B & O Railroad

(LoC) On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transportation of freight and passengers. Investors hoped a railroad would allow Baltimore, the second largest U.S. city at that time, to successfully compete with New York for western trade. New Yorkers were profiting from easy access to the Midwest via the Erie Canal.
Construction began at Baltimore harbor on July 4, 1828. Local dignitary Charles Carroll, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the first stone.
The initial line of track, a 13-mile stretch to Ellicott's Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland, opened in 1830. The Tom Thumb, a steam engine designed by Peter Cooper, negotiated the route well enough to convince skeptics that steam traction worked along steep, winding grades. Continued

Photo: MDRails

The Curious Case of Peter De Vries

(Moffly Media) In a moment we shall deal with the curious case of Peter De Vries, once deemed the funniest novelist in America, now all but forgotten.
... Great comic novels often arise out of a real-life sadness. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five is basically about the firebombing of Dresden, in which masses of innocents were cremated while they slept. It’s hilarious. The power of such books lies in their consideration of darkness as well as light, embracing both a howl of existential doom (for we are all doomed in the end) and the laughter that is its only sane response. Somehow you end up laughing much harder, reading these books, than you do reading books where nothing really bad happens.This is because we relate more profoundly to that which is like life. As Mr. De Vries once told an interviewer, it is “false to life” to write books that are only serious or only funny. “You can’t talk about the serious and the comic separately and still be talking about life,” he said, “any more than you can independently discuss hydrogen and oxygen and still be talking about water.” Continued

Image: Fantastic Fiction

Buffalo Creek Flood

(Wikipedia) The Buffalo Creek Flood was an incident that occurred on February 26, 1972, when the Pittston Coal Company's coal slurry impoundment dam #3, located on a hillside in Logan County, West Virginia, USA, burst four days after having been declared 'satisfactory' by a federal mine inspector.
The resulting flood unleashed approximately 132 million gallons (500,000,000 L) of black waste water, cresting over 30ft high, upon the residents of 16 coal mining hamlets in Buffalo Creek Hollow. Out of a population of 5,000 people, 125 were killed, 1,121 were injured, and over 4,000 were left homeless. 507 houses were destroyed, in addition to forty-four mobile homes and 30 businesses. The disaster also destroyed or damaged homes in Lundale, Saunders, Amherstdale, Crites, Latrobe and Larado. In its legal filings, Pittston Coal referred to the accident as "an Act of God." Continued

Historic Preservation Element Plan Updated

(Dagger) The Department of Planning and Zoning has updated the Historic Preservation Element Plan and will host a public meeting/poster session to obtain public input on the draft plan. ... The draft plan may be viewed at http://www.harfordcountymd.gov/planningzoning/. Continued

Image: Library of Congress

Renegade German war hero who saved French port dies

(Reuters) A renegade former member of Germany's World War Two navy, who thwarted plans to wreck the French port of Bordeaux by retreating Nazi forces, has died at the age of 91, officials said.
Heinz Stahlschmidt was serving as a petty officer in the Kriegsmarine when he was ordered to help prepare the destruction of the southwestern city's port facilities as the Germans pulled out ahead of advancing allied troops. Continued

John McGraw

(Wikipedia) John Joseph McGraw (April 7, 1873–February 25, 1934), nicknamed "Little Napoleon" and "Muggsy", was a Major League Baseball player and manager. Much-lauded as a player, McGraw was one of the standard-bearers of dead-ball era major league baseball. Known for having fists as quick as his temper, McGraw used every advantage he could get as both a player and manager. He took full advantage of baseball's initial structure that only provided for one umpire, becoming notorious for tripping, blocking, and impeding a baserunner in any way he could while the umpire was distracted by the flight of the ball. His profligacy in employing such tactics may have led to additional umpires being assigned to monitor the basepaths. Continued

Image: Library of Congress

Art of Mourning

(artofmourning) Welcome to Art of Mourning, a dedication to mourning, memorial and sentimental jewellery, funeralia and art.
Each area is constantly updated with knowledge and information.
Because mourning, sentimental jewellery and art is relevant for the history of both cultures and societies, its documentation and distribution of knowledge is essential for people ranging from social historians to jewellery historians. Continued

Md., Balto. Co. decide against farm: Boat ramp, saving house are possibilities

(Baltimore Sun) State and local officials have backed away from buying a waterfront farm in eastern Baltimore County from a developer, saying they lack funding to acquire the entire 160-acre tract. Instead, officials say they still hope to buy two small pieces of the farm, one for a public boat ramp on Back River and the other to save a deteriorating historic house that witnessed the Battle of North Point in the War of 1812. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Baltimore County had been talking with developer Mark C. Sapperstein about buying Bauer Farm, a partly wooded waterfront tract on which Sapperstein had been planning to build 144 townhouses. Continued

Photo: Baltimore County Historical Trust

1778: Baron von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge to help train the Continental Army

(Wikipedia) ... On September 26, 1777, the Baron, his Italian greyhound, Azor (which he took with him everywhere), his young aide de camp Louis de Pontiere, his military secretary Pierre Etienne Duponceau, and two other companions, reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire and by December 1, was extravagantly entertained in Boston. Congress was in York, Pennsylvania, after being ousted from Philadelphia by the British advance. By February 5, 1778, Steuben had offered to volunteer without pay (for the time), and by the 23rd, Steuben reported for duty to Washington at Valley Forge. Steuben spoke little English and he often yelled to his translator, "Here! Come swear for me!" Colonel Alexander Hamilton and General Nathanael Greene were of great help in assisting Steuben in drafting a training program for the Army, which found approval with Washington. Continued

Print: Frederick Girsch. "General Washington standing with Johann De Kalb, Baron von Steuben, Kazimierz Pulaski, Tadeusz Kościuszko, Lafayette, John Muhlenberg, and other officers during the Revolutionary War." (Library of Congress)

Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930

(lasvegasweekly) ... Luc Sante’s new book, Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930 (Verse Chorus Press, $25), ... is a corner-of-the-mouth critique of all that’s phoney in contemporary art. That the “aesthetic arbiters of the time” (code word: Stieglitz) dismissed the real-photo postcard as inept amateurism, beneath notice, only reaffirms Sante’s belief in the importance of the genre, which he positions as the missing link between the “foursquare plain style” of the Civil War photographers and the rawboned aesthetic of Walker Evans. Locating the real-photo postcard in the “tradition of non-academic art in America, from the itinerant portrait painters of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the graffiti muralists of more recent times,” Sante celebrates folk photography’s “distinctly American” aesthetic, with its “emphasis on inclusion and directness,” an aesthetic whose attractions sometimes amount to little more than “a kind of absence—an apparent refusal or inability to do anything more than state facts, which we in turn perceive as beautiful because they are so distant or so bare.” There are echoes, here, of Whitman’s bear-hug embrace of the common man at his best, and of Chandler’s eye for the poetry of the mundane. In the world before the deluge of images that now inundates our mental lives, the real-postcard photographers preserved “electrifyingly real glimpses of scenes that are halfway familiar and halfway impossibly remote, all the more vivid because they weren’t meant for us." And yet they were. Continued

Postcard by: My Grandmother c1914.

George Washington

(LoC) George Washington, the first president of the United States, was born on February 22, 1732. Americans celebrate his birthday along with Abraham Lincoln's on "Washington's Birthday" — the Monday before Washington's and after Lincoln's birthday. How do we really know when George Washington was born? Tobias Lear, Washington's secretary and close friend, gave the world a clue.
Lear lived with George and Martha Washington at Mt. Vernon, and he helped the Revolutionary War general organize his papers. On February 14, 1790, Lear wrote that the President's "birth day" was on the 11th of February Old Style, referring to the Julian Calendar. Washington was born 20 years prior to the 1752 introduction of the Gregorian Calendar (intended to more accurately reflect a solar year). When the Julian Calendar was "corrected" to the Gregorian Calendar, February 11th became February 22nd. Continued

Painting: Parson Weems' Fable by Grant Wood

For Love of Liberty PBS Documentary Sneak Peek

"TV Guide takes a sneak peek at the new PBS documentary FOR LOVE OF LIBERTY. Hosted by Halle Berry & featuring Morgan Freeman, Susan Sarandon & Ossie Davis, the film chronicles African-American soldiers' role in defending our country."

Carolina Parakeet

(Wikipedia) The Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) was the only parrot species native to the eastern United States. It was found from the Ohio Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, and lived in old forests along rivers. It was the only species at the time classified in the genus Conuropsis. It was called puzzi la née ("head of yellow") or pot pot chee by the Seminole and kelinky in Chikasha (Snyder & Russell, 2002).
The last wild specimen was killed in Okeechobee County, Florida in 1904, and the last captive bird died at the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918. Continued

Tours tell story of Monticello through voices of its slaves

(Baltimore Sun) Burwell Colbert was the only person who could understand Thomas Jefferson when the former president was on his deathbed. James Hemings and his sister, Sally, could have sued for their freedom in France when they accompanied Jefferson to Paris in the 1780s, but instead returned with the statesman. And Peter Fossett later said he didn't realize he was a slave until the day, at age 12, when he was put on the auction block. Continued

Photo: "Servant quarters of Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson" (Library of Congress)

Foes rally against Gettysburg area casino plan

(YDR) Violet Clark remembers her most profound visit to the Gettysburg battlefield -- a foggy day one July when she came close to seeing what the battlefield would look like filled with cannon smoke.
The Tennessee native remembered her ancestors who fought on both sides, and although she had visited the same place 20 times before, she wept like it was her first experience there.
It's that kind of authentic experience that would be diminished by the lights and sounds and traffic from a proposed casino resort less than a mile from the Gettysburg National Military Park, Clark told a crowd of about 150 Thursday night at a meeting organized by No Casino Gettysburg. Continued

Image: Gettysburg Battlefield, 1918 (Library of Congress)