Read all about it! Northern Frederick County’s newspaper history (Part 3)
Although Thurmont and Emmitsburg have remained distinctive communities, US 15 has connected them closely so that it is not uncommon to travel between two multiple times in a day. This closeness of the communities has been reflected in the north county’s modern newspapers. William “Bo” Cadle and his wife, Jean, started the monthly Emmitsburg Regional Dispatch in 1993. “Volunteers helped us do all sorts of things. An unexpected and greatly appreciated alliance between people in the community (readers and merchants and the worker-bees) over the following months helped the paper to gain firmer footing,” Bo Cadle wrote in a 2002 editorial. A couple years later after he started his own paper, Bo encouraged Lori Zentz to get into the newspaper business. Chronicle Press had started the Catoctin Banner in 1994, but by 1995, Art Elder was looking to sell the Read more…
Read all about it! Northern Frederick County’s newspaper history (Part 2)
Entering the 20th century, both Emmitsburg and Thurmont had solidly established newspapers keeping them informed about what was going on in town and the country. The Emmitsburg Chronicle would become Emmitsburg’s longest-running newspaper. Started in 1879 by Samuel Motter, the newspaper was published weekly, except from a hiatus during World War I and War II, through February 9, 1977. Motter died on March 21, 1889 and his widow took over the paper. Following a couple of interim owners, Sterling Galt purchased the newspaper in 1906. When Fred Debold killed Edward Smith in the mountains near Emmitsburg on August 8, 1906, Galt published an extra issue of the Chronicle. It was the first extra ever published and gave the community the story of the murder hours after it happened. The newspaper’s name changed to The Weekly Chronicle in 1909. The paper Read more…
Thurmont’s Seminary gave students an advanced education
At the beginning of July 1875, the parents and family members of 38 students of the Mechanicstown Male and Female Seminary gathered in Mechanics’ Hall for the first graduation from the school. “The stage was beautifully decorated and ornamented with flowers and evergreens, and everything looked charming as the children and young ladies, all dressed in white, were pyramidically situated upon it,” the Catoctin Clarion reported. The seminary had opened the year before by the Middle Conference of the Lutheran Synod of Maryland. It was located in the Stoner House on East Main Street. The Rev. Victor Miller was principal. The school’s prospectus said that “Its aim is to impart a better education, intellectual and moral, than is afforded by public schools—an education thorough in character and practical as possible.” The school taught three grades, though they don’t correspond to Read more…
Thurmont, MD, loses its railroad station
One of the reasons for Thurmont, MD, existing was lost in 1967. Thurmont was originally called Mechanicstown, but a movement in 1873 started to come up with a more progressive name for the growing town. Among the supporters of a name change was the Western Maryland Railroad. “The railroad was all for the idea since it would relieve the shipping and passenger problems caused by a profusion of the ‘sound alike’ communities. There was Mechanicsburg and Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania and several Mechanicsvilles in Maryland as well as our town,” according to A Thurmont Scrapbook. The Western Maryland Railroad had first reached Mechanicstown on January 9, 1871. The first stationmaster was Harry Shriner. “Upon the event of the coming of the railroad to Mechanicstown, a group of civic-minded citizens arranged a reception and a banquet for the railroad officials and their guests. Read more…
Early public education in Emmitsburg, Md.
Emmitsburg has always had plenty of schools. Of the 158 one-room schools in Frederick County in 1890 more than 20 were near Emmitsburg. This doesn’t even include the private and parochial schools in the town at the time. In a 1908 article in the Emmitsburg Chronicle, an old-timer recalled his experiences with some of Emmitsburg’s early schools. One school was on the former site of Helman’s store where Mrs. Reed, a widow, taught classes. “I was packed off to school when I was about five years old, with a small yellow book called an English Primer. The seat, a rough bench was much too high for my short legs and my feet hung some distance above the floor. The school was a sort of a go-as-you please affair, and I did not receive much attention from the mistress, who, by the Read more…
Welcome to Bird Land
In November of 1973, flocks of blackbirds, grackles, cowbirds, and starlings discovered the 60-acre white pine forest owned by Edgar Emrich of Graceham. Emrich had not trouble sharing his trees with the birds. There were thousands of trees that he had originally planned to sell as Christmas trees when he had planted them in 1957. He hadn’t, and the tree farm had turned into a forest. “I remember we’d go outside and make a game of trying to dodge the droppings,” Mrs. Austin Young told the New York Times. “Of course, there were only thousands of them then.” As the months passed, more and more birds decided to call Graceham home, and by March 1974, an estimated 10 million birds had migrated there and Graceham was becoming known as Bird Land. “Their problem apparently stems from a quirk in the migratory patterns Read more…
Frederick County's (Md.) last slave, part 3
Ruth Bowie had grown up as a slave during the Civil War. Even after gaining her freedom, she had remained with a former owners until she married Charles Bowie in 1880. By the turn of the of century, the Bowies were listed as living in log home along Lewistown Pike in Lewistown, which is where they would call home for their rest of their lives. They had had four children together, but none of them lived to adulthood and then Ruth had to deal with the loss of her husband in 1920. The Frederick News was reporting that Ruth was over 100 in 1946. The newspaper ran a short article noting that Ruth’s doctor had decided that she was too old to continue living alone. Her sight and hearing were still considered normal, but she had hurt her hip shortly Read more…
Frederick County's (Md.) last slave, part 2
Ruth Bowie was born a slave in Montgomery County, Maryland. When she died in 1955, she was the last person in Frederick County, Maryland, who had been born into slavery. Slave Life Letha Brown was a house servant and cook for the Mullinixes while Wesley was a field hand. “Well she remembers the days of her slavery when custom permitted owners to wield the whip ‘for the least little thing’ and little Ruthie often felt the sting of the switch,” Sullivan wrote. However, Ruth’s experience with this came from her interactions with Asbury’s wife, Elizabeth Mullinix whom she called “Ol’ Missy.” Hilton says he has no doubt that Ol’ Missy beat Ruth. “She treated everybody like that not just Ruth,” Hilton said. “Family stories say she was a crazy woman.” For the most part, Ruth worked in the main house. Read more…
Frederick County's (Md.) last slave, part 1
To most people, Ruth Bowie, or “Miss Ruthie” as she was called, was just a friendly old lady with a sense of humor and a sweet tooth. What they didn’t realize was that she was also a historical figure in the county. When she died in 1955, she not only was the oldest person in Frederick County (anywhere from 105 to 110 depending on which account was used), she was also the last person in the county who had been born into slavery. As old as… No one made an official record of Ruth Brown’s birth in the mid-19th Century. The 1900 U.S. Census listed her as 40 years old, but by the 1920 census, she had aged 25 years. “Nobody knows just how old Miss Ruthie is, least of all Miss Ruthie herself,” Betty Sullivan wrote for the Frederick Read more…
The final trip of Maryland's last interurban trolley
February 20, 1954, was an overcast Saturday morning that drizzled rain in Frederick County. The somber weather matched the feeling a many people as they watched trolley cars No. 171 and No. 172 pull out of the East Patrick Street car barn in Frederick and head north. About 100 people crammed the trolley, which is more passengers than it had seen on a single trip in a long time. One report noted that the leather hand straps riders could hold onto inside the trolley cars were as good as new. This was because the cars were rarely crowded enough for them to be used. The Thurmont Trolley had transported 3.8 million riders around Frederick County in 1920, but by 1940, that number was down to 500,000 riders. With ridership dropping and the popularity of cars skyrocketing, the decision had been Read more…
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