LOOKING BACK 1891: Show me the money!
Frank Laffin, a shoemaker, walked along the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad near Cumberland on November 14, 1891, with two friends. The night was dark, making it hard to see where they were walking. The young shoemaker slipped as he stepped between cross ties and he fell through a cattle stop. His leg caught on something in the fall slicing Laffin’s thigh just above his kneecap. His friends pulled him up and off of the railroad tracks, but they couldn’t do much for deep cut. The trio bound up the wound, but they knew by the amount of blood pumping out that Laffin needed to see a doctor and probably get stitches. Laffin’s friends helped him to a nearby home owned by C.H. Somerkamp. Somerkamp tried to bandage the wound, but he advised Laffin to get to a Read more…
Start your engines!
The Cumberland (MD) Municipal Airport has never been busier than when sports cars raced around its runways. Yes, sports cars. Not airplanes. Each May from 1953 to 1971 racers from across the country would travel to Cumberland to test their sports cars against other top cars to see whose was the fastest. Roger Penske, Shelby Briggs and Carroll Shelby all raced at the Cumberland Airport. The races featured some of the greatest racing cars of the time: Birdcage Maserati, Ferrari Testa Rossa, D Type Jaguar, Porsche 356 Speedster, Cobra, Mustang, Camaro, Sunbeam Alpine, Austin Healy 100, and the Howmet Turbine Car. “It was a great time,” said Dave Williams. “A who’s who of American sports car racing came through Cumberland.” Williams watched many of those old races as a young man and he remains a racing enthusiast and promoter of Read more…
Lonaconing, Md., was a phoenix rising from ashes of a devastating fire
It was a summer for Lonaconing in 1881. Even with the changing of the months from August to September and cooling temperatures, it hadn’t rained for four weeks. P.T. Tully and Co.’s store was on the east side of Main Street. On Sept. 7, Mr. Hanlon, one of the store’s employees, was sitting down to a lunch with his family that would never be finished because a fire broke out in the stable behind the store. The fire found fertile ground among the blowing wind, dry conditions and wooden structure. It moved to the store and then the flames began sweeping north along Main Street until there were no more buildings to consume and south to Bridge Street. The last building to burn was the Merchants’ Hotel, kept by William Atkinson, who also kept a store adjoining the hotel. With Read more…
Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 1)
Note: This is the first of three posts about the murder of Lloyd Clary. Lloyd Clary of Frostburg was the managing editor of the Cumberland Daily Times. He, along with John Broydrick, also owned the newspaper, which was a merging of the Mountain City Times and the Cumberland Times and Civilian. On October 27, 1873, Clary wrote an article critical of how the long-time Clerk of the Circuit Court of Allegany County Horace Resley paid jurors. “The talesmen from Lonaconing were paid $8.50 each; those from Frostburg $4.00 (the Clerk taking the trouble to tell them in Court to go down to the office and get their certificates), while those from Mount Savage and the country districts were allowed to go without being paid at all, and without receiving any intimation from anybody that anything was due them,” Clary wrote Read more…
Allegany County, Maryland, in the War of 1812
Some historians call the War of 1812 the second American Revolution. Less than a generation after America won her independence, she once again found herself battling Great Britain. It was a war that neither side wanted because both countries were still trying to recover from the original American Revolution. The British fought a defensive war in the early years of the War of 1812 because they were also fighting against Napoleon Bonaparte and the French army and navy in Europe. By 1814, Napoleon had been defeated and the British turned their attention more fully to ending the war with the United States with a victory. Up to this point, most of the fighting had been around the Canadian and U.S. border to the north. In the Mid-Atlantic, the British had started a blockade in 1813. Preparing for War In July Read more…
Western Maryland Moonshining
When the sale, production and transportation of alcohol were banned in the United States in 1920, Western Marylanders had to choose between becoming teetotalers or criminals. Many law-abiding citizens chose the latter. “Illicit liquor, manufactured in countless stills in homes, farmyard barns, and even auto repair shops, could be bought all over the county.” Harry Stegmaier, Jr. wrote in Allegany County – A History. One of the first raids in the county on these places where illegal liquor was sold and produced came about almost accidentally. On June 2, 1920, Elmer Dumar, owner of the Vimy Restaurant on North Mechanic Street was not very happy. His wife, Jennie, had spent part of the evening flirting with “a Spaniard,” according to the Cumberland Evening Times. Dumar finally lost his patience and got into a fight with the Spaniard. The man ran Read more…
Cover art for "Lock Ready"
Here’s the cover art for my new historical novel that coming out next month. Lock Ready is my first historical novel in seven years. It’s also been 10 years since I wrote my last Canawlers novel. Lock Ready once again return to the Civil War and the Fitzgerald Family. The war has split them up. Although George Fitzgerald has returned from the war, his sister Elizabeth Fitzgerald has chosen to remain in Washington to volunteer as a nurse. The ex-Confederate spy, David Windover, has given up on his dream of being with Alice Fitzgerald and is trying to move on with his life in Cumberland, Md. Alice and her sons continue to haul coal along the 184.5-mile-long C&O Canal. It is dangerous work, though, during war time because the canal runs along the Potomac River and between the North and Read more…
Allegany County partied like it was 1789
In 1789, Washington County gave birth to Allegany County. It had some settlements in it at the time, but by and large, the area that would become Allegany County was a frontier. The preamble of the act from the Maryland General Assembly that created Allegany County read: “Whereas, A number of the inhabitants of Washington county, by their petition to the General Assembly, have prayed that an act may pass for a division of said county by Sideling Hill Creek, and for erecting a new one out of the Western part thereof; and it appearing to this General Assembly that the erecting such a new county will conduce greatly to the due administration of justice, and the speedy settling and improving the western part thereof, and the ease and convenience of the inhabitants thereof…” It didn’t stay a frontier, though. Read more…
Win a free copy of The Rain Man!
To celebrate the release of the Kindle edition of The Rain Man, I am giving away 10 autographed copies of the paperback edition. It’s free to enter. Just visit this link and click to enter. Here’s the story: Raymond Twigg hates the rain because it gives the Rain Man power. It is a power to bring Raymond to his knees or drive him to deadly action. As the March 1936 rains bring the St. Patrick’s Day Flood, the worst flood ever seen in Cumberland, Maryland, it also unleashes the power of the Rain Man on the citizens of the city. While most of the police force is diverted trying to deal with the flooding in the city and the problems it is causing, Sergeant Jake Fairgrieve is called out to investigate a murder. Murders are unusual in Cumberland, but this Read more…
1931: Bootlegger vs. a revenue agent in Oldtown
The two revenue agents for the federal government crept into the woods around Oldtown on November 15, 1931. William R. Harvey was the senior agent so he led the raid. They were after three bootleggers who they had been watching lately. While making illegal liquor during Prohibition was a problem in Western Maryland due to its abundance of forests and lack of population, it usually wasn’t a fatal one like it could be in the larger cities. For the most part, it was a game of hide and seek between the bootleggers who would try and hide their stills and federal agents who would try and find them. If a bootlegger was caught, he would serve a few months in prison and then start all over again when he got out. Two of the bootleggers had been arrested previously for Read more…
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