A coal town collapse, part 1

Betty Mae Maule was one of 60 students who attended the two-classroom Shallmar School in November 1949. When teaching principal J. Paul Andrick asked Betty Mae to write a problem at the board one day, the 10-year-old girl stood up at her desk and promptly fainted. Betty Mae and her siblings hadn’t eaten anything all day. Their last meal had been the night before when the eight people in the family shared a couple apples. This is how bad things had gotten in the little coal town on the North Branch Potomac River. What had once been the jewel of Western Maryland coal towns was dying. Operating only 36 days in 1948, the Wolf Den Coal Corporation, which owned Shallmar, came into 1949 struggling in vain to stay open. The mine shut down in March, having operating only 12 days 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…

LOOKING BACK 1917: Bank robbers get away with a haul from small town bank

Around lunch time on a nice May day, three men walked into Charles Spragne’s restaurant in Kitzmiller. Their faces were blackened with cork and they wore miner’s caps. They were unfamiliar to Charles and his wife, but they were used to seeing new miners in town from time to time. Spragne’s wife spoke to one of the men, “thinking he was a local miner but did not notice that either of them were masked,” the Republican reported. The men finished their lunches, paid their bills, and then walked across the street to the First National Bank of Kitzmiller around 11:45 a.m. As they entered, the men drew large revolvers. One of the men stepped around Cashier Barclay V. Inskeep’s desk and pointed his pistol in Inskeep’s face. Sue R. Laughlin, Inskeep’s assistant, screamed. A second man pointed his pistol at Read more…

"Looking Back" column appearing in a new newspaper

Another newspaper – The Oakland Republican in Oakland, Maryland –  picked up my “Looking Back” column on a monthly basis last week. I’m pretty happy about that because I love researching the stories and writing about them. For example, I found a story about a man who was called the “Champion Miner of the World” in the 1920’s because of how fast he was at mining coal. I wrote about his story for The Republican, but in researching it, I found out that this man’s son, was a frontline reporter in WWII who won a Pulitzer Prize. He also got his reporting start at another newspaper that carries my column so I had two columns from one idea. Right now, four newspapers – The Catoctin Banner, The Gettysburg Times, The Cumberland Times-News, and The Oakland Republican – carry my column, Read more…

Inspired: How Washington County (Md.) set Laura Hillenbrand on the track to bestsellerdom

As a young girl, bestselling-author Laura Hillenbrand and her older sister, Susan, rode horses over the Washington County hills and along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath. They rode bareback, sliding back and forth and trying to stay astride the horse while only holding onto bridles they’d made from twine. “We did a lot of riding and a lot of falling off,” Hillenbrand said. When they did fall off, they had to protect their heads since they didn’t wear helmets. It might have been a little dangerous, but it was a lot of fun. Hillenbrand and her family spent much of the summers of her youth at their farm in Sharpsburg. Her father worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and the 600-acre farm served as a getaway and refuge from the stress of the city. The stone farm house Read more…

Frederick baseball showed some hustle in the Blue Ridge League

          On Thursday morning, May 27, 1915, H.A. Albaugh showed his love of baseball in two ways. He drove 42 miles over stone and hard-packed dirt roads from his home in Westminster to Frederick in order to see the Frederick Hustlers make their professional baseball debut. The drive took him about two hours and before leaving home, he made a bet with a friend that Frederick would win its opening day game. If the Hustlers lost, Albaugh promised that he would walk home. It was a daring bet. The Hustlers were playing the Martinsburg Champs who had been the league champs in the defunct Tri-City League the previous year. Albaugh and Frederick City had chosen their champion, though, and the Hustlers didn’t disappoint. Professional Baseball Comes to Frederick             Though baseball came to Frederick County near 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…

There was no stopping “Commando” Kelly during WWII

Ralph F. Kelly of Emmitsburg, Md., was a battle-hardened veteran of World War II by the age of 24. It only prepared him for what was to come. “He was with the first Allied troops which invaded the North African coast last November, and has been fighting steadily since with the exception of a two-week period spent in a hospital recovering from wounds received in initial engagements,” the Gettysburg Times reported in 1943. In August of 1943, the Allied Forced invaded Sicily. The soldiers met strong resistance from the Italian and German armies as each side battled to control the high ground in the hilly country. During the fighting, Sgt. Kelly found himself behind a machine gun firing on the enemy. He fired on the enemy time and again, but eventually, he and the other riflemen in his machine gun nest 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…

Maryland's lost silver mine

For more than a century, rumors have persisted in Carroll County, Md., of a lost treasure. Most versions of the story say it is a hidden silver mine, but at least one version of the story says that the treasure is gold bullion stored in a cave. Either way, the treasure has eluded hunters, leaving residents split over whether it ever existed.   Ahrwud’s Mine The story of a silver mine in the Silver Run area of Carroll County supposedly dates back to the late 1750’s when a German silversmith with the last name of Ahrwud settled in the area. The legend is that Ahrwud made friends with the local Indian tribe who knew of the location of silver, which they used for trading, but they admired Ahrwud’s craftsmanship. “In return for all the silver he could possibly use, Ahrwud Read more…