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…
Watch my Festival of Books in the Alleghenies presentation
The COVID craziness has led to a cancellation of just about every event I had scheduled this year. One of those events, the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies, decided to go digital and offered authors the chance to do a digital presentation to viewers. I was lucky enough to be selected, and my interview was last night on Zoom and Facebook Live. The topic was the Spanish Flu, which I wrote about in my novel October Mourning. I must of done something right because I was told it was their most-viewed presentation, so far (and before you ask, no, I wasn’t the first presentation). Here’s the link to the presentation. I begins around the 2 minute mark. As always, let me know what you think.
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…
Getting to the top the hard way
Men helped George Oakley into a straightjacket and secured his arms behind the 36-year-old man on the evening of August 25, 1924. The men tied a rope around Oakley’s feet, and with a signal, a winch lifted Oakley upside down to the top of the 6 1/2-story First National Bank Building in Hagerstown, MD. Then hanging from a car tire inner tube, Oakley freed himself from the straightjacket, climbed down the side of the building and then back up to the roof “Going up the outside wall of the First National Bank Building with the ease of an ordinary mortal climbing the steps inside…,” according to the Hagerstown Morning Herald. Before this gravity-defying feat, the daredevil had stood on his head on the front bumper of a Chrysler with four-wheel brakes. The car drove along the street at 10 mph 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…
Emmitsburg editor tries his hand in politics
Sterling Galt purchased the Emmitsburg Chronicle in 1906. He was the fourth owner of the 27-year-old newspaper. Back in those days, small newspapers had few employees. The owner was the publisher and the primary reporter. The debut editorial stated the goal of the newspaper as this: “Our first aim shall be to present the CHRONICLE as a medium through which the outer world may learn our aims, our hopes and high resolves. We shall not try to amuse our readers with rhetorical flourishes, nor with sonorous sentences, neither shall we indulge in meaningless jests, nor silly observations, but endeavor, in an unpretending way to give our readers the current news of the times, with such items of local interest that may present themselves: we shall try to practice the recent suggestion of an esteemed clerical friend, who we estimate as 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…
Embarrassed wife has Oakland’s first doctor executed
It’s been said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Such fury cost Oakland its first doctor. When Dr. John Conn stepped off the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train in 1851, he was a pioneer. Oakland hadn’t yet been incorporated as a town and the region was still frontier for Maryland. The town only had a few hundred citizens and they needed a doctor. The next-closest doctor was Dr. John H. Patterson in Grantsville. To get there and back to Oakland would have taken a full day. Conn set up his office at Second and Oak streets where it quickly flourished. “In the days before the convenience of a well-stocked pharmacy, it was said that the ‘young doctor’ either had on hand the correct medication, or could prescribe a suitable home remedy for any attack of ague or Read more…
Lilypons and Lily Pons
Given the fact that the Lilypons, Md., Post Office was created to handle the increased mail-order demand from Three Springs Fisheries, a Frederick County, Md., business that sold goldfish and water lilies, you might think Lilypons is a misspelling of Lily Ponds. Yes, it is a misspelling. Not of lily ponds, but of Lily Pons, a 1930s opera singer. Three Springs Fisheries George Thomas started his business in 1917 as a roadside stand in Buckeystown, Md., that sold the vegetables and goldfish he grew on his farm. “He had a keen eye for finding some type of venture where he might be successful,” Charles Thomas said of his grandfather. While customers may have bought his vegetables, they showed more interest in the goldfish bred in his goldfish hatchery, Three Springs Fisheries. Business grew quickly, and the little town post office where his Read more…
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