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…
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…
Female reporter on Gettysburg Address gets her recognition 78 later
Mary Shaw Leader of Hanover got up early on November 19, 1863, and started off on her walk to work. Hours later, after a cold 15-mile walk, she arrived in Gettysburg to attend the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Since the Battle of Gettysburg in July, the cemetery had been laid out and the remains of the soldiers killed in the battle had been reinterred. She, along with hundreds of other people, stood through U.S. statesman Edward Everett’s two-hour-long speech and President Abraham Lincoln’s less-than-three-minute speech. Eyewitness accounts of Lincoln’s speech, which would become known as “The Gettysburg Address”, have said that initial reaction to it was mixed. Historian Shelby Foote has said that applause was “barely polite.” Sarah Cooke Myers, who attended the speech, recalled in 1931, “There was no applause when he stopped speaking.” However, the New Read more…
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