Finding something new
I love it when I stumble on something that shows an old story in a new light, and I actually have two I’m working on right now. I’m going to be a bit vague about what they about since things may change. Plus, I’d like for them to be a surprise when they come out. Both are Cumberland, Maryland, stories. One is about an incident that took place in 1918. It wasn’t a big story, but it is an interesting one. As I researched it, I found the source that all the contemporary versions of the story used. However, I also found a newspaper report of the incident that shed a lot more details about what happened. The biggest surprise is that it didn’t even happen on the date reported in modern stories. I also found the cause of the Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1928: Of mice and women
It was the story of a little mouse named Mr. Mogo Mouse in Czechoslovakia. As far as literature goes, it wasn’t much of a story. What is remembered about Mr. Mogo Mouse 80 years after the book was published is the artwork. The pages were filled with art deco illustrations, which one bookseller has said is similar to the work of The Bobsey Twins illustrator Janet Laura Scott. However, these illustrations were drawn by Jane Beachy Miller of Cumberland who was described as a pretty and “somewhat madcap” young artist by the Cumberland Evening Times. Miller graduated from Allegany High and from there went on to the Maryland Institute of Art to pursue her passion as an artist. She graduated with an art degree and a scholarship that allowed her to travel through Europe in 1928 and study art. Miller Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1914: The new business was “smoking” hot
The doors of 121 Baltimore Street had been closed for more than a month in 1914. Many people thought the bowling alley that had occupied the space had gone out of business and they were right. However, V.T. Wolford and his son were set to open something new and better in the business space. On Sept. 3, 1914, the Cumberland Press announced that a new club called, The Smoke Shop, “will throw open its doors this evening as the finest cigar store and pocket billiard room in the state.” The bowling alleys were gone and in their place were five of the finest pocket billiard tables available. As for the cigars, “The management has endeavored to place in their store every known brand of high-grade cigars, tobacco and cigarettes and have adopted as their motto for this department, ‘We dare Read more…
An undercover detective risks exposure to help his family during a coal strike
One of the more violent coal strikes in Western Maryland occurred in 1922 as the union made an all-out attempt to unionize the coal mines in the area. Because the union didn’t want to give up Maryland, the strike lasted months longer here than in other areas of the country. Strike the Fuse, a new novel by James Rada, Jr., captures this tumultuous period in the county’s history. Strike the Fuse is the second book in the Black Fire Trilogy. The first book, Smoldering Betrayal, was released in 2018. The story follows Matt Ansaro, a WWI veteran who is a now a Pinkerton detective. He returns to his hometown of Eckhart in 1922 after being away for five years. His family doesn’t know his current profession or that he has been sent to Eckhart to spy out union activity for Read more…
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…
LOOKING BACK 1925: Fire threatens Allegany Hospital
On March 30, 1925, someone struck a match. By itself, not an act worth noting. It happened thousands of times a day in Cumberland, MD, back then. This person lit his cigarette or maybe a pipe and then gave the match a quick shake so that the flame would go out. Then he tossed the spent match aside. This is one possible explanation for the beginning of what happened that day, but not the only one. No one knows who lit what with what and then threw it aside. All that is known is that a match or something else on fire fell down a waste chute and that it wasn’t extinguished. The flames ignited a pile of paper and cloth at the bottom of the chute in the furnace room. Those flames smoldered, sending smoke up through the metal-lined Read more…
Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 3)
On October 27, 1874, John Resley, son of the clerk of the circuit court of Allegany County, shot and killed Lloyd Clary, the editor of the Cumberland Daily Times and a Confederate Civil War hero. It appeared to be an open-and-shut case. After all, Resley had confessed to the shooting. However, just as a battle plan becomes obsolete as soon as the enemy is engaged, so too, go jury trials once the judge calls the court to order. Resley’s murder trial began on January 29, 1874, barely three months after the murder. The importance of the case became clear when Maryland Governor William Pinkney Whyte sent the state’s attorney general Andrew Syester to assist Allegany County State’s Attorney William Reed with the prosecution. The defense had four lawyers. Col. Charles Marshall of Baltimore was the lead attorney and James M. Schley, J. 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…
The banishment of a Confederate family
Priscilla McKaig held the military order in her hand and re-read it. It was short but it was impossible. Major General David Hunter, who was in command of the Union forces in Allegany County for a portion of the Civil War, was ordering her and her family to leave Cumberland for one of the Confederate States. “I was thunder struck, no charges – no explanation,” she wrote in her journal. Why shouldn’t she be? Her family was among the upper class of Cumberland. Her husband was a former mayor of Cumberland, a partner in the Cumberland Cotton Factory and president of the Frostburg Coal Company. Her first reaction was to refuse to comply. This was her family’s home and she had every right to be here. However, she had no choice but to comply. Troops ringed her house and she Read more…
The C&O Canal during the Civil War
While the Mason-Dixon Line being the dividing line between the North and the South, an argument could be made that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was the dividing line between the Union and Confederacy. Running alongside the Potomac River as it does, Virginia was directly south of the canal and Maryland was to the north. Whenever you read about an army crossing the Potomac River, it also had to cross the canal. The unlucky location meant that the canal was vulnerable to destruction by both the Union and Confederate armies “In some instances, battles were fought so close to the canal that the company’s property was hurriedly made into hospitals and morgues,” Elizabeth Kytle wrote in Home on the Canal. The canal boats were considered military targets and Confederate soldiers made a habit of commandeering them at the start of Read more…
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