Views—But Owing to some of the Obstructions, already mention’d, I found that a Building Committee, or even An Architect or carpenter, was Consider’d, by a Majority of our Board of Trustees, as knowing better what was adapted to these purposes than the Instructor of long Experience.
 
I Have now Submitted to you, with no little Reluctance, such circumstantial Information as I deem’d Necessary, for your being in possession of, Respecting any Individual, who should Aspire to the Honour of your countenance as a candidate for any Department in that laudable Establishment And Undertaking in which you Are Engag’d.
 
That it may please Divine Providence to Spare your Useful Life, to See its’ Advantages Realised by Society, is the Sincere prayer of your greatly Respectful And most Obedt Hble Servt
Saml Knox

Wait a minute, did I miss Maryland oyster season? May is here already? What the heck happened to March and April?! It’s like they were here and gone in “the blink of an eye”—and this even with time seemingly on our hands while in self-quarantine with social distancing.

Ah yes, Maryland oyster season. Many of us missed it --as it officially ended on March 31st. Those in the know are well aware that May does not contain an “R.” Neither does June, July or August for that matter. Luckily, here in Maryland, “the seafood gods” offer us the crustacean consolation of steamed crabs to help us get by until September.

According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources website:
“The oyster season runs from October 1 through March 31. Harvesting Methods: A person may catch oysters recreationally only by hand, rake, shaft tong, or diving with or without scuba equipment. Also a resident may not catch oysters recreationally while on the boat of someone who is catching oysters commercially."

As is true today, oysters are only to be eaten in months with an “R.” This idea is an ancient one, dating back to sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. While some think it is just a superstition, there are actually good reasons for it, grounded in the fact that oysters spoil much more readily in warm weather. Furthermore, oysters are thin and have a less desirable texture and flavor during the summer, the period when they spawn.

Oh well, Maryland oyster season has officially ended, but there are still some ways to get them as they are mostly farm raised this day, and plenty of frozen specimen are on, or in, ice as we speak! I usually revel in getting my fill as I enjoy frying up my own oysters on holidays, other special occasions, and for an occasional football tailgate. In addition, I have some friends that have the same adoration for oysters—a love borne out of annual treks made to Tilghman Island for all-you-can-eat oyster buffets in earlier, more care-free days before family obligations curtailed the practice.

I love both oysters and Tilghman Island, so much so, that I gave the place name to a former dog of mine. I chose the moniker "Tilghman" over naming him “Oyster," as that would have been a weird name for a canine.

For those not familiar with Tilghman Island, Maryland, it is a small town located at the end of Talbot County’s Bay Hundred peninsula on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Wedged between the Bay and the Choptank River, Tilghman Island is less than three miles long and a mile wide. It is named for an old Maryland family.

Although Tilghman Island has seen 13,000 years of human habitation, many families came here after the American Civil War, attracted by the booming oyster industry and the opportunities it presented— ranging from dredging/tonging the oysters to packing/shipping the animals to nearby market centers. Tilghman Island became Maryland’s pre-eminent watermen’s community and home to the famed skipjack fleet. ​

​The Chesapeake is justifiably famous for its oysters. Indeed, one translation of the word Chesapeake from the Algonquian Indian language is “Great Shellfish Bay.” This was certainly the case when the first Europeans arrived to establish the colony in the 1600s. These numbers were the result of virtually ideal conditions for oysters in the Bay. It offered relatively shallow waters that were rich in nutrients and with generally firm bottom conditions. Forest-covered lands that bordered the rivers and creeks deterred erosion, which meant that little silt would cloud the waters and clog the gills of oysters. Ocean water from the Atlantic was diluted by fresh water flowing into the Chesapeake to produce the moderately salty water in which oysters thrive. Apparently, no serious diseases infected the shell beds. Finally, since the number of people living in the Chesapeake region for most of its existence was low, and since they had relatively simple technology for harvesting shellfish, oysters could grow and flourish without major disruption by humans.

​There is little evidence of seafood marketing during the colonial era in newspapers. It was the 1800s that saw oysters viewed as something more than just a local Maryland delicacy and food resource. The rise of cities such as Baltimore, Norfolk, Washington, DC, and Richmond spurred more demand for seafood, and harvesting of oysters and fish began to increase.

In the 1830s and 1840s, several key events occurred that had a profound impact on both oysters and the Chesapeake Bay. One was the discovery of massive oyster reefs in the deep waters of Tangier Sound off Crisfield (MD). Another was the development of canning technology that made it possible to preserve oysters effectively. At the same time, the emergence of steam-powered ships and railroads meant that transportation became more dependable, and perishable seafood could be carried to distant markets. These innovations sparked commercial harvesting and the take of live oysters expanded rapidly. The boom began and later, so did “the oyster wars.”

​As for Frederick, we are certainly not considered to be on the water as Carroll Creek and the Monocacy River don’t count. However, we are well-connected to Baltimore, and have always been a bustling transportation crossroads kind of town with ample access to “the bounty of the Bay,” so to speak.

In doing my usual research in vintage local newspapers, I often stumble across advertisements for purveyors of this particular bivalve mollusk. Here in Frederick, you could dine on these creatures in grand restaurants, blue-collar bars and at home thanks to carry-out retailers who provided “curb-side service” back in the day. There were actually hucksters who use to sell oysters out of a portable stand in the same manner of hot dog and pretzel vendors in big cities.

Long gone, I sought to “dredge-up” a few of those “brackish” oyster entrepreneurs of the 19th century, hoping of course to find some of them buried here in Mount Olivet Cemetery.  Here are the results, however, I may warn you that I found plenty of pearls which extended a single story into three-parts herein contained. Bon appetit!

Frederick Getz
One of the earliest mentions found of an oyster establishment in Frederick was that of Frederick Getz, who advertised in the Republican Gazette newspaper of Frederick in 1823. Mr. Getz was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in March, 1781. He had recently re-located to Frederick from Baltimore, likely seeking the opportunity the inland town represented as a new market for the Chesapeake Bay delicacy.
​
According to ads, Frederick Getz opened a confectionary store in Frederick in 1823, and was residing with his wife, Mary, on East Patrick Street in the stone house formerly occupied by Dr. Bogen between the grocery stores of Stuart Gaither and Thomas Conner. Gaither's grocery store was on the south side of East Patrick, roughly where Jojo's Restaurant and Serendipity Market are now.

​Little is known about Mr. Getz because his time here in town was brief. While in Baltimore, he had opened an oyster establishment in a landmark structure known as the Stone Tavern at the northeast corner of Bridge (today’s North Gay Street) and North Front streets in Baltimore in 1822. He advertised this as a place of entertainment featuring oyster suppers. Beforehand, Getz had a confectionery business in Charm City.

Frederick Getz' big plans for Frederick, the town that shared his name, were short-lived as he would suddenly pass--just one year after he arrived in town. Diarist Jacob Engelbrecht chronicled the event in his diary on Tuesday, September 14th, 1824:

“Died this forenoon in the 42nd year of his age, Mr. Frederick Getz (resident of this place about 2 years). In all probability he will be interred with Masonic honors as he belongs to that “Parish.” Buried German Reformed graveyard.”

​Getz, along with over three hundred others, remains at the Old German Reformed burying ground, today better known today as Frederick’s Memorial Park, located at the corner of North Bentz and West Second streets. His name appears on a plaque on the east end of the park. His grave could be under one of several 20th century war monuments.

​Alfred D. Bladen
In late September, 1823, advertisements began running in the local Frederick paper for the oyster establishment of one, Alfred D. Bladen. This was the same time that Mr. Getz opened his business in town. Bladen can be found living in Richmond, Virginia in the 1820 census. His foray into Frederick occurred in the winter and start of 1823 in which he apparently sold oysters. We next get a glimpse of him in May (of 1823)at which time he is advertising his services as an upholsterer and located in the old law office building on Court Street across from the Frederick County Court House. As a side note, this is not the small building that exists today, but one that existed slightly north of this site and likely served as an early office for Francis Scott Key as it had been used primarily by lawyers as such. 

​The following month, Jacob Engelbrecht reports that Bladen’s rental dwelling, also used as his residence, was involved in a fire. Apparently there was a high degree of gossip and hearsay attached to this unfortunate incident—enough indeed for Mr. Bladen to acknowledge his displeasure, complete with a stern warning to his critics.

The oyster house ad above states that he (Bladen) has found a new home on Patrick Street by the fall of 1823, and asks patrons to “consider his losses sustained in his late calamity.”
​
The next mention I could find of this man is in the Baltimore papers in May, 1826. 

​Alfred D. Bladen seems to have turned things around and eventually opened a new establishment in Washington, DC called the Eagle Tavern, and positioned near the capital, in 1828. He experienced nice success at first but was subsequently kicked out by his landlord for failure to keep up with his rent. Apparently, he would make another move to Norfolk. Virginia in spring, 1832. Tragedy struck the following September as he had two children die in the infamous cholera epidemic that hit our country. 

​Mr. Bladen, himself, would die in May, 1833 at the age of 39. I'm assuming that he was buried in Norfolk, but his gravesite may be unknown at this point.

The oyster cellar of William Saunders must have been one to behold. In addition to having oysters prepared anyway you'd like, you had the greatest beer selection in all of western Maryland at the time! The location in which Mr. Saunders would  conduct business was smack dab on the National Pike and in the middle of Frederick's early hotel district. This exact location, on the northeast corner of West Patrick and Court streets, would be the scene of several oyster establishments in the decades to follow.

Upon finding the above advertisement, I immediately became curious as to the label of "oyster cellar" used by Mr. Saunders. I soon learned that establishments serving our "shellfish in question" went by various names, especially when paired with beer in a bar-like setting--case in point, oyster bars. Oysters were seen as a cheap food to accompany beer and liquor so you could also find both in oyster parlors, oyster saloons, or oyster cellars. These establishments were often located in the basement of establishments where keeping ice was easier. As the ad above declares, Saunders kept his "oyster cellar" under a tailor's shop at that time.

William Saunders was operating a bar of some sort here in town as early as 1822, this based on newspaper listings. He, himself, only had a five-year run as I would learn from Frederick diarist Jacob Engelbrecht who mentions Saunder's death in a brief entry made on October 18th, 1827. 

"Died this day in the year of his age, Mr. William Saunders (oyster man) of this place a native of England."

I also learned from Engelbrecht that Saunders had a business associate who had "crossed the pond" with him to America. This was a man named Abraham Sherwood, a right hand man in running the oyster cellar in Frederick. Sherwood was a tailor from Kent County, England, and I'm thinking that he could have kept the business above ground during the day.

Mr. Sherwood died two years after Saunders in 1829. Both men were originally buried in the old All Saints Protestant Episcopal burying ground, once located atop the hill between East All Saints Street and Carroll Creek. They shared a headstone here that gave more information about each.  It read:  

"Cemented by Love (displaying a Masonic Compass and Square) William Saunders died Oct'r. 18th 1827, aged 41 years.  Native of England."  and "Abm. Sherwood died April 15, 1829, aged 42 years, Native of England." 

I'm not going to read anything into the "cemented by love" expression, but I assume the two were very close, regardless.

​
In 1913, the bodies of these two gentlemen were moved to Mount Olivet. Saunders and Sherwood are buried in Mount Olivet's Area MM in lots purchased by the All Saints' Vestry in 1913 as part of a mass removal project of the church' s old burying ground. Saunders is recorded as being buried in Lot 52. As was customary with shabby looking grave markers, the headstone mentioned above is noted as being buried beneath ground here in the vicinity. Sherwood is within Area MM/Lot N-35, the mass grave which holds n 285 other bodies.

​John G. Holmes
Another early spot in town for oysters doubled as an early election precinct location in 1831. This was the oyster house of John G. Holmes, of whom I have been able to find little except him living in Frederick at the time of the 1830 census. Perhaps Holmes picked up the former business of Getz, Bladen or Abraham Sherwood, but I have not made a definitive connection. He appears to have overcome some financial challenges a few years previously and was operating fine.

​The interesting thing about the timing here is that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad came to town that same year. As mentioned earlier, this surely provided a more dependable means to safely bring oysters in regularity to the people of town.

My assistant, Marilyn Veek, found a brief article from 1828 regarding John G. Holmes being jailed for being insolvent. I have included it to the right for your reading pleasure. On the bright side, Holmes was an "engine man" for the Washington Hose Company in 1829. We also found that the John G Holmes Oyster House would serve as a voting precinct for Frederick's Ward 5 in the Corporation election of 1831.

Thanks again to the Diary of Jacob Engelbrecht, we have an idea of what eventually became of Mr. Holmes, another oyster promoter who died far before his time:

Died last evening in the year of his age (38), Mr. John Glen Holmes, Shoemaker, son-in-law of the late Daniel Cassel. His death was rather sudden, having been struck on the neck by Harrison Knight in a dispute which took place in George Rice’s cellar (a Restarature kept by a Mr. Keach). His neck was broke and instantly died. Mr. Knight was not aware that he had killed him and left the cellar for home. He delivered himself to the Sheriff immediately thereafter, say several hours. Mr. H. was buried this evening at 6’o’clock on the Lutheran graveyard, east end of Church Street.
Sunday, July 29th, 1838

Engelbrecht mentions a second Lutheran burying ground in downtown Frederick. This was located on the southeast corner of today’s Everedy Square at the intersection of East Church Street extended and East Street. Most of these bodies were re-interred to Mount Olivet in the early 20th century.

​I found that we have several members of the Holmes family here at the Mount, but not John G. Holmes. There is a possible son by the name of John Lewis Holmes (1824-1893). He and other Holmes relatives are in Mount Olivet’s Area P/Lot 110. I've even theorized that there is a remote chance that John G. Holmes is here without a stone, or there could have been a bit of record confusion upon the time he was brought in to our cemetery.

Not to be a downer, but these large-scale reburial operations always had good intentions of having "no one left behind"—but it was a difficult task, and some bodies didn't make the trip. I’m not saying that Mr. Holmes is residing under Talbot’s Department Store, but since he's not clearly visible in our cemetery records, there is a mathematical chance. That said, I was delighted to find Holmes’ killer, Mr. Knight, buried within Mount Olivet’s Area Q/Lot 96.

​​With the early demise of all five of our earliest known “oystermen of Frederick,” I began to think that there could have been some curse associated to their business staple, as it clearly can be seen that “the world was not their oyster.” I also started wondering how healthy oysters were for you back in the day. I'm sure it was merely coincidence that each of these men died before they were 44 years old.  Regardless, Frederick was very progressive to have multiple oyster purveyors dating back to the 1820s. 

A native of York, Pennsylvania, Ambrose Carson was a carpenter whose specialty was making chairs. His wife was from Baltimore and likely had a pipeline to oysters. Ambrose appears as an early supplier to Frederick in the wholesale/retail realm. 

George Washington Tice Shaffner was the son of Peter and Ann Shaffner, who were re-buried in Mount Olivet after original interment at Evangelical Lutheran's burying ground off East Street. Shaffner's oyster house location, mentioned in the above ad, says that he was three doors above the Junior Fire Hall which had its original home on North Market Street to the immediate north of today's Brewer's Alley Restaurant. George Shaffner married Mary Exline in 1875 and bought a house on East Patrick Street in 1877, but seems to disappear from the record, at least locally.

                                            "Frederick's Oystermen" Part II

I would venture to say that one of the most colorful of "oyster salesmen" during the period of the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s was Jacob Haller, Jr. —a former veteran of the War of 1812. From mentions I have read of this man, his oyster business at least dates back to the year 1860 where the census lists "the old defender of Fort McHenry and Baltimore" as a restaurant keeper. 

Jacob Haller, Jr. was born on June 29th, 1795 to Jacob and Anna Maria (Hockwerdter) Haller. He grew up in south Frederick and served in the 1st Regiment, Maryland Militia under Capt. Nicholas Turbutt from July 23rd, 1814 to January 10th, 1815 during the War of 1812.

Haller was twice married, the father of ten, and began his working career as a saddle-maker. Haller was very active with the fire community and also dabbled a bit in politics, elected as a member of the town's Common Council in 1841. In 1850, he can be found living in Baltimore but returned home somewhere within the decade, likely to begin his retirement. For one reason or another, he decided to open up a bar/restaurant on South Market Street near its intersection with All Saints Street.

Jacob Haller, Jr. died on August 14, 1873 at the age of 79. His property would be auctioned off at the City Hotel shortly thereafter. Phillip Haller obtained ownership of the Haller property in September 1874. Philip appears to have run the establishment for a few years before selling it in 1878. 

​Jacob’s son, Charles Edward Haller (1847-1907) would graduate into the oyster business as well in the early 1870s. Born November 11th, 1847, Charlie Haller had taken over the main responsibilities of his father a few years before the elder Haller's death.  A printer by trade, "Buck" Haller successfully made the transition to restaurant keeper. He gave the old place a makeover and certainly left a lasting impression on the city as having the most industrious, progressive and successful bivalve run of anyone.

​Charles E. Haller would move on from the Haller House location and join Isaac Landauer in operating an oyster eatery named "the Gem" on West Patrick Street. This place, once the site of Turbott's Tavern, run by his father's old military commander, was made a new addition to the City Hotel, and located near the intersection with Court Street. This was almost the same locale of the oyster bar run by William Saunders and Abraham Sherwood some fifty years earlier. After a year and a half, Haller would serve as sole proprietor.

In 1875, "Buck" Haller made another move of two blocks to another location. He would set up shop in the basement of the Bentz Building on the northwest corner of Church and Market streets. Today, this location is home to the popular Tasting Room restaurant. Haller's youth, drive, charisma and marketing brilliance, exhibited by delivering free  samples to the newspaper staffs of town, set him apart from his competitors.

After a couple years, young Charlie Haller was on the move again, this time choosing a a location closer to his roots on South Market Street. The destination was on the north side of Carroll Creek, on the west side of Market. Today's La Paz restaurant's patio marks the approximate location.

A former employee, John F. A. Fox had tried giving this location a go, likely bankrolled by Mr. Haller himself, but surrendered it to his former employer and selling a partnership to his own brother-in-law in an effort to go to work selling oysters for a man named Washington P. Marman.

​Mr. Haller would give this saloon a makeover as well, attracting a higher brow clientele then those  it had been dredging up for years.  He renamed the establishment the “Green House Restaurant." I found that Mr. Haller did some novel advertising in the local papers, and even placed ads in Thurmont’s Catoctin Clarion to attract north county patrons. 

​The 1887 Sanborn Insurance Map shows clearly the location of the saloon on S. Market at Carroll Creek, operated by C. E. Haller as "the Green House Restaurant." 

​​Haller would run The Green House, the premiere place for oysters and seafood in town, until 1893, when he decided to sell it. He would set up shop again on East Patrick Street and then would attempt to retire later in the decade. This would be short-lived as he would be hired by a former employee named Charles N. Hauer to be the manager of the Buffalo Hotel's restaurant in 1898. Ironically, The Buffalo been the site of the earlier Gem Restaurant he oversaw some 25 years earlier.  Haller helped Hauer on his way, and stepping aside after a year to lead a quieter life for health reasons.

​Mr. Haller died in 1907, and would be buried in Area C/Lot 94. His extensive obituary tells the story of a very successful businessman in various endeavors in addition to oysters. In my opinion, he should hold the title of "Oyster King" of Frederick City. 

John Frederick Augustus Fox was born on September 29th, 1852. His father, a successful tinsmith, was born in Stadthagen, Germany, and came to this country in 1841, where he settled in Middletown. Interestingly, tinsmiths played a major role in the growing commercialization and consumption of oysters through their ability to make storage cans. Perhaps young John was brought into the industry through this avenue?

Whatever the case, John F. A. Fox worked as clerk under Charles E. Haller at the "Gem Restaurant" dating back to 1871. He was only 19 years-old at the time. Fox followed Mr. Haller to various other locations and eventually became a partner in The Green House location along Carroll Creek. Around 1883, for one reason or another, Fox’s brother-in-law (Henry Dertzbaugh) bought out his interest in the firm.

John F. A. Fox went to work for Washington Marmon as a salaried clerk. Interestingly, his name would be used as a member of the firm--Marmon & Fox operated on South Market Street. ​

​John F. A. Fox was married, but had no children. He was a member of the Independent Fire Company. Sadly, in January, 1884, just weeks after announcing a reopening of the business, John F. A. fox died at the age of 31. He was buried in Mount Olivet’s Area Q/Lot 53.

Washington P. Marman conducted the oyster business until the time of his own death (February 25, 1892). This was  just over eight years after that of Fox. Born September 15th, 1823, Mr. Marman had an interesting background that included being a Union soldier in the Civil War, along with working on Frederick's earliest police force. He had previous experience in the hospitality trade as a one-time owner of the Black Horse Tavern that once graced the bend on West Patrick Street. He is buried in Mount Olivet's Area R/Lot 71.

Lewis Hager
For a guy who earlier in life was called upon to help quell John Brown's ill-fated insurrection attempt at Harpers Ferry in 1859, keeping control of rowdy patrons within an oyster saloon was likely  not much of a challenge. The native Pennsylvanian was born in 1837 and living here in Frederick by the 1850s.

​Lewis Hager was a member of the Independent Riflemen (a fire company which doubled as a local militia group) and was among the first responders on the scene in Harpers Ferry, 25 years before he opened his business at a location on Court Street which was formerly operated by a J. William Brubaker since 1872. 

Mr. Brubaker would relocate to Columbia, Pennsylvania (between York and Lancaster) in 1885, opening the door for the cagey former militiaman, who was cursed with a rival town's name. Hager set up shop at #12 Court Street in the basement of Black's Hotel.

Mr. Sheppard was a staple in the neighborhood, and would locate right next door in the summer of 1885 or so it appears in the papers. Interestingly, this is a period when the Hagers stopped advertising. Perhaps there was a business handoff for a while? I think that the property the Hagers were leasing was subdivided by ownership to accommodate both entities.

Job K. Sheppard
I mentioned Job Kelsy Sheppard earlier in conjunction with Lewis and Mary Hager. He was born on April 14th, 1838 in New Jersey and came to Frederick as a shoemaker, at least according to the 1860 census. He was a member of the Junior Fire Company at this time and served in the Junior Defenders militia company. From a newspaper article of that time, he was praised as the company's best marksman. This came in handy as he would serve in the ensuing Civil War.

In 1870, Sheppard was working as a hotel clerk for Mr. Frank B. Carlin who took over operation of the former Dill House at the corner of West Church and Court streets. Job came into the "oyster business" from another angle as he was listed as a brewer according to the 1880 census. ​

Mr. Sheppard seems to have begun operation of his own dining establishment in 1885. I have a strange feeling that he may have been bankrolled by his old boss, Frank B. Carlin, who also happened to be married to his sister, Ann (nee Sheppard). Maybe Mr. Carlin could have owned the Court Street properties next to his hotel and livery stables and simply set-up Sheppard in an effort to compete with the Hagers?--
as his hotel guests were going somewhere to eat, and the eateries on Court Street were the closest choices.

I also found that Mr. Sheppard was among the first restaurateurs in town to carry a familiar beer that is still with us today. ​

In 1888, Job was given the "job" as manager of The European House, the elegant dining hall associated with the City Hotel. This had been run under the name of "The Gem" by Charles E. Haller a decade earlier. I'm thinking the selection of Job K. Sheppard came due to the fact that Mr. Carlin took ownership of the City Hotel at this time, and brought his faithful brother-in-law with him.

Meanwhile, Sheppard still continued to run his popular restaurant around the corner on Court Street. Life marched on for Job Sheppard and almost every article I read about him talks about how nice and personable he was. He also seems to have possessed a great sense of humor and did some things to make himself stand out as the manager of what would become known as the finest dining location in town. 

Everything was going fine for this awesome duo until the fateful night of August 22nd, 1896.

In 1883, an understudy of Charles E. Haller, named Charles N. Hauer, took charge of the Haller Dining Rooms establishment at Church and Market when his boss relocated to the Green House a few blocks to the south.

This was quite an opportunity for Hauer, a distant relative of Frederick's famed heroine, Barbara (Hauer) Fritchie. Just a few years prior he found himself a cigar maker, along with his brother, Fritchie Hauer. Their father was a cigar-maker.

​Charles Nicholas Haller was born October 5th, 1859, the son of George N. and Lucretia (Poole) Hauer. He was one of nine children and spent most of his life living on South Market Street.

He got the chance to learn the business from a great teacher, Charles E. Haller. Now at the helm, he took the opportunity to re-use the name of "Gem Restaurant" for the restaurant on the corner of Church and Market streets.

Charles continued to run The Gem for years at this locale. He married Clara Filby in 1887, but the couple had no children. Charles would really experience a strange degree of fame in the form of a medical testimonial he would give for Hood's Sarsaparilla in the year 1892. His face would appear in newspapers coast to coast. The following ad appeared in the March 2nd edition of the Philadelphia Times.

Perhaps if one had bad blood, the tempting intake of raw oysters and alcohol, readily available at work, may not have been the best career choice. But what do I know?

Charles would eventually leave the Gem to take a job at the establishment on West Patrick earlier mentioned and named European House. Ironically, this was the original "Gem" location for those keeping score at home. Actually, the City Hotel next door would receive a makeover under new ownership after the death of Frank B. Carlin. It became the New City Hotel. The European changed hands as well and would come to be known as "The Buffalo Hotel and Restaurant." ​Wisely, Charles Hauer soon brought in his mentor with like name to help him manage the new venture.

Mr. Charles E. Haller moved into retirement in 1899, leaving Charles N. Hauer to make a name for himself. The world was clearly his oyster, or buffalo, take your pick. 

Mr. Hauer was at the top of the oyster heap at the start of 1901. The Buffalo restaurant was roaring and the "Roaring Twenties" were still a few decades away. Unfortunately, Hood's Sasparilla would not be a sure-fire cured for what "ill-ed" Charles N. Hauer. He would pass on March 10th, 1901 at the age of 41. His death certificate in our cemetery files gives pneumonia as cause of death. He would be buried two days later in Area L/Lot 82. His gravesite can be found directly behind the Key Memorial Chapel. Just look for the sizeable monument with the BPOE Elks symbol on it, as Hauer's widow (Clara) would remarry a man (William Myers) belonging to the fraternal order, and proud of the fact, I might add.

Nowadays, tavern food has expanded to things such as hamburgers, nachos, hot wings, and mozzarella sticks. But hail to the bivalves! Raw bar items such as oysters, mussels and clams, along with decapod crustaceans in the form of steamed shrimp, are a special treat, and go incredibly perfect with beer any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

​Frederick has continued to welcome oyster establishments and retail sales since the bawdy 19th century and height of the "oyster craze." The mollusk can be found at a multitude of restaurants throughout Frederick City and county and serve them up in a variety of ways. On top of that, oyster fritters are still a delicacy sold as fundraisers by groups ranging from churches to fire companies. As I said earlier, firemen love oysters!

Ironically, my last "meal out" was the night before the mandatory quarantine of dining in restaurants went into effect. I enjoyed a fried oyster dinner at Callahans. Now that was a heavenly "final supper" so to speak—I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

You may not be aware of this, but April is Maryland Archeology Month. This has been the case since 1993 when Archeology Month was officially proclaimed by Governor William Donald Schaefer as “ a celebration of the remarkable archeological discoveries related to at least 12,000 years of human occupation here in “the Old-Line State.”
​
Maryland Archeology Month has annually provided the public with opportunities to become involved and excited about archeology.  With a variety of events offered statewide every April, including exhibits, lectures, site tours, and occasions to participate as volunteer archeologists, “Archeology Month elicits the gathering of interested Marylanders at various occasions to share their enthusiasm for scientific archeological discovery.” This according to the Maryland Archeological Trust, the chief sponsor of activities.

Well, scheduled Maryland Archeology Month activities for 2020 were postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. These include featured lectures across the state, but most importantly the Field Schools, or Sessions, which are open to the general public. This year’s theme was Partners in Pursuit of the Past: 50 Field Sessions in Maryland Archeology. The Field Sessions are 11-day intensive archeological research investigations held every spring in partnership between the Archeological Society of Maryland, a State-wide organization of lay and professional archeologists, and the fore-mentioned Maryland Historical Trust, a part of the Maryland Department of Planning and home to the State’s Office of Archeology.  While these two partners host the event every year, others are required to make the Field Sessions happen, including researchers/principal Investigators, archeological supervisory staff, property owners, and volunteers from the public.  

I had some prior knowledge and experience in the realm of archeology thanks to my work with a documentary produced in 1999 and entitled Monocacy: the Pre-history of Frederick County, Maryland. Here I got to learn first-hand from state archeologists and local/avocational lay people. One of these was my chief mentor for the project, Spenser O. Geasey (1925-2007).

I would love to write a comprehensive “Story in Stone” on this New York native who spent the majority of his life in Frederick County, but he is buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery up in Lewistown (MD). This was close to his boyhood home of Mountaindale, which helped inspire his interest with arrowhead finds as a child. He always made it a point to tell me he was nothing more than an “avocational archeologist”—avocational translating to hobbyist without holding a degree in the field.
​
Spencer was a World War II vet (304th Infantry/76th Division) who would make his living as Housing Manager at Fort Detrick. After retirement from the Army base, he worked as an archeological field assistant for the State Highway Administration. Although not formally trained in the field, his favorite hobby and passion would have him advising local, state and national professionals as he became an expert on Frederick’s native peoples through weekend exploration for fun. He walked the fields and carefully took notes which blossomed into extensive scientific reports for state archeological periodicals.

Spencer regularly surface collected (with permission) and donated these artifacts (nearly 41,000) to the state collection housed at Jefferson-Patterson Park & Museum of Archeology in Prince Frederick in Calvert County. The MAC (Maryland Archeological Conservation) Laboratory has research space for working with the collections, a library of site reports and other material (such as field notes) and a variety of analytical equipment. Interestingly, this site along the Patuxent River in southern Calvert County is less than a stone’s throw from the birthplace of the famed Johnson brothers buried in Mount Olivet: Gov. Thomas Johnson, Jr., James Johnson, Baker Johnson, Joshua Johnson and perhaps Roger Johnson (but the latter is debatable).
​
Spencer kept his proverbial “ear to the ground” and notified state officials when he felt that local sites were in danger of being disturbed. This most often happened with commercial or residential development and roadways. He helped organize the Maryland Archeological Society, regularly spoke to school children and civic groups about native peoples and was involved in the publication of several articles about the topic here locally in Frederick County and the State of Maryland. All of these “avocational“-archeological activities led to Spencer receiving the Calvert Prize in 1993, the  highest award for preservation in Maryland. In fact, he was the first archeologist to win the coveted honor.

In my special time spent with Spencer, we built a great friendship. He showed me prehistoric rock shelters and fish wiers in the river. We walked several, freshly plowed farm fields in springtime. Best of all, he took me on personal tours of three of the state’s most studied and important sites: the previously mentioned Biggs Ford site (north of Frederick), the Rosenstock site (east of Frederick City) and the Noland’s Ferry site (in southern Frederick County along the Potomac). You could not have had a better guide than the one I had.

I also gained the opportunity through Spencer to learn about Frederick’s early archeologists, and others who dabbled in collecting under a bit more unscrupulous title as “relic hunters.” The noble archeologist goes about his search of artifacts in the name of science and history exploration, taking careful notes and handling any and all human remains with the greatest of respect. The relic hunter is generally looking to cash in on his finds, raiding ancient gravesites and selling off local treasures to collectors throughout the country.  I want to note here that some of these “relic hunters” did not have bad intentions as they simply participated in a hobby, and kept the prized finds for themselves and unselfishly shared their artifacts with the community in terms of education as their efforts were a labor of love and learning.
​
Spencer introduced me to two of these men, that not only were Frederick County natives, but are buried within the confines of Mount Olivet Cemetery—John Jacob Snyder (1890-1968) and Edward Ralston Goldsborough (1879-1949).

​John Jacob Snyder
I will start with a man that Spencer Geasey interacted with personally. John Jacob Snyder was reintroduced to me when I created a memorial page for him a few years back in building our MountOlivetVets.com website. Snyder was a Frederick native and military veteran of the First World War.  He was born on May 7th, 1890, the son of William F. Snyder and wife, Florence Walter. He grew up in a house located at 127 N. Market Street and attended Frederick City public schools. On his MountOlivetVets.com memorial page, I included  the following information regarding military service after his induction as a 27 year-old private on March 23rd, 1918:

              5/14/1918, Headquarters School for Radio Mechanics (College Station, TX)          
              7/2/1918, C Squadron, Ellington Field (Texas)
              8/10/1918, Field Artillery Training, Fort Sill (Oklahoma)
              10/9/1918, Promoted to Private First Class, 328th Aero Squadron
              1/11/1919 12th Company, 154th Depot Brigade
              Honorable Discharge 1/28/1919
 
I’m assuming that John J. Snyder had an opportunity to add to his interests and experiences with native cultures while serving with the US Army in the western states of Texas and Oklahoma. It seems to have been a love nurtured in his youth in Frederick. While conducting internet and newspaper searches on him, I came across a small classified ad in the Maryland Archeological Bulletin dated January 12th, 1912 on page 34:

​In a later Maryland archeology publication, I found a story in which Snyder caught the attention of the state’s professional community. John had discovered what is commonly called today, the Rosenstock site. This is a Late Woodland village located atop a 7-meter-high bluff overlooking the Monocacy River. First off, the Woodland period is a cultural classification roughly representing the time period of 1000BC to the time of European contact in the 1600 AD. The bluff location of the former native village is a narrow, level promontory bounded by a deep ravine on the north, the river on the west, and a small stream on the south.
 
The site, known since just after the turn of the century, has remained uncultivated since 1913 and currently is wooded. Since an initial exploration in the early 1900s, the Rosenstock site lay largely forgotten until it was reported to the State Archeologist in 1970. Subsequently, the State Archeologist’s office, in cooperation with the Archeological Society of Maryland, Inc. (ASM), carried out systematic testing of the site in 1979, and more extensive excavations in 1990-1992. Each of these projects was undertaken as part of the ASM Annual Field Session in Maryland Archeology. 

​John Jacob Snyder discovered the particular site on October 15th, 1907. Snyder, then a 17-year-old, was apparently “hunting for dogwood” on the Samuel Rosenstock farm, today making up Clustered Spires Municipal Golf Course. Snyder related at the time, “I was keeping to windward that was to the east on account of the Dogs [Russian Wolf Hounds], and hiding behind a shock of fodder saw 3 nice arrows about the shock so it was found by mere coincidence but I never got the dogwood.” At the time of discovery, the site—having been cleared of timber in 1884—was plowed.

Snyder reported finding abundant pottery shards, triangular projectile points, clay, stone, and bone beads, discoidals, shale discs (about 3” in diameter with a hole drilled in the center), celts, and clay and steatite pipes at Rosenstock, which he considered the “most outstanding site” in the Monocacy Valley. The valuable location took the name Snyder’s “Site #1,” and farm cultivation would cease in 1913 in an effort to assist future researchers.

​John J. Snyder married Frances Catherine Riehl and raised his family at 24 E. Fourth Street in Frederick. In addition to his work as an avocational archaeologist, he spent his career as an electrical repairman and vulcanizer (skilled worker with rubber). He proudly displayed his Indian artifact collection to professionals and county residents for decades until his death on March 9th , 1968. He is buried in Mount Olivet’s Area GG/Lot 170.

Edward Ralston Goldsborough
Although Spencer Geasey could only talk about “Ralston” Goldsborough anecdotally through his past research and findings, I actually had the opportunity to meet one of his close relatives. I was particularly interested in this man (Ralston) who, like Spencer, made an incredible contribution through his research and work resulting in scholarly research by a non-professional.

Edward Ralston Goldsborough was born on July 8th, 1879, the product of a very interesting pedigree which included Robert Goldsborough (1735-1788), a delegate to the Continental Congress, and Frederick Town’s supposed first settler, John Thomas Schley.
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Ralston was the only son of a prominent attorney and veteran of the American Civil War, Major Edward Yerbury Goldsborough. I need to tell you a bit about this Goldsborough family first as valuable context can be gleaned in respect to Ralston’s interest in archeology, genealogy and local/Maryland history. Ralston’s 5th great-grandfather, Nicholas Goldsborough, arrived from England (via Barbados) a few decades after Maryland’s founding and settled near Kent Island in the late 1660s. The next two Goldsborough generations would accumulate wealth and settle in the Eastern Shore areas of Easton in Talbot County and further south in Cambridge, Dorchester County along the Chesapeake Bay and Choptank River. 

The fore-mentioned Robert Goldsborough would rise to the highest ranks of Maryland politics and play a substantial role as delegate to the Continental Congress and Maryland’s participation in the American Revolution. He narrowly missed his chance at eternal fame as being a Founding Father. Like Thomas Johnson, Jr., he was not present in Philadelphia on July 4th, 1776 for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, having withdrawn his position six weeks earlier to help frame Maryland’s first state constitution.
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Robert Goldsborough was friends with fellow patriot, Thomas Johnson, Jr., and this likely guided a future Goldsborough connection to Frederick County. Robert’s son, Dr. William Goldsborough (1763-1826), moved to Frederick and bought several properties from Thomas Johnson, including Johnson’s 138-acre plantation of Richfield. Johnson, whose health was frail at the time, had accepted an invitation to live with his daughter and son-in-law at Rose Hill Manor. He had built the latter for the couple as a wedding gift.

​Dr. William and wife, Sarah Worthington Goldsborough, lived here at Richfield until moving in town shortly before his death in 1826. The location for a new domicile was another property acquired earlier from Gov. Johnson. It  sat on 115-117 East Church Street, later destined to be Frederick’s first public Female High School and later the headquarters of Frederick County Public Schools.

​Dr. William Goldsborough died without a will, but with debts which seems to be a recurring theme for family members in the future. His wife, Sarah, sold the Richfield property with mansion house on the east side of the Frederick-Emmitsburg turnpike road to John Schley in 1829 and granted the property on the west side to son, Edward Yerbury Goldsborough, Sr. (1797-1850). Edward, Sr. was our subject Ralston’s paternal grandfather, and had married Margaret Schley (1802-1876) a descendant of John Thomas Schley, the German Reformed Church’s first choirmaster and builder of Frederick’s first house. The wedding occurred in 1826.

​Upon graduation from the Academy in 1859, John's younger brother, Edward Yerbury Goldsborough, Jr.,  became a law student in the office of Joseph M. Palmer and was accepted to the Frederick bar in October, 1861. He opened his own practice at this time as the winds of war were swirling. In August of 1862, he would receive a commission in the Union army as a second lieutenant in the Eighth Regiment, Maryland Volunteer Infantry. In 1863, he was nominated by Frederick County's Union party to serve as State's Attorney (for Frederick County).

Another historical account says that Edward "served briefly in the Maryland Infantry of the U. S. Army in 1862-1863, but was mustered out due to illness. Still, he was a volunteer on General E. B. Tyler's staff during the Battle of the Monocacy in 1864, for which he earned the rank of Major. Beginning in 1869, he served as a United States Marshal for the district of Maryland, and he is often referred to by either ''Major" or ''Marshal" in historical accounts. He was known as a fine lecturer on the Civil War and his foreign travels and as an active Agricultural Society member.

Margaret Schley Goldsborough died on Christmas day, 1876. A few years before her death, she took great pride in the fact that her son Edward had courted a young debutante from the Midwest with familial ties to one of the most famous politicians and legal minds in the country. The couple married in 1874.

Margaret was laid to rest beside her oldest son William, who died in 1853 at the age of 23, in Mount Olivet's area E/Lot 15. Her husband is buried on the other side of William. A large obelisk and ledger stones mark these gravesites. 

Finally getting back on track with the biography of Edward Ralston Goldsborough, his parents married in June of 1874.

​Ralston’s mother, Amy Ralston Auld, was a grandniece of politician/jurist Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873) who served as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, replacing Roger Brooke Taney. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and I'm assuming they met in Washington, DC where she lived with her famous  relatives. 

Ralston spent his childhood in Frederick City at a family home then located at 54 West Patrick Street, this would be 114 W. Patrick Street with today's numbering system. Ralston attended school in the city and took an interest local figures in Frederick's history, and those that came long before. 

More history of the Frederick County Goldsborough family can be found within a Maryland Historic Trust' State Historic Sites Inventory property summary for another residence of Edward Y. Goldsborough, Jr. The aptly named Edward Y. Goldsborough House is located at 6739 Clifton Road west of Frederick. This was a family summer home and farm located on the eastern slope of Catoctin Mountain below Braddock Heights. Edward Y. Goldsborough, Jr. bought the property in the 1860s and Ralston places this as his birth location in later records.

​Continuing through his youth, Ralston Goldsborough took delight in finding Indian artifacts in the fields that surrounded his grandparent’s former plantation of Richfield, located a few short miles north of Frederick City. The plantation house of the Schley’s (named Richfield) exists today and was the birthplace of Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, a naval hero of the Spanish-American War. He was also a cousin of Ralston.

The Richfield mansion was childhood home to Ralston's grandfather as I had earlier said it had been the site of Thomas Johnson's former mansion, with a house rebuilt by Ralston's grandfather William after a devastating fired destroyed the original Johnson dwelling in 1815. It sits between today’s US route 15 and the Monocacy River. Ralston's grandparents had kept the property to the west of the turnpike which is basically today's site of Crumland Farms and Homewood Retirement Community. Many of the artifacts found by young Ralston likely came from inhabitants of the neighboring Biggs Ford site on the east side of the Monocacy. This was their immediate hunting ground, a primeval forest before the European settlers cleared the land for farming.
​
Ralston began hunting other local Indian sites, tracing Indian trails and collecting artifacts. His early interests were encouraged by his mother, who worked as an assistant in the office of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute. Ralston would graduate from Lehigh University and afterwards serve as a civil engineer in Frederick County, with an office at one time in Winchester Hall.

​Goldsborough was in contact with professional archeologists at the Smithsonian, but most were too busy with research in far-off parts of the world to study the nearby Indian locations which he pointed out in Monocacy Valley. He too ingratiated himself to Maryland’s earliest professionals in the field and became one of them.

Sometime between the Rosenstock site discovery in 1907 and October 1909, John J. Snyder—who communicated closely with other artifact collectors in the Frederick area—revealed the site location to E. Ralston Goldsborough. Goldsborough visited the site on October 10th, 1909, and on October 26th received permission from Samuel Rosenstock to carry out excavations. Here is a summary of his notes written in 1911.

​Goldsborough said that the village site was visible on the ground as a dark discolored area covering either 1.5 or 1.6 acres “by actual survey.” Between November 5th and December 8th of that year, Goldsborough spent eleven days excavating a series of trenches at Rosenstock, which was then planted in clover. With one exception, which is not specified, the depth of the trenches did not exceed 12 inches. The trenches—situated “one hundred and ten feet from the river, about the center of the site and parallel with it” —are depicted on a plan map, but there are no identifiable landmarks shown; discrepancies between written measurements and with the scale also detract from the map.

From these excavations, estimated at 361 ft, Goldsborough recovered nearly 3,000 objects, including pottery, clay pipes, steatite beads, bone implements, and triangular arrow points. Several thousand animal bones included those of deer, raccoon, bird, dog, turtle, and beaver. This research was included in various editions of The Archaeological Bulletin in 1912. E. Ralston Goldsborough had truly arrived!

​In a report from 1912, Goldsborough notes that the pottery at Rosenstock, with its distinctive rim collar, is different from the pottery types found at other sites in the Monocacy valley, and speculates that it is the result of Iroquoian or Siouan influence. He also illustrates some of the decorative motifs used in a series of “restored” pots. Despite being taken out of cultivation in 1913, the Rosenstock site continued to attract artifact collectors.

​According to Snyder, around 1920 two collectors (Dudley Page and Alan Smith) had the site plowed; “it paid off well in broken pipes discoidals ceremonial & other material.” The subsequent decades-long unplowed condition of the site notwithstanding, Rosenstock’s location remained known and it was occasionally surface-collected by various individuals, including Spencer Geasey, who brought the site to the attention of then-State Archeologist Tyler Bastian in 1970. 

​Nonetheless, the fallow and/or overgrown nature of the site since 1913 afforded a measure of protection not seen at most village sites in the region. Sadly, although the notes and writings of Snyder and Goldborough survive, the fate of the early artifact collections is less certain. Snyder’s collection from Rosenstock (which came to include the collections of Dudley Page, Allen Kemp, and some of Alan Smith’s material from the site) was owned by a Mr. Dennis Murphy as of 1979. A small sample of ceramic shards collected from Rosenstock by Dudley Page is curated by the Maryland Historical Trust. Spencer Geasey’s surface-collected material from Rosenstock is included in the extensive collections he donated to the Maryland Historical Trust in 1992.

​​During this time, the house was rented as a summer residence by wealthy Fredericktonians and others attracted to the vicinity of nearby Braddock Heights, the mountaintop village developed by the Hagerstown & Frederick Railway alonq with its amusement park. According to Anne Hooper's Braddock Heights: A Glance Backward, the Goldsborough House during this period was an unofficial "Frederick Country Club,” with prestigious social events and parties. Oh, the "Roaring Twenties," but apparently not a great ending to the decade, or start to the first for our subject.

I found a 1931 directory that shows the couple living at 29 Jefferson Street. Sadly I also found the following classified ad printed in the Frederick paper that year:

​I had heard that Ralston battled the demon of alcoholism during his life, and this perhaps contributed to a Sheriff’s sale of his property and a subsequent divorce in the early 1930s at the onset of the Great Depression. A story exists that at this time Ralston could regularly be found walking the streets of Frederick offering to produce family genealogies for the price of a dollar. Although the Stock Market Crash of 1929 could have cost him his home, fortune and marriage, the Depression did eventually provide Goldsborough employment with an opportunity to continue his dream as an archeologist. He would be tapped as the local director of WPA (Works Progress Administration) work relief in the field of archeology for Frederick County. 

​Through US government funding, Ralston had as his official sponsor the Maryland School for the Deaf. He investigated a number of local American Indian sites, including a rock-shelter and a small village. Although he maintained a healthy correspondence with other archeologists in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, Goldsborough does not seem to have completed a formal report on his WPA investigations. 
​
Virginia Commonwealth University alumnus Brenna McHenry Godsey assembled and examined the available archival record on Goldsborough’s work housed at the Historical Society of Frederick County, Maryland, while she was still a student.  These records focused largely on Goldsborough’s pre-New Deal archaeological work.  It remains unclear exactly what the nature of his relationship was with the Maryland School for the Deaf.  Was the School simply a project sponsor, or did some of their charges participate in the WPA excavations? Regardless, Goldsborough produced a map showing numbered sites of special interest in Frederick County, and collected a vast array of artifacts which remain in the Bjorlee Archival Collection of the Maryland School of the Deaf. 

​It is also thought that the Rosenstock material excavated by Goldsborough decades earlier may also be included in this same artifact collection prepared for the Maryland School for the Deaf during the WPA project. I had the opportunity to work with MSD back in 1997 in an effort to access and film Goldsborough’s map and hundreds of artifacts for my Monocacy documentary. I’m hoping Goldsborough’s treasures at the school will make their way out of storage again one-day, and go on display for local residents and visitors to behold.

​Census records and directories show me that the couple apparently never formally divorced. Frances took up residence at 347 S. Market Street. in 1935 and can be found renting an apartment at 306 N. Market Street. in 1940. Ralston made his home during this time in Room 3 of the Pythian Castle, located in the middle of N. Court Street, a half block north of his childhood town home located near the corner of Court and W. Patrick streets—the site of today’s county courthouse.

​The files of the Frederick County Historical Society (Heritage Frederick) remain filled with Ralston’s research in the form of newspaper clippings and original manuscripts typed on onion skin paper. Many of those manuscripts and writings/research on Frederick history have the Pythian Castle address typed as their place of origin under Goldsborough’s hand.

The last decade of his life saw him working as a top-tier genealogist. With his vast knowledge of Frederick's past, he was an easy choice to serve as Frederick City's official historian for the town's Bicentennial celebration in 1945. He wrote several articles and presented lectures on local topics and helped create a successful history pageant and other related events.

​Sadly, E. Ralston Goldsborough would suffer failing health in his final several years. This would not only throw him in poverty, but also led to a domicile change to the Frederick County Home at Montevue, northwest of town. Here he died on May 7th, 1949. He was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Area G/Lot 162. 

​His grave, in the shadow of a large obelisk erected to the memory of his paternal uncle, Dr. John Goldsborough (1835-1885), was unmarked until a marker stone was placed around here in 1998 by a relative. This was during the time I was doing my research on Ralston for my documentary.

​I vividly recall contacting Superintendent Ron Pearcey back in late 1997 for help in finding the grave of E. Ralston Goldsborough. He took me to the unmarked grave and let me know that he had been working with a family relative living in Delaware who was paying for a monument to be done. I hoped this gentleman may be able to provide me with a picture and more insight into the man few remembered, but was responsible for a tremendous body of work on the native peoples in our area. 

​Ron gave me the name and address of Richard Duvall Goldsborough, Jr. of Bayville, DE. I was excited in contacting Mr. Goldsborough and soon found that he lived just a mile from my family’s beach trailer located near the Fenwick Lighthouse in Fenwick Island (DE). Mr. Goldsborough graciously invited me to dinner to discuss his “archeological cousin” the next time I was “down the shore.”
​
This visit eventually transpired in the summer of 1999. No pictures came about of E. Ralston (as I am still in search of one), but Richard shared the story of his remembrance of attending Ralston’s funeral with his parents. Richard lived in Baltimore, as did his folks, at the time and said that his father had kept a long-time correspondence with Ralston. He recalled childhood visits to Frederick with his dad to visit the peculiar man who told them rich stories of family history and local Indians on each trip.

Upon learning of his failing health in spring of 1949, Richard and his father traveled to Frederick to make plans for Ralston’s burial as the archeologist had made none for himself, and had no immediate family. It would have been customary for Ralston to have been buried in Montevue’s potter’s field. As the next of kin, Richard’s father made arrangements for Ralston to be buried with his own parents in a lot adjoining the previously mentioned Dr. John Goldsborough.

​Dr. John was Richard Sr.’s grandfather and Richard Jr’s great-grandfather.  Dr. John named his son Edward Yerbury Goldsborough as well, and he is buried in this lot. Of course this man is Richard Sr.’s father, and was named in honor of Ralston’s grandfather—Edward Yerbury Goldsborough. Dr. John’s father was William Goldsborough, the Confederate brother of Ralston’s father, Edward Yerbury, Jr. So to review the complicated family genealogy, my friend Richard’s great-grandfather (William), and Ralston’s father (Edward), were brothers.

​My dinner host shared with me the fact that Ralston had lost all his money through personal vices and never got around to putting a proper headstone on his own parent’s gravesite. Ralston’s father had passed suddenly in 1915 leaving wife Amy in dire straits. She would die in 1921 and things never really straightened out for Ralston financially speaking. Richard said that his father had always spoke of putting a stone on the graves of Ralston and his parents but never got around to it either. This was unfinished business, and Richard, Jr. never forgot his father’s intention. With medical issues of his own, Richard contacted Mount Olivet in the late 1990s to pre-plan burial arrangements for both himself and wife Beulah in a pair of grave-lots within Dr. John Goldsborough’s family plot. His parents were laid to rest here back in the 1970s.

​The new stone was finally completed in 1998 and placed over the grave of Ralston and his parents. Although I talked to Richard on the phone just once more after our dinner and shared a mail correspondence a few years later, we lost touch with each other. Not knowing his fate, I took solace in knowing that he is here buried in Mount Olivet, having died in 2010—a decade after our dinner meeting. His wife, Beulah, died the following year. That night at his house, I would learn that Beulah’s sister was married to an elderly third cousin of mine living in northern Delaware, the oldest member in a family line. 

Author's Note: I originally wrote this blog in April 2020 and have tried over 15 times to boost this post (marketing terminology) so a larger audience could  see it. I found that Facebook was actually limiting the number of people who could see it. When I attempted to boost which puts it in people's newsfeeds for a fee, I kept getting rejected due to breaking Facebook's political and election policy. This had me perplexed because I had briefly mentioned the following regarding E. Ralston Goldsborough's ties to earlier Maryland governors in the 1830s and 1916. The first was Robert Goldsborough. You recall that it was Robert’s son William who came to Frederick around 1800. Robert had another son (William’s brother) named Dr. Richard Yerbury Goldsborough (1768-1815). He is buried at Christ Episcopal in Cambridge, MD along with plenty of other Goldsborough relatives including Phillips Lee Goldsborough (1865-1946). Phillips Lee was Maryland's 47th governor, serving from 1912-1916. He later was elected US Senator and held that seat from 1929-1935.
 
In either case,  E. Ralston Goldsborough, could trace his amazing Maryland lineage back to  Continental Congress delegate Robert Goldsborough, and original immigrant to America, Nicholas Goldsborough (1640-1670). History is complicated and tedious at times, but it's certainly worth the "dig!"

Somehow, this was dangerous info? I even removed this from the story to no avail. I soon learned that bots and AI perform the screening of stories and the fact checking on this social media outlet. I desperately tried to reach Facebook for further discussion on the subject. First, its nearly impossible to make human contact with them, and second, the international team-member I spoke to in 2020 (and another again a year later) had no clue what I was talking about and kept reiterating/parroting corporate policy. My story on Gov. Thomas Johnson in October 2019 experienced a similar fate, and I was accused of electioneering. But I pleaded, "TJ was a politician in the 1700s!!!" They still rejected my boost attempts.

All my research work and writing and basically I was censored from having a larger audience seeing it. So I've tried to run this Goldsborough story in April 2021, April 2022 and again in April 2023 to highlight Maryland Archeological Month, but to no avail. So here I am, in May, 2023, and trying to circumvent "The Powers That Be"....Facebook. Hope you enjoyed this special "Story in Stone." ;)

​Of late, my commute home from Mount Olivet Cemetery to the Rosedale/Villa Estates neighborhood on the northwest side of Frederick has been as quiet as can be. Hey, I’m not complaining, and never have, since I have been so very fortunate to both work and reside here in Frederick for the last 30 years. I know darn well that I am one of the lucky ones having grown up seeing both of my parents commute to Bethesda each work day throughout my childhood.
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I can usually get to and from work in about ten minutes, and without the aid of major roads or a highway. In fact, I primarily use back streets and alleys, the names of a few may not even register with some readers. And on my way, I only have four turns to make once I leave the cemetery. So join me for my commute home, and I'll give you an impromptu, local-history tour/lesson along the way. Don't worry, we'll be properly "socially distanced," and I'm guessing that most of you have plenty of time to kill while in self-quarantine lockdown.

 To begin, for those unfamiliar with the Rosedale/Villa Estates which I call home, it sits just north of Rosemont Avenue, sandwiched between US15 and Fort Detrick. Homes were primarily built here between 1930-1950, providing housing for many newcomers to Frederick employed at "Camp Detrick" during, and after, World War II. These included doctors and scientists from around the country and world, completely changing the cultural fabric of "small-town" Frederick which had been in existence for nearly 200 years up to that point.

​The neighborhood does have a nice park area and serves home to Frederick's current mayor—so we have that going for us! Fittingly, as you will soon see with this week’s story’s central theme, my neighborhood is best known today for its vehicular “cut-through” streets (linking Rosemont Avenue to West Seventh Street) probably more than anything else. 

​Most of these roadways are named for leading historical figures: Schley Avenue (Admiral Winfield Scott Schley—Frederick boy turned naval commander and hero of the Spanish American War), Taney Avenue (Roger Brooke Taney--Frederick lawyer turned controversial Supreme Court justice), Grant Place (Ulysses S. Grant--Union general during the American Civil War and our 18th US president), Wilson Avenue (Woodrow Wilson--our 28th US president who served during WWI and the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic), and Lee Place (Robert E. Lee--Confederate general during American Civil War). Military Road (self-explanatory) runs along the northwestern perimeter of the Villa Estates  and neighboring Fort Detrick and there is one more named Biggs Avenue, but that one seems to be a head scratcher. We'll pick that one up later.

Speaking of streets, those belonging to the City of Frederick are far from bustling at the time of this writing (mid-April, 2020). This has been the case for multiple weeks now, thanks to the mandated state quarantine urging people to stay at home in an effort to curb the spread of the Coronavirus disease/Covid-19.

If you are lucky enough to escape your house for a glimpse of life on the outside, you may spot a person or an occasional couple walking along the sidewalk--but I can’t even remember the last time I saw more than ten people gathered together in one place, let alone five. I smile in thinking that just two months earlier I found myself irate and stranded for ten minutes  (no lie) trying to make a simple right turn while downtown.  I had been doing some history research at C. Burr Artz Library and parked in the adjacent garage late that Saturday morning. I exited the garage okay but ignorantly decided to exit onto S. Market Street (by Wags restaurant). My error was forgetting that it was Downtown Frederick’s First Saturday, and not just any First Saturday, but February’s “Fire & Ice” First Saturday. The city was mobbed with people by the time I had left the library that afternoon!

As I said a minute ago, these days, one sees but a few people out along the streets in late afternoon/early evening. They are usually engaged in a brief evening stroll or picking up carry-out from the multitude of busy restaurants and eateries offering "curb-side service." Some folks out walking are donning sneakers and shorts, while others have covered themselves from head to toe while wearing latex gloves and face masks. What puzzles me most is seeing other motorists with face-coverings, and they are the only ones in the car? How are they going to catch, or transmit any viruses while driving? "To each their own," I guess, especially during these anxious and curious times.

Driving While “Stoned”
I knew this sub- title would grab your attention, but it’s not what you think! When I was driving home one day last week, I contemplated upcoming topics for this blog. At the same time, I found myself taking extra notice of the thoroughfare names I utilize each and every workday. More so, I took specific interest in the names behind these streets traveled. It quickly dawned on me that this was somewhat like the “Stories in Stone” blog format itself, in which I research the names on gravestones and make connections to other elements of the community through people's life stories. I figured I could effectively “kill two birds with one stone” so to speak, and figure out for whom these streets are named, and then attempt to find these individuals in Mount Olivet, if they so happen to be buried here. So let's go!

LEG 2 — "Frederick's Other City"
Here’s an interesting piece of trivia to “wow” your friends and family with:  Did you know that Mount Olivet Cemetery contains over eight miles of paved roadways? In addition to serving as a great place to work, visit, learn history and spend eternity, the cemetery is also a fabulous safe-haven for reverent recreationalists in the form of walkers, runners and cyclists.

From my office, located within our administration office and mausoleum complex in the south end of the 100-acre burying ground, it’s a 1.3 mile-drive to the Key monument and cemetery's main/front gate positioned off S. Market Street. Call me a rebel, but I refuse to attempt a left turn in afternoon rush hour onto Market Street—doing so would double, or perhaps triple, my entire commute time! .....so says the idiot who wanted to drive on Market Street during "Fire & Ice First Saturday."  I choose instead to use our side gate located off Fox’s Alley and Broadway Street. Those who use Stadium Drive each day to accomplish this daring feat (turning left onto S. Market) know exactly what I’m talking about.
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Interestingly, before I exit Mount Olivet, I've passed by the gravesites of at least four of the street namesakes involved in my commute. In addition, I passed another who isn't a true street namesake, but simply shares a moniker. I also passed a few more stones that have other connections to why things were named the way they are today. Now that I've likely either piqued your interest, or totally confused the heck out of you, let's pick up the second leg/part of my journey as I depart the "City of the Departed."

LEG 2 —"On Broadway”
Albeit brief, I will include Fox's Alley in my story. I’m usually only on this for 1.7 seconds as I cross over to Broadway Street. Many commuters use this quiet lane (Fox's Alley) on their way home to bypass the stoplight at S. Market and Madison streets. This is a much better, and safer, alternative than those who insist on cutting through the cemetery, especially considering the safety and solitude of our visitors and recreationalists. Yes, we've had some near misses with people speeding on through which has prompted management to close this side gate now in late afternoon.

Fox's Alley takes its name from John S. Fox, former proprietor of Fox’s Sport and Bait shop at 501 S. Market. This business just left us last year, but since around 1959  was an ideal place for one-stop-shopping, especially if your wife asked you to stop and pick-up a 6-pack of beer and pound of nightcrawlers on your way home.

​Mr. Fox (1911-1989) sold the establishment a few years before his death to Bill Offutt, son of local attorney Jerome Offutt. Mr. Offutt was assisted by daughter Lauralea over the years as it kept the Fox’s name for a little bit but changed to Offutt’s Sport and Bait. Recently this property was sold and received a true business makeover, opening as the Stanley Salon. Oh, if Mr. Fox could see it now!
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When I brought his name up to Superintendent Ron Pearcey, he immediately smiled. Ron knew Mr. Fox quite well and frequented his store regularly over the years, particularly for ice cream and purchasing miniatures for his boss, former cemetery superintendent Robert Kline. This practice, however, came to a halt once Mrs. Kline discovered the ruse of Mr. Kline having Ron make the secret purchases on his behalf. 

​Ron hurriedly left my office for a second, saying, "Hold on Chris, I want to check on something." He returned a minute later and belted out, “February 26, 1964.” I asked, “What about it?”  He said that this was the day Mr. Fox bought his burial lots and then proceeded to tell me his funniest remembrance of Mr. Fox, told to him by the previously mentioned, Mr. Kline.

Ron said that Mr. Fox approached his old boss (Bob Kline) about buying a gravesite back in the mid 1960s, with the distinct caveat that the location must have a good view of Sugarloaf Mountain. Apparently, Mr. Fox had a decent view of the monadnock from his home on Ball Road south of town. Mr. Kline brought Fox to Area GG/Lot 28 and said, “Will this lot suit you?”  At this point, Mr. Fox immediately proceeded to lie down on the ground, and from that vantage point looked to the southeast towards Sugarloaf Mountain. After about a minute, Fox sprang back to up his feet and said to Kline, “That’ll do, I’ll take it!”

​Mr. Fox’s wife passed in 1967 and was laid to rest here. Mr. Fox wouldn't join her here until August of 1989.

Once on Broadway Street, I usually think about the famed thoroughfare in New York City which becomes the country’s epicenter every December 31st. I sometimes also get a tune instantly playing in my head—the song “On Broadway” of course, performed first by the Drifters in the 1960s, and later covered by George Benson a decade later. I will honestly say that I have never heard the song (“On Broadway”) while actually driving on Broadway Street, but that doesn’t mean that I will continue to suppress the urge sometime to do so in the near future!

​I wanted to see what Broadway looked like back on the 1873 Titus Atlas Map which I often reference with my "Stories in Stone" blog articles. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it, well at least all of it.

​​As I drive north, Broadway Street crosses over Madison Street (named for James Madison, our fourth US president) and continues on until it joins a much older portion of road near the intersection with today’s Getzendanner’s Alley (on the east). This was formerly known as Mantz Street in 1873, and this road came off S. Market Street in a westerly fashion and turned north to connect with W. South Street (see Titus Atlas inset below left).

LEG 3 —Ice Cold Beer
Now, back to my ride home, and again, the title is alluding to nothing that I am doing behind the wheel on this ride home. As I depart Broadway, I cross over South Street (self-explanatory as this was once Frederick’s southernmost major thoroughfare) onto the coolest street in town--Ice Street. I learned that this narrow lane was originally called Tanner's Alley in an early newspaper article dating to 1832. It was so named for some tanneries located a few blocks north on Carroll Creek. Around the year 1840, an ice house was built by George J. Fischer (1809-1866) as he leased a lot from Elizabeth Hauer, a relative of Barbara Fritchie. The Hauers and Fritchie's were in the glove-making field which certainly was related to tanning. Fischer built his structure on the east side of Tanner's Alley, halfway between W. All Saints Street to the north and W. South Street to the south. 

Fischer sold his property, known as “Ice House Lot” in 1855, and has continued to be called called Ice Street ever since, although some old deeds still say Tanner's Alley and others say Brewer's Alley. Marilyn found a  1905 deed that refers to the corridor as both: “Ice Street or Brewers Alley.” As we know, the former name would primarily stick to the stretch from W. South to W. All Saints, and Brewer's Alley would adorn the road up until its intersection with W. Patrick Street for most of the 19th century and into the 20th (before becoming Court).

​Court Street continues for another few blocks but was originally known as Public(k) Street/Alley as it dates back to the time of the erection of Frederick County’s first courthouse, today’s Frederick City Hall. This occurred after Frederick became a county in 1748. Founder Daniel Dulany donated the lots for this purpose, and gladly, since his planned development of Frederick-Town would serve as county seat.

​Travelers  on the National Road, and court business called for a profusion of inns and taverns here dating back to the 18th century. Hotels could be found on or near the east side corners of old Public Alley at intersections with W. Patrick and W. Church streets. I recently wrote about Mrs. Catherine Kimball who operated “The Golden Lamb”  Tavern on the northeast corner of today’s Court and W. Patrick which eventually morphed into The City Hotel, and later the Francis Scott Key Hotel in 1922—now luxury apartments. 

Time out for a sidebar....Remember when I told you that the All Saints Protestant Episcopal congregation decided to abandon their former church structure down on E. All Saints Street to move closer to the courthouse? Well, here is where they went (on the left). This structure was used until the present church, fronting on W. Church Street and around the corner,  was built in the 1855.

​There was another interesting hotel on the SE corner of the former Public and W. Church streets which once stood on the parking lot of today’s M&T Bank. I pull into this parking lot on occasion to use the ATM on my way home. Some residents may recall this as Frederick’s earlier YMCA location, up until the building’s destruction by fire in 1974. Before that, you have to go back to the year 1907, at which time stood the Park Hotel—the final moniker for a very popular lodging location that dated back to the 1700s. We are fortunate to have a beautiful old photograph dating from between 1903-1905, showing the hotel and adjacent area. 

​The building would be demolished in 1907 to make room for the Young Men’s Christian Association which opened the following year.  Preceding the Park Hotel, the structure took the name of the Carlin House, whose story will be told in a future article in context to proprietor Frank B. Carlin.

​The roots for inns and taverns run deep at this location, a funny thing to say considering that "The Temple," a Paul Mitchell Partner School for hair design, is located next door these days. The first apparent petition to the county court for a license to operate a tavern in Frederick was made by Cleburn Simms, who presented the following petition in March, 1749:

"That your petitioner, having provided himself with accommodations fit for travelers and others, humbly prays that Your Worships would be pleased to grant him a license for ordinary keeping, he complying with the Act of Assembly in that case provided and he as in duty bound will pray."

The petition was accepted by the county court justices, and the site of the Simm's tavern was built right here at this location of the M&T Bank and Temple parking lot. When Mr. Simms died, his widow Mary became the first female to hold an innkeeper's license.

It is thought that this same location came into the ownership of a gentlemen named Samuel Swearingen who hosted the grand celebration dinner following the mock funeral of the 1765 Stamp Act in late November, 1765. The county court justices were all for taverns as we can see, but had little use for stamped paper from Great Britain.

One way or another, the site of Swearingen's Inn at this location eventually became a private residence owned by a man named Benjamin Ogle. Later, another man named John Dill would come into the picture and be responsible for giving Frederick Town “The Dill House." This was purchased from Robert Miller of Baltimore on December 11th, 1806 for $2,450. John Dill (1762-1841) was of German heritage and could have come to Frederick by way of Pennsylvania. He operated his tavern stand here starting around 1807 and this would also come to be known as "the Cross Keys Tavern." 

From reading old newspapers, Dill’s Tavern seemed to be the premiere site for sheriff’s auctions, entertainment events, and organization meetings ranging from bank boards to the county’s Republican Committee to the Frederick Agricultural Club who put on the first cattle shows and fairs. This was even a site of special mayor & alderman meetings, as well as serving as a municipal election precinct. Mr. Dill eventually turned hotel management over to Mathias Bartgis in 1826.

​John Dill married twice. His first wife was Catherine Peltz, a widow and daughter of George Burkhart.  The couple wed in 1790 and would have three known children to live to maturity: Joshua (b. 1792), Ezra (b. 1795), and Elizabeth (1800-1866), the latter marrying a man named Levin Thomas.

After Catherine's death on October 4th, 1804, John Dill would eventually wed another widow,  who had been married to a fellow named Henry Fout. Her name was Philipina, and her maiden name was Philipina Krieger, daughter of another tavern owner in town (George Krieger/Creager, Sr. (1752-1815).

John Dill was civic-minded and served as a roads and street commissioner of town. He continued to own the tavern property throughout his lifetime, but leased it out to others to run. Upon his death in 1841, his will would convey the popular hostelry to his son, Joshua. 

Mr. Dill was originally buried in the Evangelical Lutheran burying ground behind the church within two blocks to the east of his tavern. His descendants would move his remains to Mount Olivet on September 20th, 1870. He was buried in Area H/Lot 327. His second wife, Philipina, would be reburied here as well on the same day.

As I drive over W. Second Street, the street sign says that I’m still on Court Street. The road bed actually widens enough to allow for parking on both sides as I enter this new through-way. Up until the 1930's, this used to be called Kleinhart's Alley, a unique name that has a direct link with the fore-mentioned Dill family.
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You see, Joshua Dill (son of the previously mentioned innkeeper John) was married to Mary Kleinhart, the daughter of a Hessian mercenary soldier who was fighting under the British flag during the American Revolution. Johann Franz Kleinhart (born in 1751 in Hesse-Kassel) was likely captured in New Jersey at the Battle of Trenton. This small, but pivotol, battle took place on the morning of December 26th, 1776 in Trenton, New Jersey. After Gen. George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton the previous night, the iconic hero led the main body of the Continental army against Hessian auxiliaries garrisoned here. After a brief battle, almost two-thirds of the Hessian force (800-900) were captured, with only negligible losses to the Americans. The battle significantly boosted the Continental army's waning morale, and inspired re-enlistments.

Kleinhart and other German soldiers were imprisoned at various sites. In his case, Franz Kleinhart would be brought to the Frederick-Town Barracks, a military installation located atop Cannon Hill, today’s site of the Maryland School for the Deaf. The concentration of these German mercenary soldiers led to it receiving the lasting nickname of Hessian Barracks. Kleinhart may have even been involved in constructing the barracks  which seems fitting as I have seen a few references to him perhaps possessing talent as a stone mason.

Like several other Hessians in captivity here during the war, Franz, or Francis (as his name would become Anglicized) decided to stay in Frederick once released at the end of the war in 1783. There were plenty of pretty German girls around and Kleinhart married a woman named Maria Salome Weltzheimer. The couple had a son named John Frederick in 1787, and two daughters: Mary Matilda in 1794 and another named Wilhemina in 1799.

​Herr Kleinhart operated a tavern on the southside of E. Second Street near the town's early gaol (jail) and later another on W. Third Street. In Rev. Frederick Weiser’s book Frederick Maryland Lutheran Marriages & Burials 1743-1811, I found references to a number of marriages performed at Kleinhart’s Tavern between 1803 and 1805. 

​In 1827, Maryland newspapers carried the story of a terrible fire at Mr. Kleinhart’s residence in early June, 1826. Reported as the worst fire in Frederick Town up until that time, the blaze started mysteriously in Francis Kleinhart’s stables located along the alley between W. Second and W. Third streets. The fire spread to consume a number of nearby dwellings including that of Klinehart who was sharing his home with daughter Mary and her husband Joshua Dill. Kleinhart's brother-in-law, Dr. Lewis Weltzheimer, lived next door and his apothecary business fell prey to the flames as well.

News of the fire made newspapers all over Maryland including Baltimore and Easton. Frederick’s Jacob Engelbrecht wrote of the “dreadful fire” in his famous diary in an entry on June 1st, 1826. He would have known Mr. Kleinhart quite well as his own father, Conradt Engelbrecht, was also a Hessian soldier held captive at the Frederick Barracks during the Revolutionary War. I was, however,  surprised to see the following written on June 3rd, 1826 by the man who seemingly had his finger on the pulse of Frederick:

“Frederick Kleinert, son of Mr. Francis Kleinert was this day brought before the Mayor George Kolb & M. E. Bartgis & George Rohr Esquires on suspicion of being the incendiary of the fire of the 1st instant and after an investigation of 2 or 3 hours was committed to prison to stand his trial at the next County Court. It appeared in evidence that he had threatened to consume the whole fabric owing to some difference between himself and his father bye the bye Fred, is a very bad boy.
PS. Clip & clear not indicted

I don’t know what became of Frederick Kleinhart, but assume that he eventually moved away from the area as I haven’t located a grave or obituary. He married Catherine Wiegle in 1813, and all I have been able to find relating to him is a marriage record and (Engelbrecht) diary notation for his daughter Susan Kleinhart (Faubel). He last appears here locally in the 1840 US Census, apparently living in Frederick.
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Francis Kleinhart, alley namesake, died the following year on September 14th, 1827 and was buried in or next to Frederick’s first Presbyterian Church cemetery. This sacred ground was once located by the congregation's meeting house on the southeast corner of N. Bentz and W. Fourth streets. Jacob Engelbrecht made note of his death and added that “he was buried in a vault made by himself for that purpose in his lot adjoining the English Presbyterian graveyard without a ceremony.” 

Frederick's original English Presbyterian Church was constructed in 1780 and built of brick  and boasted "high backed pews, a lofty pulpit, and a brick floor."  A new house of worship was completed in 1825 on W. Second Street, but the original graveyard remained active until 1885, at which time the trustees decided to discontinue use. The old structure was utilized afterwards  as part of an old factory until being sold, along with the cemetery ground, to the Salvation Army for $400 in 1887.

Most of the bodies here were removed on May 10th, 1887 and transferred to Mount Olivet. These were originally placed in Area Q, but later moved to Area NN on December 12th, 1907. Among these was the old Hessian Kleinhart, who is said to rest in Lot 131/Grave 11. He doesn’t have a stone, as it likely disappeared along the way, not uncommon as broken or worn stones were seen as unsightly elements here in Frederick’s “Garden Cemetery” back in the day.

Mary (Kleinhart) Dill and her husband, Joshua, repaired/rebuilt their home and lived on West Third Street until their respective deaths—the house still stands today at 102 W. Third Street. We are lucky to have a bit more info on Joshua thanks to a publication that the cemetery undertook in 2014 with the bicentennial of the War of 1812, entitled Frederick’s Other City: War of 1812 Veterans:

Sergeant Joshua Dill served under Capt. George W. Ent, 3rd Regiment, Maryland Militia, from August 24 to September 30, 1814. Joshua Dill was born September 13, 1792 in Frederick to John (of “Dill House”) and Catherine Burkhardt. He was married to Mary M. Kleinhart on April 12th, 1817 in Frederick. Joshua died July 24, 1868 at the age of 75. He was laid to rest in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Area H/Lot 327. Mary was born March 24, 1794, and died May 14, 1873 at the age of 79. She too was buried in the same lot as her husband.
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Joshua held the following positions within Frederick City: A constable in December 1820, May 1825, and June 1833; Deputy Sheriff in October 1821; Lutheran Church warden in January 1824 and an Elder in January 1833, January 1841 and January 1844; a councilman for Ward #6 in February 1834, February 1862 and February 1863. He was the owner of the Cross Keys Hotel, which became known as the Dill House, located southeast of the Courthouse. 

​Joshua and Mary Dill had six known children. First was John Francis Dill (1819-1891), Lewis Henry Dill (1821-1894), George Theodore Dill (1823-1888), Henrietta (Dill) Wisong (1826-1872), Hirame Dill (1828-1829) and Mary M. (Dill) Schultz (1830-1861). Here are census records showing Joshua and Mary Kleinhart Dill's family living on W. Third Street:

​The Dills, primarily Joshua, did a great deal of buying and selling of land in and around Frederick City. He had ample opportunity during his terms as sheriff, as people regularly were put in the position of hastily unloading their holdings to pay outstanding debts. The lion’s share of these auctions occurred at the Dill House to boot. Joshua Dill and his children benefited greatly. In his later years, the former sheriff and innkeeper put his efforts toward farming, as he had plenty of parcels to care for.

Joshua Dill died on July 24th, 1868 and wife Mary, daughter of the old Hessian, passed on May 14th, 1873. A notation in our cemetery records says the following:
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"REMOVAL from the Dill's Cemetery where he was originally buried on July 25, 1868."

I haven't been able to find a reference to a "Dill's Cemetery" but have a theory that it could be a reference to a plot within or adjacent the Old Presbyterian graveyard where his father-in-law (Francis Kleinhart) was buried. Regardless, Joshua Dill was removed to Mount Olivet and reburied in the Dill family lot on November 24th, 1869. His parents would join him here a year later as previously stated.

​As I pass the old Kleinhart/Dill residence on my right, I cross over W. Third Street and find myself in a "tried and true" portion of virtually unaltered Klineharts Alley. 

​I can’t travel the alley to its terminus at W. Sixth Street because I’m soon forced to take my first turn of the commute trip home—a left onto W. Fourth Street. In researching for a Frederick-based, Black history documentary project nearly 25 years ago, I learned that many African-American/Black residents lived along Klineharts Alley between W. Fourth and W. Seventh streets. A derogatory moniker of sorts once used as the name for a cluster of dilapidated shanties and shacks that once stood along the alley was Santa Domingo. I don't know if the Blacks here were actually of Haitian origin or not.

The narrow roadway was usually in terrible shape and often flooded, prompting a former mayor's ire and municipal help. I could judge this from an article found in the Frederick News from 1914.

​LEG 4 —"Dilly, Dilly"

​​Once on W. Fourth Street, I soon come to a stoplight at the next cross-street of N. Bentz Street. I won’t get into the name Bentz at this time, but here was another family with deep German roots in town and a namesake mill located at the southern portion of this intersecting roadway at Carroll Creek. A glance to my left toward the southwest corner of the intersection shows me a row of townhouses where the original English Presbyterian Meeting House once stood. Of course this was before the site became home for a number of years to the Salvation Army.

The property sold again and was developed into townhomes on both corners. Francis Kleinhart, and perhaps son-in-law Joshua were once buried in the adjacent church graveyard as I remarked earlier. It all seems to come full circle as I cross Bentz Street and find myself heading west on Dill Avenue. Now where in the world did that name come from?  You can guess by now...or you sure as heck better be able to!

​The 1873 Titus Atlas clearly shows land parcels owned by Dill. It wouldn’t be until August, 1901 when Frederick alderman John Baumgardner suggested the name of Dill Avenue to replace the W. Fourth Street Extended moniker. It was duly accepted, and the rest is history. As for Lewis Henry Dill, he made his living as a farmer and large landholder thanks to previous generations of “Dill”igent business persons. He is buried in Mount Olivet's Area G/Lot 32. ​

​Heading northwest out of town, Dill Avenue suddenly becomes Rosemont Avenue once you pass Hood College. The name Rosemont comes from a poultry farm, and later subdivision, of the same name. The neighborhood was laid out in 1913 by Eugene Sponseller and Harry Tritapoe, the latter being the poultry farmer.

Two gentlemen of particular interest in the Rosemont story are Elbridge F. Biggs and John M. Culler, who jointly bought eight building  lots here in 1913. Their purchase constituted the entire 1st block of Fairview Avenue, north of the newly named Rosemont Avenue which came with the development. 

​​John McCleary Culler (b.1880), was a grocery store proprietor, and Elbridge F. Biggs, Jr., the switchboard manager for Chesapeake & Potomac (C&P) Telephone Company. In addition to being successful businessmen and civic leaders, this tandem were brothers-in-law as Mr. Culler was married to Mary Ada Biggs, Elbridge’s sister. The Cullers lived on Elm Street and the Biggs took up residence on Fairview Avenue which was the principal street of the Rosemont development, which didn't go any further to the west.

​As far as Rosemont avenue, the road had been unofficially called the Montevue Turnpike, a crude translation to French of “Mountain View,” leading to the county almshouse of the same name as mentioned earlier. Rosemont Avenue became the new name as it ran past the new development. The transition between Dill and rosemont avenues occurs at a major bend in the roadway, exactly in front of Hood College's main gate. From a timeline perspective, the college campus here opened in 1913, moving from downtown's Winchester Hall.
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The cross streets here along Dill and Rosemont are mostly named for college connections (ie: College Avenue, College Terrace, College Parkway, Hood Alley), scenic vistas like the fore-mentioned Fairview, and trees/plants (ie: Elm Street, Ferndale, Magnolia Ave). A few more exist like Lindbergh and Grove. Lindbergh was named for the heroic aviator, but I don’t know if Grove paid homage to trees, or the local family of the same name. Scottish Alley is a story unto itself as well, and I will leave it alone for now.

​However, there is one additional street name that irks me more than any other--Dulaney Street. This is the only tribute we have to the founder of Frederick Town/City and Frederick County. It's more or less an alley, and should be spelled Dulany as this was the way the man spelled his name. The pathetic lane connects Dill Avenue to W. Second Street, running two measly blocks. For God's sake, I've done far less for Frederick over my lifetime, but have a prominent thoroughfare named for me in Christopher's Crossing.

 I assumed Culler Avenue was named for Lloyd Culler, former mayor. I was mistaken as I have since learned (from my assistant Marilyn) that it was named in honor of John M. Culler, the grocery store owner/Rosemont lot buyer who lived on Elm Street. Sadly, Mr. Culler would die in a car accident in 1935 on MD 26 near Mount Pleasant while returning home from taking his son back to school at Western Maryland College. 

The street would be soon named in honor of the former businessman on a 1937 plat for a new subdivision called Rosedale, planned to encompass the Jacob A. Kidwiler property stretching from Fairview Avenue and the Rosemont subdivision, westward to existing Wilson Avenue in Villa Estates which had come about around 1930.

The Rosedale property had been bought in 1931 from Henry Krantz, son of Edward Krantz who owned this property prior. You may remember Edward from another “Story in Stone” written just a few weeks back and entitles "A Statue of Hope". At the time, the purchase (Jacob A. Kidwiler) actually lived on the property where Frederick High School is now located before selling that to the Board of Education in 1938.

​Anyway, there was no US15 bypass as yet as this would come in the early 1950s. As I pass by Schifferstadt Architectural Museum and go under the US15 overpass, I soon make an immediate turn right off Rosemont Avenue onto Biggs Avenue. I failed to mention Biggs earlier in my dazzling overview of the roadways of Villa Estates/Rosedale. To tell the truth, I was very interested to learn who the famed namesake was myself. I ride this road nearly every day, and my boys had their elementary school bus stop here.

​Well, with help from Marilyn, I learned that Biggs Avenue was named for the other major Rosemont development investor, John M. Culler’s brother-in-law, Elbridge F. Biggs, Jr. It's certainly a further stretch than Mr. Culler by having his name remembered in the form of a street, but no big deal I guess. Or should I  say, "No Bigg Dill" instead? As you can see, this commute, albeit short, has made me quite punchy!

​Although Mr. Biggs is entombed within the mausoleum at Clustered Spires Cemetery atop Linden Hills, John M. Culler and wife Ada Biggs Culler are buried in Mount Olivet’s Area AA/Lot 2.

We also have buried here Mr. Kidwiler, "the former king of Rosedale" and  a Spanish-American War veteran as well. His gravesite is in Area AA/Lot 84, not that far from that of Mr. Culler.  I will write a more in-depth piece on him one day, but I learned that his name is the proper one for my neighborhood park as somewhere along the line it had wrongfully been changed to Rosedale Park.

I know this sounds anticlimactic, but my third turn is a left onto Blue Ridge Avenue.  It’s a short thoroughfare of two blocks with few speaking points. However, to the left, at the intersection with Schley Avenue, one can gaze at the childhood home of Frederick’s current mayor, Michael O’ Connor. This property (on the southeastern corner of the intersection of Schley and Blue Ridge) was sold out of the family a few years back, after Michael’s dad passed away. Saying this,  I’m assuming we won’t see any museum or "mayoral library" placed here in the near future.

​I cross Schley and proceed to the next sleepy intersection, where I make my fourth, and final, turn-- a right, onto my home street of Taney Avenue. I won’t get into the story behind that guy, but those who may have read my September 19, 2019 "Stories in Stone" article, know that Roger’s wife, Anne, and three daughters are buried in Mount Olivet. Anne Taney's brother, Francis, also has a nice burial site, complete with an impressive monument up by our front gate.

​I hope this story was worth the read, as it surely took far longer to do so than it takes me to drive my daily commute home. Thanks for the company, take care and stay safe!

"Stories in Stone" is made possible by:

Well, April Fools’ Day 2020 has come and gone, and I would surmise that this particular one held the least impact or interest in recent memory. Some sources even reported that it had actually been cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately the predicament we have found ourselves in atpresent is the furthest thing from a joke.
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I had intended to publish something light and less serious for this week, attempting to make a connection between this unofficial holiday of mischief/”Tom Foolery” and someone buried here at Mount Olivet. I went back in the Frederick newspapers of yore and found mentions of April Fools’ Day (with appropriate exercises) going back to the early decades of the 19th century. After a few hours, I hadn’t found any good matches and decided to “cut bait” and move on to another topic. I had to laugh as I fondly recalled last year’s April Fools’ Day of 2019 in which I helped instigate a creative, and fitting, space-related prank relating to Mount Olivet. I know what you are probably thinking: pranks and cemeteries should never go hand-in-hand for so many reasons. I couldn’t agree more, but my idea was to involve more a play on words than anything else.

I have a co-worker named Meghan who runs our administrative office operation and conducts cemetery sales with customers. In addition to doing a fine job for the cemetery, she prides herself on organization and neatness. Meghan is equally quite particular about the overall care and appearance of her beloved vehicle.  I had concocted the perfect April Fools’ scheme with her in mind and even would employ our boss to help me carry it through to fruition. I was going to Francis Scott “Key” my co-worker’s car!
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On March 31st, 2019, I meticulously cut out about a dozen small pictures of Francis Scott Key’s head from outdated copies of our self-guided cemetery tour brochure. I put in an envelope and through these in my work bag. The next morning I pulled into our parking lot and alongside my co-workers’ vehicle. I quickly put my devious plan into motion by lightly adhering the cut-outs (each with a small piece of double-sided tape) in a row on the passenger side of her car. 

I quickly completed by “decorating” task and went into our office building, undetected. I dropped off my stuff at my desk and then went to see Meghan to deliver the bad news that I had noticed upon pulling in that her vehicle had been “keyed” on its passenger side. Of course, she didn’t believe me when I gently broke the news to her.  She sat there determined not to let me rattle her with news of this sort, thinking it a joke. So I quickly invited the superintendent (J. Ronald Pearcey) to go out for a look, and report his findings to Meghan. He obliged, and, upon return to her office, reported the honest truth that her sparkling white car had indeed been “keyed.” She sprang from her desk in an instant, making her way to the parking lot to see with her own eyes the dastardly deed done to her precious car.
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Of course, the anxiety and extreme panic quickly subsided when she saw the ridiculous, temporary graffiti in the form of “Star-Spangled” micro-heads of our most cemetery’s most famous resident. The three of us got a good laugh out of that one, and I made amends by gladly buying that day’s lunch for both my prank accomplice (Ron) and most of all, hapless victim (Meghan).

​It was nice to think back this week, as this years’ April Fools’ Day seemed as surreal as these last few weeks.  I quickly tried to spin my mind with the hope of normalcy returning far in advance of next April 1st (2021), and started scheming on how I could top Francis Scott "Key-ing” a car? Perhaps I can somehow incorporate novelty itching powder and Barbara Fritchie to create the dreaded Fritch Itch--“Scratch if you must this irritable itch, but spare your country’s flag.” Just kidding of course, as I don’t think any of us will be in the mood for pranks anytime soon after we finally get through this pandemic.

“This Too Shall Pass”
The following story may well strike a sensitive nerve with some readers, but my intent is not to scare, sensationalize or depress. We have enough anxiety and bad news to sort through these days as we find ourselves in a situation no one could have predicted a year ago, or even just a few short months ago when we were enjoying the Christmas holiday season.

We are a few weeks into self-quarantining and the practice of “social distancing,” a term that has quickly entered into our vernacular, almost overnight. I have seen articles that the proper term should be “spatial distancing,” because with smartphone and computer technology still readily at our disposal despite Covid-19, we continue to have the means to easily communicate with friends, families, co-workers and complete strangers (for that matter) with the touch of a button. Familiar voices can be heard, and faces seen, no matter the geographic distance apart, whether its 6 feet, or 600 miles.
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It’s along these lines that I write this particular story as a “compare and contrast” exercise. It can be fully illustrated by local and national history with the over-arching message of: “This too will pass.”  The familiar adage (“This too will pass”) comes originally from Persia—that Western Asia country we know better today by the name Iran. The quote has been translated and used in multiple languages and reflects on the temporary nature, or ephemerality, of the human condition. The general sentiment has often been expressed in wisdom literature throughout history and across cultures, although the specific phrase seems to have originated in the writings of the medieval Persian poets. 

I found that “This too shall pass” is known in the Western world primarily due to a 19th-century retelling of a Persian fable called “Solomon’s Seal” by the English poet Edward FitzGerald. In it, a sultan requests of King Solomon a sentence that would always be true in good times or bad; Solomon responds, "This too will pass away.”

The expression was popularized here in the United States over a century-and-a-half ago when featured in a speech by Abraham Lincoln in September, 1859 and before he became the sixteenth President of the United States. Honest Abe could have obtained the adage from an early English citation of "this too shall pass" which appeared in an article titled "The Revolutions in Europe", and featured in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in May, 1848:
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When an Eastern sage was desired by his sultan to inscribe on a ring the sentiment which, amidst the perpetual change of human affairs, was most descriptive of their real tendency, he engraved on it the words : — "And this, too, shall pass away." It is impossible to imagine a thought more truly and universally applicable to human affairs than that expressed in these memorable words, or more descriptive of that perpetual oscillation from good to evil, and from evil to good, which from the beginning of the world has been the invariable characteristic of the annals of man, and so evidently flows from the strange mixture of noble and generous with base and selfish inclinations, which is constantly found in the children of Adam.

I don’t mean to wax poetic, but surely will do so while I have you kept captive, likely in the confines of your own home at the present time of my writing. Here are three poignant quotes, or aphorisms, to reflect upon in the restless days, weeks and possibly months ahead:
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“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
                                                                                                                                  -George Santayana (1863-1952)
 
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
                                                                                                                                  -Maya Angelou (1928-1914)
 
“What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.”
                                                                                                                                  -Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

​This last passage has particularly resonated with me for a number of years as I even use it on the home page of my side ”history for hire” business entitled History Shark Productions. I had the rare opportunity to stay in his Paris residence of Place des Vosges back in 2003, and also visit his burial crypt within The Pantheon (Paris). Victor Hugo is one of the greatest French writers to have lived, and gave us such notable works as his novels Les Miserables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). This gentlemen was at the forefront of the Romantic era, an intellectual movement characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature. 

​As this is a highly emotional, nervous and troubling time we live in at the moment, we need to heed the echoes of the past. This is something that seems to consume me each and every week in writing “Stories in Stone,” and I can honestly say that there has nothing that has been so self-gratifying and rewarding in my thirty-year professional career. I feel as if I have had the chance to personally meet my subjects, the majority of which dwell beneath the grounds surface with a memorial periscope in the form of a tombstone. With that knowledge, I’m able to see my surrounding hometown as a form of continual reflex from these past residents, just as the Hugo quote shared illustrates. 

Back in the fall of 2018, I busily published articles, presented talks and gave walking tours based on research I was conducting on the nearly 600 World War I veterans buried here in Mount Olivet.  One of the most enlightening experiences for me was studying the deaths of five servicemen who died as a result of the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918.
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Frederick, and her past residents, experienced the uncertainties associated with several wars ranging from world conflicts to the American Civil War, when fighting and massive casualties actually came to their doorsteps. All the while, terrible diseases and illnesses such as cholera, typhoid and smallpox were commonplace due to unsanitary conditions and lack of advanced healthcare methods. 

The 1918 Spanish Flu was the perfect combination of both war and disease. It was a global pandemic during a global war. While the enemy was somewhat visible to the American doughboys fighting in the trenches of France, the invisible flu waged war “over there,” and quickly made its way “over here” to the chagrin of all. Today, we are experiencing a similar war against the virus, luckily not man at the same time.
In recent weeks we have had to socially distance our cemetery staff from visitors and customers alike for the safety of staff. This is so very hard for members of a profession that is built upon having the utmost compassion for those needing our services and visiting our grounds—all made possible by the greatest unwelcome visitor of all, the coronavirus. We don’t have to look far to find answers from the past. Less than 102 years ago, our newspapers read like that of our tv, laptop and smartphone screens of today.

​The earlier “unwelcome visitor” understandably had then cemetery superintendent, Albert Routzahn, unnerved, along with his faithful staff. As far as Mount Olivet Cemetery is concerned, the first documented civilian fatality of the Spanish Flu was Mrs. Bessie G. Jones, a 33-year-old housewife from Buckeystown, MD. Mrs. Jones passed on September 28th, 1918.

The next day, George Jacob Cronise of Mount Pleasant would die as his in-laws were suffering from flu symptoms. A day later, a broom-maker named John H. F. Bender would be claimed as a victim and buried in Mount Olivet. Bender, age 60, was also from Buckeystown. Yet another resident from the same town of Buckeystown would help usher in funerals during the horrific month of October, 1918. Thirty-year-old Sallie Elizabeth Barber expired on October 2nd.

The other day, I decided to read over our death ledgers and interment registers from the fall of 1918. I became interested in Frederick City’s first victim of the flu, and buried in Mount Olivet. This individual was named Marshall Howard Zepp, Jr., a 21-year-old electrician who worked for the Hagerstown & Frederick Railway.  Young Mr. Zepp died on the fourth of October. ​

​Marshall Howard Zepp’s mortal remains were buried two days later in Area T/Lot 130 in the middle of the cemetery—dare I say, the “dead center?” I can say this with surety, because Area T, was virtually a dead center as 40 people were interred here as a result of the Spanish Flu. Meanwhile, cemetery superintendent Ron Pearcey decided to carefully inspect the Spanish Flu victims buried here by studying the interment cards themselves. As is the case today, many people with underlying health conditions were more susceptible to not only contracting the Spanish Influenza, but becoming a fatality because of it. Ron also studied the severity of pneumonia in olden days, pandemic or not. With physicians seeing this malady for the first time, pneumonia was given as cause of death because of like symptoms.

​I wrote a story focusing on World War I soldiers as victims of the crippling pandemic of 1918. This occurred in early October of 2018 and was entitled “No Ordinary Flu Season.” In that piece, I counted 93 Spanish Influenza-related victims buried here in Mount Olivet from late September (1918) through January(1919). Superintendent Ron came up with 98 victims, and we were able to prove two more cases should be added to our total. I will tell you about it here shortly. Regardless, that brings our tally up to 100 Spanish Flu victims buried in Mount Olivet. 

​Ron and I also predict that the number of Spanish Influenza deaths/burials will rise if we closely research the other interments that took place here during that period. We can do this by looking at medical complications, listed as causes of death in our records, and consider the “cause and effect “relationship to the Spanish Flu. In addition, pneumonia presents a complicated “sticky-wicket.” Ron researched deaths by pneumonia over the previous year’ late September through January timespan of the pandemic and found a grand total of nine deaths related to the respiratory illness—one that is usually brought on by cold or flu. Regardless, the number gave us a benchmark.

One Lonely Cart Row
Cart rows are useful cemetery thoroughfares—for both workers and visitors alike. These lanes represent linear “no bury zones” and extend through cemetery sections as a means for employees to bring necessary digging and lifting equipment to individual gravesites. This is particularly useful over time when an area fills up so to speak, and obstacles in the form of granite and marble monuments create challenges to reach a specific lot. Just imagine trying to get a mechanized digging apparatus like a backhoe into the center of a section crowded with grave monuments. Even in the early days of Mount Olivet, monument vendors utilized horse and wagon to carry gravestones to be placed on burial sites. The cart rows were invaluable to them in giving needed access.
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From the visitor perspective, I myself can get easily lost when seeking a specific grave, even with coordinates and a trusty cemetery map in hand. I always advise visitors and family historians seeking a specific site to take note of the cart rows on the maps, and use these as a helpful guide in finding their desired destinations.

Looking at Ron Pearcey’s research numbers, Area T boasted 40 Spanish Flu related interments—40% of the cemetery’s total. Along the particular cart row in question, one can find 25 Spanish Flu victims (25% of Mount Olivet’s total). There are 30 individual (“ten-grave”) family lots laid out along the grassy transportation corridor. Of these, 19 include one or more flu interments from the fall/winter of 1918-1919.
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The chart below shows the incredible spike in burials here at Mount Olivet in late 1918. A monthly average of 21(burials for the first 9 months of the year) skyrocketed to 77 in October. 

The Year 1918 and Burials in Mount Olivet Cemetery
Jan      Feb      Mar      April      May      June      July      Aug      Sept      Oct      Nov      Dec
 18        14        23         19            14          35          17         19          25          77        27         40

​By the 8th of October, 1918, flu cases had become so prevalent that the state health board ordered county health officer Dr. T.C. Routson to immediately close all schools, churches, theaters, pool halls and other places where the public may gather. This again was 11 days after the first reported death on September 27th.

Between September 27th and October 31st, related deaths attributed to the influenza included five servicemen and 51 civilians, making a grand total of 56 individuals laid to rest in Mount Olivet over the period. Using the typical average of 21 burials/month, this was the equivalent of two-and-a half to nearly three additional months of burials that the cemetery was burdened with in October, 1918. Keep in mind that this was a time where graves were still primarily dug by hand.

Ron relayed to me a story about that particular October told to him by a former South Market Street resident by the name of Melvin Engle. He vividly remembered the cemetery bell atop the superintendent’s house tolling almost non-stop. Of course, the bell was used to toll for the deceased and signified the funeral cortege’s entrance into the cemetery back in the day. You may remember the old expression: “For whom the bell tolls?”

In my former story, I included a list of the first 20 Spanish Influenza victims buried here in Mount Olivet Cemetery, along with their respective hometowns, ages and occupations. Here is a list of the 25 individuals that can be found along the “lonely cart row” on the south end of Area T:

​9/29/1918            George Jacob Cronise                     23           Farmer               Mount Pleasant     Area T/123
9/30/1918            John H. F. Bender                               60           Broommaker     Buckeystown        Area T/124
9/30/1918            George Grover Sanders, Jr.          25           WW I Soldier          Frederick           Area T/126
10/4/1918            Marshall Howard Zepp, Jr.           21            Electrician               Frederick           Area T/130
10/6/1918            Franklin Luther Staley                     26           WW I Soldier      Shookstown        Area T/131
10/8/1918            John Ridenour, Jr.                               28           Baker                      Virginia                   Area T/131
10/10/1918         Anna E. Metz                                          5             N/A                             Frederick            Area T/133
10/11/1918         Mary G. Metz                                       25            Housewife            Frederick              Area T/133
10/10/1918         Harry N. Garrett                                26            Munition Plant    Baltimore            Area T/132
10/13/1918         Della Irene Angleberger               37             Housewife            Mt Pleasant        Area T/123
10/13/1918        George Frederick Strailman        27            Blacksmith            Frederick              Area T/122
10/14/1918        Marguerite E. Redmond                  6             N/A                             Frederick             Area T/120
10/15/1918         Pauline Virginia Woerner            12            N/A                             Frederick             Area T/133
10/18/1918         Helena G. Delaughter                      4             N/A                             Frederick             Area T/134
10/18/1918         Leslie F. Selby                                      27            WW I Soldier           Frederick          Area T/141
10/20/1918         William Denis Covell                      42            Day Laborer             Baltimore         Area T/142
10/24/1918         Cora Leona Oden                              6 mos    N/A                             Frederick            Area T/130
10/26/1918         John William Poole                          39           Park Manager  Braddock Hghts  Area T/140
10/27/1918         Edgar John Mossburg                    25            Laborer                Buckeystown       AreaT/124
10/27/1918         Niona Gearinger                               22            City Hospital           Frederick         AreaT/145
11/7/1918            Carrollton L Zimmerman             8 mos    N/A                               Frederick          Area T/147
12/4/1918            Bessie Wittler                                    41            Housewife                Frederick          AreaT/129
12/20/1918         Madora Adams                                  2 mos    N/A                             Pittsburgh          Area T/144
1/10/1919            Arthur S Basford                              20            Machinist            Alexandria VA     Area T/134
1/14/1919            Emma May Shaw                              23           Housewife               Frederick           Area T/136

Local industries such as Frederick Iron & Steel, the Ox-Fibre Brush Company and the Union Knitting Mills were hit hard with many employees having to go out on sick leave. Several store-keepers wisely kept their doors closed as well. Controlling the spread of this epidemic was a difficult task, but social distancing and self-quarantine efforts back then “flattened the curve” as they say. 

Interestingly, senior citizens fared much better against the Spanish Influenza than those 20-40 years of age. Using the 25% sample of those listed in the above chart, one can see that there is only one individual above 42 years of age (John H. F. Bender-age 60). Conversely, the majority of victims here, 17 in number, are between ages 20-42. This is the complete opposite of today’s Covid-19 pandemic.
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I recall my former research on the 1918 flu and being fascinated with the cancellation of the annual Great Frederick Fair (formerly held in mid-October) in an effort to curb the spread of the disease, and save lives. In the last month, we, ourselves, have seen all sporting events, concerts, and special events follow suit the same way. ​

​During the remainder of the October, 1918, 48 other souls had gone to early graves in Mount Olivet thanks to the Spanish Influenza outbreak. The high-water mark having been reached by mid-month, cases waned by month’s end. Health Officer Routson even placed a temporary ban on church funeral services. Most interesting of all, then Frederick Mayor Lewis H. Fraley and the Frederick Board of Alderman reinstated a ban on public spitting, referred to formally as “expectorating.” Violators would be fined $1.00 for each instance. Apparently, this just wasn’t restricted to spitting on city streets, as there had been a running problem with riders doing this on the floors of the local trolleys. The earlier mentioned Marshall Zepp was an electrician working for the electric railway. Could he have been felled by a careless placement of saliva? 

Speaking of Frederick’s trolley system, there is a unique “roundabout” connection to one of Area T’s Spanish Influenza victims that I just learned about this past week by pure coincidence. It relates to a gentleman name John William Poole. 

​John William Lorenzo Poole
Earlier this week, I received a phone call from a member of our “Friends of Mount Olivet” preservation and social group named Betty DeColigny. I’ve known Betty for over a decade now, first meeting her through by involvement with the Francis Scott Key Memorial Foundation. Betty is a direct descendant of the national anthem author, and one-time “car graffitist” through her mother, Elizabeth Poole Remsburg, a former Middletown native, schoolteacher and local history lover. Betty is recently widowed and spending her days in a senior community in the Randallstown area of northwest Baltimore County.
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Anyway, she called to say that she had some local genealogy resources that she found going through some boxes while in quarantine, and asked if she could send them along to me for use. We got to talking, and I brought up the fact that I had recently seen an old newspaper article involving her mother  at Braddock Heights in one of my research jaunts. This led to Betty telling me that her mother had grown up at Braddock, solely because her parents were one-time managers of the former amusement park once located atop Catoctin Mountain.

For those not familiar with the story of the Braddock Heights settlement, here’s a brief backstory. In 1896, a local man named George William Smith helped organize the Frederick & Middletown Street Railway in an effort to aid farmers to get their products such as milk, wheat, produce, etc. to the county seat of Frederick and further destinations via train if necessary. The trolley could also deliver supplies, groceries, furniture outward from the county’s largest commercial center and rail depot of Frederick.
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Another use of the trolley was passenger transport and this became a boon to the ensuing era of suburbanization that was also aided by the innovation of the automobile. Commuters began to travel between Frederick and Middletown with relative ease. Mr. Smith quickly realized the potential in Braddock Heights, with its wondrous views of the surrounding countryside. 

​The trolley was run by electricity, a modern marvel that brought so many changes to life at the turn of the 19th century. The electricity from the rail line could be used at the Braddock Heights location for an amusement park and other attractions such as a casino, swimming pool, observation tower and playhouse. A surrounding colony of cottages and the sizeable Braddock Hotel soon made Braddock a premiere summer destination for affluent Frederick residents and tourists alike. The trolley company expanded to Hagerstown and eventually took the name of the Potomac Edison Company.

In her book Braddock Heights: A Glance Backward, author Anne B. Hooper describes the job duties of the position which included a residence on the park grounds:
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“Up a little and back from the casino building was the park manager’s home. These men and women who worked to make the park thrive over the years became familiar figures to visitors and local residents. In the spring it was their responsibility to clear the park of leaves, fix the gravel roadways and paint the benches, swings, and buildings. During the season they cleaned up the litter left by picnickers and generally saw that things operated smoothly. In the fall they prepared the property for winter. Cap Stine, the first manager, was succeeded by John W. Poole.”

​Sadly, John William Lorenzo Poole was a victim of the Spanish Flu in late October, 1918. Death records also show that he had meningitis at the time of his passing.

​In his absence, Mr. Poole’s wife, Elizabeth “Bessie” Mae (Feaga) Poole took over her late husband’s park duties. She was assisted by her son Charles, daughter Elizabeth and nephew, Ed Poole. The Pooles would continue in this role until 1934, at which time, Ed Poole stayed on as park manager until 1946.
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Bessie died in 1962 and Charles in 2005. The Pooles are buried in Area T’s Lot 140, originally purchased by Mr. R. Paul Smith, Superintendent of the Hagerstown and Frederick Railway Company. Betty’s mother Elizabeth lived to be 101, dying in 2007. 

​Medical News
The Red Cross was mobilized throughout the land. In Frederick, they took over the entire fourth floor of the county’s Montevue Hospital for the sole purpose of caring for patients suffering from the malady that came from “Over There.” The local newspaper did its part with informing readers on how to best recognize and deal with flu symptoms. I also found a small article showing that Montevue's most famous physician was no stranger to the Spanish Influenza.

​I was curious to learn about another flu victim buried within ten yards of the fore-mentioned John Poole. This was 22 year-old Niona Gearinger. Niona’s death certificate states that she died the day after Poole on October 27th, 1918 and was a resident of 220 East Sixth Street in Frederick City. The daughter of Jacob Russell and Bertha (Legore) Gearinger interested me due to her occupation at the time of death was that of an employee of Frederick City Hospital. 

​I’d like to think that Niona was among the brave workers who willingly put their own health and lives in harm’s way while caring for their fellow man at the hospital. Here, she would have been surrounded by other residents ailing from the Spanish Influenza. Unfortunately, I cannot prove that postulate. All I could really find on Niona was that she was born on August 15th, 1896 in Pennsylvania, likely Dauphin County as her mother was from Middletown, (PA.) Her father was also a Pennsylvania native and performed odd jobs. In 1900, the family can be found living in Sharpsburg but moved to Creagerstown sometime before 1910. Niona was the oldest of six children. 

​I did learn from newspapers that Niona suffered from the grippe (flu) in 1911, but fully recovered. They did a hatchet job on her first name, however it was worthy enough to make the publication, it must have been somewhat serious. Perhaps this was a contributing factor to her death seven years later (compromised immune system)?

The Gearingers were soon residing in Frederick. In 1912, her father suffered a work injury when a piece of steel entered his eye. Local efforts could not remove the foreign object and all feared that he would lose his eye and vision. He was sent to a hospital in Baltimore that employed a large magnet to successfully pull the piece of metal out of Mr. Gearinger’s eye.

​A few years later, Niona’s father was in the papers again. This time, the content involved a court case in early 1917 in which Jacob R. Gearinger was the plaintiff in a mugging case in which he was struck from behind by his assailant and robbed of 50 cents. He won the assault and battery case and was awarded $500. He joined his daughter in Mount Olivet’s Area T/Lot 145 just over a decade later upon his death in 1929.

Things slowly got back to normal in November, 1918 but the battle against the influenza was not over yet. Twenty-two more residents would die of the flu in November and December, 1918. Another 13 people would succumb in January of 1919, before the influenza pandemic finally dissipated in our area. It was something that had never been seen before, and thought not to be seen again.

All in all, there would be roughly 2,000 cases of the deadly Spanish Influenza in Frederick County in 1918-1919. Of these, 200 were fatal. This translates to Mount Olivet being the final resting place to half of the county’s victims. Diligence, patience and perseverance were practiced by local officials, business owners and the citizens themselves to keep this number from being far worse. Proof is all around in Mount Olivet as thousands residing in our cemetery today that lived during that troubling time have a death date other than 1918 or 1919 carved upon their gravestone.
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​Unfortunately, we as residents of Frederick are living through another pandemic of magnificent proportion. We need to learn from history and those former generations buried in Mount Olivet who, if they could, would surely tell us to use caution, be vigilant, stay optimistic and don't leave the cart row…….. as “This too shall pass.”

A picturesque scene can be found in Mount Olivet’s Area G. Standing high above all surrounding others is the funerary monument of Edward C. and Mary Catherine Krantz. The towering gravestone was erected in the waning years of the Victorian Era (1832-1903) and displays the high ornamentation that characterized that time period. The era was an eclectic period in the decorative arts with several styles—Gothic, Tudor, Neoclassical—vying for dominance. This was true in architecture, furniture, and, of greatest interest here, the funerary arts. In cemeteries, gravestones became taller, embellished and sentimental.
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This particular grave monument on Lot 156 features a shrouded woman with arms folded across her chest, gazing upwards toward the heavens in what appears to be prayer and contemplation. The white marble statue sits atop a polished, granite base.  Altogether, the work stands roughly 10 feet in height. 

​The monument itself is a paean to Victorian design—possessing an air of triumph, symbolism and sentimentality.  Upon closer inspection, one will notice that the woman has a chain draped around her neck which extends down and across her chest to an upright anchor at her side. One of the anchor’s spades is partially concealed under the rear of her robe. Look carefully and you will see that the chain is actually depicted as being broken at the point it reaches the eye-hole atop the anchor. 

​Anchors abound on tombstones throughout Mount Olivet. In some cases, they denote the sailing profession of the deceased as is the case with that of Captain Herman Ordeman (1812-1884) of whom I published an earlier story back in late summer of 2017.  More so than not, it is the religious/Christian symbolism of the anchor that comes into play with these grave markers as we have a large amount featured throughout the grounds. The gravestone of the father of the earlier mentioned Edward C. Krantz actually utilizes the anchor-cross motif in an adjoining lot (Area G/Lot 158).

As a religious symbol, anchors were used in antiquity as secret crosses and denoted hope, and still do today. Within the books of the New Testament, the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews 6 states:
“Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.”

A translation elaborates on this passage attributed to St. Paul, saying:
“So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.” 
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The three theological Virtues (human forms that represent core Christian values) include Faith, Hope and Charity, and the figure of Hope almost always has an anchor with her. Therein lies the allegorical statuary category that this gravestone can be classified within--the Statue of Hope. These were commonly erected in the Victorian era and believed to be popularized by the Statue of Liberty's dedication in 1886. 

A female, typically shown wearing Roman Stola and Palla garments, stands with one arm resting on, or holding, an anchor. Often, the opposite arm is raised with the index finger of the hand pointing towards the sky, symbolizing the pathway to heaven. Holding one’s hand over the heart symbolizes faith and devotion. In the case of the Krantz monument, the woman has her hands folded in a show of complete devotion and subservience.
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Statues of Hope generally feature elements of a broken chain attached to the anchor, or sometimes hanging from the neck symbolizing the cessation of life. Many statues feature the maiden donning a “Crown of Immortality” made of flowers or stars. The flower or star on the top of the forehead, usually on a crown or diadem, and represents the immortal soul. Prior to this, other images such as Saint Philomena (patron saint of infants, babies and youth) whose authorization of devotion began in 1837 and Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen's Goddess of Hope statue sculpted in 1817, displayed similar characteristics.

​One of the earliest signed Statue of Hope memorials was carved by Odoardo Fantacchiotti in 1863 for the grave of Samuel Reginald Routh of England in the Protestant Cemetery of Florence, Italy. Another variation was completed earlier in 1791 with the Custom House, Dublin Ireland in which a 16-foot tall statue of a female resting on an anchor is atop the building’s iconic dome. This statue has been called both the Statue of Hope and the Statue of Commerce.

​The Krantz Family
So just who were these “hopeful” people that left us with such a beautiful lasting legacy in the form of a statuary monument atop their gravesite? Thanks to a number of sources, I had a relatively easy time of learning their vital statistics, life stories, and causes of death. An extra bonus came with accessibility to images of the couple courtesy of polished embellishments to both an Ancestry.Com Family Tree and Find-a-Grave pages by family historian Patrick Aaron Steward. (Thanks Patrick!)

​The History of Frederick County by T.J.C. Williams and Folger McKinsey includes an elaborate biography on Edward Cornelius Krantz. Mr. Krantz was born on July 3rd, 1852 on a small farm and grist mill located along Linganore Creek in the New Market District. He was the son of Frederick J. and Catherine E. (Stup) Krantz. Edward’s grandfather (John Dietrich Krantz 1820-1890) had come to this country from Germany in his youth and worked as a shoemaker. Son Frederick took up the occupation of miller and worked at various locations around Frederick.

In 1869, Edward’s father (the above-mentioned Frederick) purchased a fine farm of 142 acres, located two and a half miles northeast of Frederick City on the Shookstown Pike. Here’s where we find our subject living in the 1870 census as he spent his childhood learning his life’s profession of farming. After his father’s retirement, he and brother William managed the home farm for three years. 

​Edward would go on to rent another farm that their father had acquired in 1879 on the Buckeystown Pike and located a few miles south of Frederick. The young man would purchase and make this his home until 1901. 

Edward's brother, William, and sisters farmed the old family homestead bisected by Shookstown Road (between Willowdale and Waverly drives). The remaining structures were recently demolished to make way for the Gambrill View housing subdivision. When the farm sold out of the Krantz family in 2001 (to a developer from Leesburg (VA)), it was one of the last remaining large farms operating with the Frederick City limits.

Edward C. Krantz married Mary Catherine Biser, born October 28th, 1855 in Middletown. She, like her husband, had been raised on the family farm belonging to her parents, Henry and Sophia Routzahn Biser. They married in 1885 and had three children: Frederick Biser Krantz (b. 1886), Catherine Elizabeth Krantz (b. 1887) and Henry Cornelius Krantz (b.1895). Of wife Mary Catherine, Williams’ reads: “She was a devoted helpmate in his (Edward’s) labors.” 

The family attended the Evangelical Reformed Church of Frederick and made their domicile into what Williams’ states as “an elegant farm of 140 acres.” The author stated Mr. Krantz to be “one of the highly successful agriculturalists of the Frederick District. "The property is west of the Buckeystown Pike (today's MD route 85), north and east of Crestwood Blvd, surrounding Westview Drive.

Fortunately, the Krantz farm stayed pretty much intact, with the  exception of some road right-of-ways, from before 1859 through 1986. I know this takes us a bit off subject, but I was fascinated to see the ownership of this property over history before and after the Krantz family. This info comes  courtesy of my awesome research assistant, Marilyn Veek, and includes other residents of Mount Olivet who I have bolded (names) for your reading pleasure. These include: Abraham Adams, Valentine Adams (1799-1860 in Area H/326) Abraham's son,  John Henry Nelson (1820- 1870 in Area H/326) Valentine's son-in-law,  Richard and Caroline Kemp Lamar (1815-1879 in Area D/53), Robert Guy Lamar (1848- 1885 in Area Q/45) son of Caroline.

Here are a couple of descriptions of the farm as it existed in the 1860s, from chancery court records:

It had a 2-story brick house, barn, stable, carriage house, wagon shed, smoke house and other out buildings including a large quarter for servants detached from the house. It had two pumps of water, one near the house and the other near the barn. The soil is limestone, quality unsurpassed; improvements consist of a 2-story brick house of 9 rooms and kitchen, barn, stabling, shedding, corn house, ice house, a first-class farm. There is also a tenant house which has recently been repaired at great expense. Farm lately used as a dairy farm for at least 30 cows; has fine water, milk house, fine orchard of various fruit.

​Everything seemed to be going well for the Krantz family until late 1901 when bitter misfortune would rear its ugly head. 

In my curiosity, I became determined to learn more about this malady that killed many in the time before modern medicine and a known vaccine. Typhoid fever, also known simply as typhoid, is a bacterial infection due to a specific type of Salmonella that causes symptoms that may vary from mild to severe, and usually begin 6 to 30 days after exposure. It likely starts from ingesting contaminated food or water. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several days. A critical added danger of Typhoid is its spread to others by way of eating or drinking food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Family members were prime targets. The best they could do was wash hands meticulously—certainly more difficult to accomplish in the days before running water.
​
In the desperate nursing of the newly turned 14 year-old daughter, a hopeful and devoted mother would fall prey herself to the dreaded illness.

​Edward had lost his teenage daughter and 46 year-old wife within that fateful month of November 1901. He would erect the Statue of Hope memorial to these two exceptional women of his life.

The monumental losses suffered could have prompted him to move back to his earlier home area north of Frederick. He purchased a 185-acre farm on the old Montevue Pike (today’s Rosemont Ave), and erected a two-story dwelling, a bank barn and other buildings, at the same time improving an existing house on the land. The existing house was none other than Schifferstadt, one of Frederick's earliest dwellings. The property consisted of land stretching westward to Baughmans Lane, eastward to West 7th Street, and to Fort Detrick. My home in the Villa Estates neighborhood (between US15 and Military Road) was even part of the Krantz farm. 

Edward  married again two years later in late 1903. His second wife, Mamie E. Schaeffer was the daughter of Frederick druggist David L. Schaeffer and wife Elizabeth.

Edward Krantz would continue overseeing his farm properties and stayed active in town and religious affairs. He died on March 21st, 1926 and was buried beside his beloved daughter and exceptional helpmate—​one who, like many other devoted women, sacrificed her own life in the unselfish care of an ailing child. Saint Philomena surely interceded on her behalf then, and in the form of a statue of Hope that has kept vigilant watch over the women's mortal remains ever since.

As for the farms of Edward C. Krantz, the Buckeystown Pike farm was conveyed to his sisters when he re-located north of Frederick City (after the deaths of his wife and daughter). The Krantz sisters sold it to Henry Krantz, Edward's son. Henry sold it to Gerrit and Elizabeth Lewis Peters (1898-1989 in Area E/Lot 89). The Peters sold it to Tyler Gatewood Kent, who sold it to Martha Prior. She sold it to her son Howard Anderson Prior (1905-1985 in Area FF/252), who eventually sold it to the trustees of Princeton University in 1984. They sold it to Westview Associates Ltd Partnership in 1986.

​And here is the former Edward C. Krantz farm today:

Since its Women’s History Month, I decided to seek out a leading businesswoman in Frederick’s distant past. There are plenty out there to choose from, but unfortunately most have not graced the pages of Frederick’s history annals. Information is scarce. One such that did, Mrs. Catharine Kimball (1745-1831), has held my interest for quite some time as a prominent tavern-keeper dating back to the Colonial era. Another woman (in the mid-late 19th century) seemed to jump off the pages of old newspapers at me with countless advertisements boasting her popular millinery business located in downtown Frederick. Her name was Elizabeth Jane Eldridge (1815-1895).
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Mrs. Kimball
Frederick has been a popular hospitality center since its inception in 1745, welcoming travelers and visitors as an important crossroads town and commercial center. Few taverns have been praised more in the history books than that of Mrs. Catharine Kimball, who operated “the sign of the Golden Lamb.”  Kimball served as her inn’s proprietor for over thirty years. 

Catharine Kimball was born Catharina Margaretha Grosh in Mainz, Germany on September 10th, 1745. She was the daughter of Johann Conrad Grosch and Maria Sophia Gutenberger. Interestingly, Kimball’s birthdate is the accepted birthdate for Frederick Town as well.

The family, including Catharine’s brother and sister, arrived in America in 1748. It appears that she married William Kimball, a saddler by profession, in the early 1760s but this gentleman seems to vanish from the record by mid-decade. The couple had at least one child, Maria Barbara, born May, 1763.
Three of Catharine’s brothers took part in the American Revolution. Her sister Mary (Grosch) Beatty would become the mother-in-law of Maj. Nathaniel Rochester (1752-1831), when the latter married Catharine’s niece Sophia Beatty. The namesake of Rochester, New York and his wife would give one of their daughters the moniker of Catharine Kimball Rochester (1799-1835).
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Mrs. Kimball’s father had started the location as a tavern and Catharine took charge at the time of his death in 1793. Here, many a famous guest, including Thomas Jefferson, had lodged. The hostelry also had a reputation for hosting many of the town’s important social events. According to Frederick legend, a young Barbara (Hauer) Fritchie is said to have served George Washington tea from a favorite, family china set.
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Catharine Kimball’s tavern would be sold in the late 1820s to Joseph Talbott who changed the name eventually to the City Hotel. Nearly a century later, in the early 20th century, the Francis Scott Key Hotel would sit on this site. Today, the former home of Mrs. Kimball’s fabled establishment boasts luxury apartments. 

I wrongly assumed to find Mrs. Kimball here in Mount Olivet. I mistook her to be an Episcopalian, which she clearly was not. I soon recalled her maiden name and realized her father, Conrad Grosch, was one of the earliest, and most influential, settlers of town and served as a prime force in building a new home and place of Lutheran worship in the early 1760s.
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Catherine is buried behind Evangelical Lutheran Church on East Church Street. So, not a Mount Olivet “Story in Stone,” since she’s not here, but at least I gave her an important “shout-out” during this special month honoring women. 

Mrs. Eldridge
Unlike Mrs. Kimball, I found Elizabeth Jane Eldridge in our cemetery’s Area C/Lot 91. However, I had a much easier time discovering info on Kimball’s early life and vital info compared to that of Mrs. Eldridge. Here was a lady whose advertisements filled local papers for nearly 40 years. It has frustrated the heck out of me as all I’ve only really been able to learn about her past from a few things gleaned from the 1850 census. This constitutes an “epic fail” as the kids say these days.
​
Elizabeth Jane Eldridge was born in Virginia in 1815. I’m guessing she met her husband in Loudoun County, VA as he was employed on the Potomac River, but I really have no idea. I haven’t been able to narrow down her exact birthdate, birth location, maiden name or any family members on her respective familial side (parents, siblings). This info is not in our cemetery records, or any that I have searched through otherwise. Elizabeth likely met her husband, William “Clarke” Eldridge, in the nearby area/region because of a clue taken from that very same census of 1850. The Eldridges are found living in Medleys, Maryland, better known to us today as the vicinity of Poolesville in northwestern Montgomery County. Clarke Eldridge was born in Vermont in, or about, 1807. His profession is listed as that of “canaller.” 

When I say canaller, I’m referring to the operator of a canal boat, one that would have traveled specifically on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal which stretched from Georgetown in the District of Columbia to Cumberland, Maryland—184.5 miles in length. The commerce marvel was begun in 1828 (at Georgetown) and reached Frederick in the early 1830s. Apparently, Mr. Eldridge would serve as a contractor for canal section 126 (between Edwards Ferry and Berlin (Brunswick)) in the summer of 1832.
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Clarke Eldridge would also serve as an assistant superintendent of this stretch as I found repair reports written in his hand in 1843. In the US census of 1840, Clarke is shown as a resident of Petersville District of Frederick County, living with what appears to be a young son and wife. This correlates well with another newspaper advertisement in the Baltimore Sun in 1843 in which Clarke is inquiring of the public about information about a missing horse that was stolen from his horse stable.

​From an advertisement, found in an 1845 newspaper from Alexandria (VA), it appears that two of Mr. Eldridge’s prime shipments were tobacco and livestock from northwestern Montgomery County at the location of the Monocacy Aqueduct’s eastern approach at mile marker 42.2. The aqueduct, itself, is the largest of 11 featured along the old transportation system and has been called an icon of American civil engineering. In my research, I was fortunate to have found another online source that chronicled deliveries on the canal in the waning years of the 1840s. Clarke Eldridge was transporting a wide variety of goods ranging from lumber, anthracite coal and plaster to groceries, corn, salt and dry goods such as boots and shoes.

​I stumbled upon a copy of Thomson’s Mercantile and Professional Directory of 1851 which listed our subject, Mrs. Eldridge, in the profession of a “milliner.”

​Sometime before 1856, the Eldridges moved to Frederick. Frederick diarist Catherine Susannah Thomas Markell penned a short passage in April of 1856 that she was attending Mrs. Eldridge’s store opening. The two women were neighbors and seem to have become good friends as well. In 1860, the Eldridges are found living in Frederick on West Patrick Street on the southside of the famed “bend” in the street. 
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For long-time Fredericktonians, the house would have been located at the west end of the count courthouse and the former parking area of Delphey’s Sporting Goods, and the lane that went back to other commercial units and the McClellan Veterinary Clinic. Today, this area is best illustrated as the driveway between the courthouse and the West Patrick Street Parking Garage.

​In the 1860 census, Clarke Eldridge is listed as a merchant, and Elizabeth as a milliner. The previous two years (1859) featured newspaper advertisements for both of their respective businesses. Clarks was on the northwest corner of Bentz and West Patrick streets. Mrs Eldridge ran her business out of her home at No. 60 (today this would be No. 122), geographically situated at the bend in West Patrick. Clarke partnered with a gentleman named Jacob Henry Grove (1793-1878) and ran a grocery and hardware store. Elizabeth was a milliner, a term many are unfamiliar with in this day and age. It was a fancy term for a seller of stylish women’s hats. Of course, today, we seldom see women wearing headgear, and outside uniform accoutrements and baseball hats, men don’t don them like we use to.

​The Eldridges had two known children per the census: William Clark (b. 1840) and Emory Olin (b. 1852). The 1860 census also showed that other tenants living with the Eldridges included three young ladies employed as milliners, an random 11 year-old girl, and a 14 year-old black servant named Fannie Holland. I checked the background on the 11-year old and other milliners hoping that I may get a clue to Elizabeth’s background with one of these being kinfolk. I got absolutely nowhere after several hours of work. I did learn that Elizabeth was one of the Sunday school managers of the town’s Methodist Episcopal Church congregation.

Since info is so slim on Elizabeth, perhaps I should explain the origin of the word “milliner.”
Here’s what I found on the internet (Wikipedia):
 
A probable origin of millinery as an occupation is suggested by the etymology of the word "milliner." The Oxford English Dictionary states as the primary definition, "a native or inhabitant of Milan (Spain)." In reference to the occupation the second definition, denoted as obsolete, is "a vendor of ’fancy' wares and other articles of apparel, such as were originally of Milan manufacture, e.g. ’Milan bonnets,’ ribbons, gloves, cutlery."

​In A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson derived "milliner" from "Milaner, an inhabitant of Milan," and defined the subject as "one who sells ribands and dresses for women." Thus, the products of Milan seem to have been related closely to the activities of early milliners. Purveyors of like products in England in the 1600s and 1700s became known by this name and it carried forward to those of the profession in the colonies.

​Competition
It was interesting to learn that Mrs. Eldridge was not the only milliner in town. In fact she faced competition from a gentleman named Henry Goldenberg, and three other women: Miss Sarah J. Vermillion, Miss A. J. Stevens and Mrs. Catherine Elizabeth Tucker.
 
I don’t really care about telling you about Mr. Goldenberg because its Women’s History Month and all, but I promise to tell you his interesting (and tragic) story another day. As for Miss Vermillion, she was born in 1812 and lived in the first block of East Church Street. She would pass in June, 1876 in Baltimore and is buried in Mount Olivet’s Area E/Lot 71 within a plot owned by the Keturah Hayes family with whom she lived while here in Frederick. 

​Miss Anna Jane Stevens appears to have come to Frederick by way of Baltimore where her mother was a seamstress. Born around 1830, she may have wanted to test the waters out in Frederick and set up shop on North Market Street in the early 1860s. Perhaps it seemed a safer choice as her hometown of Baltimore was under martial law at the time with the guns of Federal Hill pointing down on the city.

​While here in Frederick, she met her future husband George W. Mark, who worked as a fireman for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Mr. Mark’s parents are buried here in Mount Olivet. It seems Miss Stevens abruptly left Frederick around 1868/69 and reemerged in early 1871. I found an announcement of her wedding in November, 1870 to Mr. Mark. However in the 1870 census, she is living with her mother in Baltimore, and Mr. Mark was a boarder in a hotel. Of great interest is the fact that living with George Mark is a one-year-old baby named Viola. The birth predates the wedding, so I’m curious if Miss Stevens ducked out of Frederick and took up residence because of the stigma attached at the time to having a child out of wedlock? 

​Mrs. Stevens-Mark would eventually move with her new husband to West Virginia as he continued his work with the railroad. They would eventually take up residence in Philadelphia where her husband would die in 1908. Anna would live until 1923, however the census records don’t reveal whether she ever picked up professional millinery work again after she got married. She is buried in Philadelphia’s Mount Moriah Cemetery.

​Mrs. Catherine (Kephart) Tucker was born in Frederick around 1819. She married husband William J. Tucker in 1840. Mr. Tucker was a master carpenter and native of Frederick. Mrs Tucker was the mother of four children and is listed as a milliner in the 1860 census. She was aided in her business by sister Caroline Kephart. However, it seems that they were out of business by the middle of the decade.

By 1870, it appears that Clarke Eldridge changed professions, albeit briefly. He is listed as a contractor for the railroad, the chief competitor against his old C&O Canal profession. I’ve struggled to find out more about this railroad venture, but this is certainly fitting since he had a like contracting job with the canal a few decades earlier.
 
Two major events affected the Eldridge family and business. It likely had an impact on Mrs. Eldridge’s previously mentioned competitors as well. The first was the American Civil War. At war’s end, the family appear to have moved the business location out of their home and back up Patrick Street to No. 34 West Patrick which was a former building that stood on the southeast corner of the intersection of Brewers Alley (today’s South Court Street) and West Patrick. Today, you will find the Patrick Center, home to several financial-oriented firms, which overlooks the County Courthouse. Ironically, the Eldridge Store faced the City Hotel, former tavern of Mrs. Catharine Kimball.

​In February 1866, court records show that Elizabeth bought out the business venture of her son (William C.) and took over the entirety of the store including its contents. She seems to have enlarged her dry goods business with a focus on women’s clothing. Son William was working for her as a clerk.
 
A second event of note came in late July 1868 as a terrible flood hit Frederick, doing its worst damage to the commercial entities and private homes between Brewers Alley and the iron bridge going over Carroll Creek. The famed Barbara Fritchie house was so damaged that it would be condemned and later demolished. The Eldridge home had to have taken in much damage. Diarist Jacob Engelbrecht says the family had lost a new wall constructed to the rear of their home and I am guessing this was perhaps for an addition being built as their back yard stretched all the way to Carroll Creek. 

Whatever the extent of the damage done by this flood, Mrs. Eldridge entered into a business partnership with a gentleman named John Marshall Landis (1837-1920) by century’s end. Landis was a retired grocer turned boot and shoe salesman. Advertisements now proclaimed the business as Eldridge & Landis.

​By 1870, Elizabeth was still operating her own business at this time. Her younger son, Emery O. Eldridge was attending Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA and then would head to New Jersey’s Drew Theological Seminary in 1872-73. Rev. E. O. Eldridge was ordained in 1875 as a Methodist Episcopal Church minister. He would preach throughout the country. In the early 1880s, he was in nearby Emmitsburg and would have stints in Winchester (VA), Baltimore and ended his career in churches located in Medford and Portland, Oregon.
 
This same 1870 census shows two employees of the business living with the family in Elizabeth Sencil and Ella Stevens. Stevens may have had a connection to rival milliner Miss A. J. Stevens mentioned earlier. She would marry a gentleman named Isaac Shipley in 1871 and move to Baltimore. Miss Sencil would become the bride of William C. Eldridge.

​The 1880 census shows the Eldridge family still living on West Patrick, operating their business with Clarke back at the helm, at least on paper. Son William is living with them, along with his wife. Three other boarders are also shown here, all employees of the store as well. One such, Cecilia Peters, had been with the Eldridges working as a milliner for over twenty years. I again have an outside hunch she could have a familial connection, but have come up with nothing.

Mourning Ware
Clarke Eldridge died in August, 1887 after reported to have been in poor health for several years. It’s not known when he stepped away from the business, but an advertisement in Frederick newspapers of 1885 still attributes Mrs. E. J. Eldridge as the sole proprietor.
 
Mr. Eldridge was buried in Mount Olivet’s Area C/Lot 91. The service was presided over by son Rev. Emory Olin Eldridge. The family plot had been purchased four years earlier for the burial of an infant grandson. Its easy to say that this site would see many a mourning bonnet over the next decade, most likely made by the talented  hands of Mrs. Eldridge, herself.

​​​Elizabeth Jane Eldridge would live out her final days in Frederick, passing at the age of 80 on April 30th, 1895.

Again, Rev. Eldridge would come back to town and help officiate the burial of a parent. The local newspaper took the opportunity to ask him his thoughts about Frederick while here.

​I’m sure the Eldridge plot held additional significance to the clergyman because it held the graves of his mother-in-law, Anna M. (Ireland) Yoe (1828-1906) who died at her residence in Washington, DC. Rev. Eldridge’s infant sons William Yoe Eldridge (d. 1883) and Robert Clark “Robbie” Eldridge (d. 1890) and an un-named baby (d. 1891) are also resting here.

​William Clark Eldridge died in 1896, and his widow Elizabeth Sencil Eldridge lived until 1919. Rev. Emery Olin Eldridge died the following year (1920) in Oregon and is buried there.  One remaining individual here in the Mount Olivet plot is Ann Cecelia Peters, the longtime millinery assistant who lived with the family from 1850 until her death in 1892.

This is part-two of a story chronicling some of the local places frequented, and people met, by Col. Robert Gould Shaw of the American Civil War. If the name seems eerily familiar, you may recall being introduced to Shaw as the fearless leader of the 54th Infantry Regiment of Colored Troops who stormed Fort Wagner in the motion picture Glory.

Shaw was formerly with the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as a 2nd lieutenant, and spent the winter of 1861-1862 encamped just east of the Monocacy River and Frederick City at a place called Camp Hicks. In part 1, I shared a letter written home (by Shaw) to his sister, Effie, in which he talked warmly of spending a day with two of the daughters of Col. Edward Shriver, a lawyer, politician, officer and all-around, key Union man here in town. This correspondence was found in a work called Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The work was edited by Russell Duncan and published Avon Books in 1992.
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My fascination, in respect to “Stories in Stone,” lies in the fact that the above-mentioned Col. Shriver and a daughter, Mary, are buried here in Mount Olivet. To think, each had a brush with greatness. I often have wondered how the colonel and his daughters reacted upon hearing news of Shaw’s untimely death on July 18th, 1863 in South Carolina while recalling their fond encounter(s) with the dashing young, soldier the previous year?

More Letters Home
The next few correspondences written by Lt. Shaw were atypical of the time of year. It was December, and more importantly, Christmastime. In letters written on the 14th and 25th, Shaw laments the fact of being away from family and the pleasures of home during this special time of year. Apparently, we soon learn that Shaw had received a special gift from his sister mid-month—42 pairs of mittens. With the holidays behind him, Shaw in his first letter of the new year recounts some of the non-glamorous experiences of his military duty.

Cantonment Hicks
Jany 15 1862
My dear Effie,
 
I have, I believe three letters from you unanswered, the last received day before yesterday in which you relate your encounter with, and defeat by the invidious fog. I hope he relented at last and that you have got away.
I proceeded immediately after receipt of yours to inspect my checks and I don’t think you w’d find them much less flabby than formerly. Indeed, Mother’s account of my corpulency must have been a little exaggerated for I don’t perceive much increase my-self.

I returned yesterday noon from the Monocacy bridge, between here and Frederick where I was on guard for 24 hours, and where I should have had a very pleasant time if it hadn’t been for three brats who tormented me. I stayed in a house near the bridge, and thought at first that the landlady was a very pretty & pleasant woman, but the bad behavior of the above-mentioned children soon brought out some little characteristics which were, to say the least, not ladylike. She got very much enraged and said to the nurse: “Hang you, you black imp, I’ll knock your black head off”—and to the children “Get out of this or “I’ll smack your jaws!” and made use of many other expressions.
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At night instead of putting the children to bed, the plan was, to get them asleep downstairs & then carry them up. Of course, this was a tedious process & involved much screaming, swearing, bawling & blubbering. Three times it was tried & three times they waked up on the way upstairs. After the third failure the noise was something terrible—all the three children screamed at the top of their lungs. Mrs. waters cussed & swore at the black girl. The black girl cried and actually said it wasn’t her fault. Mr. Waters consoled himself & vainly tried to amuse the 2 children by vigorously playing upon the most infernal old fiddle that ever was manufactured and beating time very hard with his cowhide boots. I sat with a smile on my face, but despair in my heart trying to concentrate my ideas sufficiently to understand "Halleck’s Elements of Military Art & Science.” May I be preserved in the future from such scenes at these! I didn’t bargain for anything of the kind when I joined the regiment. 

​I originally read this particular letter for the first time about 15 years ago and pondered the location of this residence of the Waters family. I knew it was in the vicinity of the old Jug Bridge’s eastern approach, today’s MD144 over near Bartonsville and Spring Ridge, and not far from the site of Camp Hicks off of Linganore Road.

Jug Bridge itself was a marvel in engineering for its time, having been built in 1808-1809 as part of the Baltimore-Frederick Turnpike. It was a true asset in the transport of travelers, pioneers, and natural resources and farm products from western Maryland to eastern manufactories and the port of Baltimore. It was equally important in the American Civil War for moving troops. It behooved the Union Army to protect this important gateway from being sabotaged by the Confederates--hence Shaw’s guard duty assignment.

So the next question is this: "Who was this family whose house Shaw and other soldiers took refuge in during the war?" I looked at two old Frederick maps: the Isaac Bond Map of Frederick County (1858) and the Titus Atlas Map of 1873. I could not find a Waters family name associated with any houses in the immediate area on either map. The US census records of 1860 and 1870 were of no help as well because I didn't find any Waters in this specific location. ​

I started to deduce “Waters” families by looking at those buried here in Mount Olivet, because otherwise they wouldn’t be relevant to me for my story’s sake (as this is a blog about folks buried in Mount Olivet.) The exercise limited me down to three gentlemen who seemed to match up age-wise to being of “young father age” in the year 1862. Two, of the three men, had little kids in 1862, and only one had three at this time. This latter suspect perfectly fit the bill of siring the “brats” that tormented the man who would lead the legendary “54th Mass” later this same year.

My person of interest was Richard Linthicum Waters. I would soon find that his wife, Ann Virginia (Hobbs) Waters, had family in the immediate area—father Rezin Hobbs (1810-1891) and wife Margaret Galezio (1810-1881). The neighborhood was known more commonly by the name of Pearl, nearly a century-and-a-half before the name Spring Ridge would come around.
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I still didn’t know where this house was, but asked my research assistant, Marilyn Veek, to search real estate records for a clue. I shared with her my “non-findings” on the maps earlier mentioned, not to mention census records.  I had found Richard L. Waters living in Carroll County in 1860 within the Freedom District at the hamlet of Freedom. This is the approximate location of Centennial High School today, just northwest of Eldersburg in southern Carroll County. He was listed as a farmer, and I found other supposed relatives of his father-in-law (Rezin Hobbs) in the area. 

In 1870, the Waters family was living in Frederick City and Richard was listed as a green-grocer and living on East Patrick Street.

​Richard Linthicum Waters was born February 11th, 1834, the son of Ignatius and Susan R. (Linthicum) Waters. In 1850, the Waters lived in the Howard District of Anne Arundel County, and Ignatius was listed as a Methodist minister. This area would become Howard County in 1851. Family history pointed towards the family being slaveholders.

Richard married wife Anna Virginia Hobbs on October 7th, 1856. As far as I could ascertain, the Waters had the following children:

Sarah Margaret “Maggie” Waters (1857-1887)
Charles Monroe Waters (1859-1909)
Amelia Waters (1860-1863)
Minnie Waters (1862-1865)
Ida Kate Waters (1866-1869)

So this proved my postulate of Richard and Ann Waters having three children with the potentyial for extreme "brattiness" in January, 1862 at which time Lt. Shaw would have stayed in their home in between guard duty shifts atop the old Jug Bridge. However, where was the Waters’ home in 1862, as I could not prove that the family was living here in the Bartonsville/Pearl area on the east side of the Monocacy River, and along the National Pike? That’s when the “smoking gun” was discovered by my trusted assistant.
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In August 1860, Richard L. Waters obtained the property named “Snug Farm” from Frederick W. and Malinda Bremerman. Ann Waters father (Rezin) and husband (Richard) would enter into an agreement to mortgage the parcel for $4,500. It can be found on the 1858 Isaac Bond map and labeled under the name of F. W. Bremerman. The property is the first dwelling found on the east side of the Monocacy along the Frederick-Baltimore turnpike, on the southside of the road. 

While the Bremermans were losing children in the late 1850s, the Waters were gaining them. Perhaps, family help was needed from Ann Waters’ family ( the Hobbs) who lived here in this vicinity. This would have been a comfort for the young mother in childbirth, along with relatives to look after her other small children. Besides, if we can trust Lt. Shaw’s judgment, those Waters' kids were a handful to say the least!
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The Waters owned slaves in the 1860 census and possessed a domestic servant in 1870. So it is not far- fetched that the family had at least one slave in January, 1862, whom Mrs. Waters verbally attacked in front of Robert Gould Shaw. Interestingly, this would be one of the first images of slavery and oppression witnessed by the wealthy New Englander who would help mold the most famous Black fighting regiment in US history (the 54th). An interesting paradox, found all to often in Frederick’s history as “a border county within a border state,” is that Mr. Waters was a die-hard Union Man. He even hosted a Union rally on his property back in the summer of 1861.

One of the speakers at this event was Col. Edward Shriver. The Shriver family, one of the town’s most loyal and patriotic, (of whom I mentioned in part I of this article) also owned slaves, as did Frederick’s greatest Union supporter of all-time—Barbara Fritchie. So don’t let anybody tell you that the American Civil War was solely an act to end slavery as there were many factors at play, and motivations for men to fight on both sides (states rights, nationalism, patriotism, economics and capitalism, abolition of slavery, humeris, etc).

Now back to the family of Richard L. Waters, host to Robert Gould Shaw in December, 1861. The couple would have other children born later in the decade so I’m sure the sleepless nights didn’t end for several years to come. As much as I feel sorry for Mr. and Mrs Waters, I, of course, feel more sorry for the slaves and servants that had to dote on the brats with little say in matter.
​
So what happened to the Waters family? Well, it appears Richard declared bankruptcy in spring of 1868. This led to the Waters family losing the fore-mentioned property and likely precipitated the move into Frederick.

​I found a few ads beginning in 1866 where Richard is advertising his business wares as a green grocer. 

​By 1880, the Waters had moved again—this time to Baltimore. In the 1880 census, Richard is listed as a salesman, and the family was living on Lombard Street. Two more children blessed the family in the forms of Richard Vincent Waters (1870-1926) and Rachel N. Waters (German) (1873-1947). Sadly, the Waters had endured the deaths of three children in the 1860s,  perhaps leading to financial woes and the original move from “Snug Farm” to Frederick. Daughter Amelia, the youngest of the “three brats,” died in February, 1863. Two other daughters, Minnie and Ida Kate would die in 1865 and 1869 respectively. 

​Richard L. Waters was duly buried in the Hobbs family plot in Mount Olivet’s Area H/Lot 139, alongside his three previously deceased daughters. The “sharp-tongued” Ann Waters would live until 1913, dying in Berwyn, MD.

​Brat number two, Charles Monroe Waters, grew up and eventually worked as a foreman for the American Can company in Baltimore. In 1880, he married an Irish immigrant named Catherine and had two daughters and two sons. When Charles died in January of 1909, he was living in Brentwood, MD in Prince Georges County. His body was brought to Frederick to be buried beside his father and sisters.

​Sarah Margaret Waters, “Maggie,” married Thomas Edward Denoe in 1887. Interestingly, Mr. Denoe was a grocer in Baltimore and had a successful career, primarily running his store on West Baltimore Street. The couple never had any children. Maggie died in 1923 and is buried in historic Loudoun Park Cemetery in west Baltimore.

​Unfortunately, I could not  come across a visual of the old Waters house that Lt. Shaw visited. The former house no longer exists as it was torn down long ago to make way for the new alignment of the National Pike/MD144. As many know, the original Jug Bridge collapsed on March 4th, 1942, when heavy rains and high winds caused a 65-foot span of the bridge to collapse. A few years later the stone arch bridge was demolished and little remains of it. The replacement bridge was in operation for decades until a new crossing over the river was built to the immediate south of the old bridge.  

"Prospecting" in Frederick
In early December, 1861, Frederick diarist Jacob Engelbrecht estimated more than 16,000 Union soldiers had recently come to town and were encamped around it. They were under the command of Gen. Nathanial Prentiss Banks who set up his headquarters at the southeast corner of N. Court and W. Second streets, a few doors north of Col. Edward Shriver’s home and courthouse square.

​Regiments, here at that time, were not just from Massachusetts, but hailed from New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana. The streets were packed with “boys in blue” as Frederick had never been so populated ever before. Unfortunately, liquor and libations got the best of many of these soldiers, far from home with time to kill. In one of his letters, Robert Gould Shaw talks about a “sobering” experience while attending a great party here in town in early January, held at a landmark structure that still stands today.

​The party in question was held on Friday, January 10th (1862) at Prospect Hall, former site of St. Johns Literary Institution later known as St. John's Catholic Prep (College Preparatory School). The owner in 1862 was local lawyer William Pinkney Maulsby, Sr., born July 15th, 1815 near Bel Air in Harford County. Maulsby had been commissioned a colonel during the war and was the first commander of the 1st Potomac Home Brigade, organized at Frederick, Maryland, beginning August of 1861. It was mustered into the Union Army under Gen. Banks on December 13th, 1861.

​As a young man, Maulsby studied law in Baltimore under the tutelage of John Nelson (who would later go on to serve as the US Attorney General). In 1835, William married John Nelson’s daughter, Emily, and embarked on a legal and political career. You may recall a story I published a few years back about William and Emily Maulsby’s daughter Betty Harrison Maulsby (Ritchie) who was was the driving force in organizing Frederick’s first DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) chapter in 1892. Betty’s daughter, Emily Nelson Ritchie McLean would serve as President General of the national organization from 1905-1909.

Upon the creation of Carroll County in 1837, Col. Maulsby represented the county first as a state senator, then as a state’s attorney. By 1850, he had moved his family to Baltimore before again moving to Frederick for business and political reasons. In 1856, Maulsby purchased “Prospect Hall,” a large Greek Revival style mansion just south of the city.
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Prospect Hall would serve home to the Maulsby family from 1856-1864 and the location did more than host the future hero of Glory, as this would be the site where Gen. George Meade assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in late June, 1863.

Col. Maulsby headed his regiment (Potomac Home Brigade) for three years, leading his men at Harper’s Ferry, Gettysburg, Monocacy, and countless smaller skirmishes. After leaving the US Army, he sold Prospect Hall and moved to downtown Frederick and a home on East Second Street. Despite his service to the Union, William P. Maulsby earned the wrath of many Republicans in the post-war years due to his affiliation with the Democratic party and his leniency towards the defeated secessionists.

​In 1866, he ran an unsuccessful bid for congress. Maulsby continued his career as a judge and eventually moved to Westminster where he died October 3rd, 1894. He is buried under a large cross monument in Mount Olivet’s Area G/Lot191.

​A Very Queer Old Party
Lt. Shaw talked of a “party” of another kind in a letter sent to sister Effie in February, 1862. His hosts were prominent mill-owners in Buckeystown who had a son whose later printed creation would “shower good news” down on Frederick County for well-over a century. I also owe this same man homage as his direct descendants gave me my first real job, and the opportunity to work professionally in public history. 

Frederick Md.
February 9,1862
 
My dear Effie,
I have received two letters from you since I last wrote and I admire your constancy in writing so regularly.
Susie is in Washington & I have just telegraphed to Cousin John to know if he can’t go home this way and make us a short visit. I can’t possibly go away, so if they don’t come to Frederick I shan’t see Susie at all. That would be too bad when we are so near together. Today, for the first time, I think, for five weeks the weather is fine—but it looks as if it were going to cloud over again in a little while.
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I have very pleasant lodgings here in a family consisting of a very queer old party, named Delaplane, and his wife. The latter has a most wonderful appetite and an extraordinary love of good dinners, the result of which is, that we live remarkably well. Capt Savage & Dr. Stone of the 2 Mass. Live here too, but will soon be going back to the regt. I am afraid I shall be rather lonely then. We have two rooms adjoining each other, one of which has a large open fire-place, which is very comfortable & cozy. I go round to the Court-Martial around 10 o’cl. A. M. and we usually get through at 2 P. M. so that I have a good deal of time to myself. I find though, that camp is the best place for me. I am always in good spirits out there—probably because it is such a wholesome life. As soon as I get a horse, I shall have a much pleasanter time here, for I have much difficulty in getting about now—especially out to camp where I want to go quite often.

Robert Gould Shaw was living with Theodore Crist Delaplaine and wife Hannah (Wilcoxen) Delaplaine, proprietors of the Monocacy Flour Mill located southeast of Buckeystown along the Monocacy River. This property still exists today off of Michaels Mill Road.

Mr. Delaplaine was born in Georgetown on November 2nd, 1810. Two weeks after his birth, his mother died. At this point he was taken to Frederick to live. In T.J.C. Williams’ History of Frederick County (published 1910), shares the following anecdote about young Theodore:

“On the way from Georgetown to Frederick the stage coach broke down but the little fellow was passed through a window, and was quite unharmed.”
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I don't know whether that means if he was thrown out of the vehicle, or simply handed out, but it piques curiousity. Young Theodore's childhood was spent on a farm near Ladiesburg and he was educated in the country schools. He got his first job at Greenfield Mills in southern Frederick County and then added to his “milling” experience and education by working at like operations in Halltown (WV), Bladensburg (MD), Georgetown (DC), Alexandria (VA), Highland and Germantown (OH), and Missouri. Delaplaine returned to Maryland and owned/operated various mills in Frederick County along with getting further instruction as an employee of the famed Ellicott Mills in Ellicott City (Howard County).