Online tour of the Battle of Hanover

(CivilWarAlbum.com) During the American Civil War, the Battle of Hanover was fought on June 30, 1863. Union cavalry under Judson Kilpatrick encountered Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart and a sharp fight ensued in the town and in farm fields to the south, particularly along Frederick Street.
The inconclusive battle delayed the Confederate cavalry on their way to the Battle of Gettysburg. Three days before the battle, another detachment of Virginia cavalry had briefly occupied Hanover, collecting supplies and horses from local citizens. Continued

Homewood Museum at JHU spends $100K to restore 1801 outhouse

(Baltimore Sun) The Homewood Museum at Johns Hopkins University has spent more than $100,000 to restore a small, separate brick building with lift-up seats, graffiti on its wood-paneled walls and a crescent moon carved into its steeple-like ventilation stack.
Some people might say it's a lot of money to spend on an old outhouse, even an unusually elegant one built in 1801. But Catherine Rogers Arthur doesn't see it that way.
"It's really a very interesting little building," said Arthur, director and curator of the museum overlooking North Charles Street. "We joke that it was built like a brick (pause) privy." Continued

John Hunn

(Wikipedia) John Hunn (June 29, 1849 – September 1, 1926) was an American businessman and politician from Camden, in Kent County, Delaware. He was a member of the Republican Party who served as Governor of Delaware.
... Hunn's father, also John Hunn, was a noted abolitionist and chief engineer of the Underground Railroad in Delaware. Shortly after the younger John's birth, the family lost their New Castle County farm, "Happy Valley," in a sheriff's sales because of fines assessed for helping runaway slaves. They then went to live with family at Magnolia, Delaware. Continued

Still Toxic After All These Years

(Aegis) Minute amounts of a World War I blister agent were found at an Aberdeen Proving Ground demolition site after a pipe was broken Tuesday.
Officials initially said nothing was found after testing, but Public Affairs Officer Robert DiMichele said Thursday afternoon that additional lab results found trace amounts of lewisite IN (sic) the pipes. The chemical agent, when in use, causes blisters when touched and in lungs when inhaled, according to DiMichele. Continued

Judy Agnew, vice president's wife and Md. first lady

(Baltimore Sun) Elinor Isabel "Judy" Agnew, who as the wife of former Baltimore County Executive, Maryland Gov. and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew preferred quiet domesticity to that of the political limelight, died June 20 in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 91. Continued

Photo: Judy Agnew (2nd from left). 

World War I

(LoC) A Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sofia in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, setting off a chain of events that would culminate in a world war by August. Five years later, on June 28, 1919, Germany and the Allies signed the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending World War I and providing for the creation of the League of Nations.

After the 1914 assassinations, an elaborate network of treaties among the nations of Europe led to a rapid escalation in the "Great War" between the Central Powers—including Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, and the Allied nations of Britain, France, Italy, and Russia. On April 6, 1917, the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies. Continued 

Causes of death: 1900 and 2010

(boingboing) An editorial in the 200th anniversary issue of the New England Journal of Medicine looks at mortality and health through the centuries, and includes this chart of causes of death from the turn of the last century, which makes for quite a comparison. Continued

James Smithson

(LoC) British scientist James Smithson died on June 27, 1829. He left an endowment "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Some regarded his bequest as a trifle eccentric, considering Smithson had neither traveled to nor corresponded with anyone in America.
A fellow of the venerable Royal Society of London from the age of twenty-two, Smithson published numerous scientific papers on mineralogy, geology, and chemistry. He proved that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals, not zinc oxides; one calamine (a type of zinc carbonate) was renamed "smithsonite" posthumously in his honor.
An act of Congress signed by President James K. Polk on August 10, 1846, established the Smithsonian Institution. After considering a series of recommendations, which included the creation of a national university, a public library, or an astronomical observatory, Congress agreed that the $508,318 bequest would support the creation of a museum, a library, and a program of research, publication, educational outreach, and collection in the natural and applied sciences, arts, and history. Link

Photo: Theodor Horydczak

Hampton takes flak for title of black history program

(Baltimore Sun) Officials at the Hampton National Historic Site in Towson this week officially changed the name of a black history program planned for next month after controversy erupted over its original title — "Slave for a Day."
The July 8 event, which park ranger and event organizer Angela Roberts-Burton said is part of the historical site's monthly black history educational series, caused a stir on the Internet for what some believe was insensitive wording. Continued

Photo: Farm at Hampton (Falmanac)

Where Was Stonewall?

(NYTimes) In the early spring of 1862, the Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson won dazzling victories in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley that made him “the hero of the South.” Combining incredible energy and audacity with a mastery of terrain and tactics, Jackson’s Valley Campaign is internationally famous and still studied today.
Beginning later that year with the Second Battle of Bull Run, Jackson cemented his reputation as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s hardest-hitting corps commander. After solid fighting at Antietam and a decisive victory at Fredericksburg, he was instrumental in the resounding Union defeat at Chancellorsville. Tragically for the Southern forces, he was wounded by friendly fire immediately following what was arguably his greatest success. He died a few days later, on May 10, 1863.
Between these two legendary pinnacles is the series of bloody engagements around Richmond in late June, 1862 known collectively as the Seven Days. For most of the time, Jackson wasn’t where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there; and, from all reports, he was ineffectual, listless and confused. Continued

Agnes

(Wikipedia) Hurricane Agnes was the first tropical storm and first hurricane of the 1972 Atlantic hurricane season. A rare June hurricane, it made landfall on the Florida Panhandle before moving northeastward and ravaging the Mid-Atlantic region as a tropical storm. The worst damage occurred along a swath from central Virginia through central Pennsylvania to the southern Finger Lakes region of New York, as illustrated by the rainfall map below [above].
Agnes brought heavy rainfall along its path, killing 129 and causing $1.7 billion in damage, with railroad damage so extensive it contributed to the creation of Conrail. At the time, it was the most damaging hurricane ever recorded, surpassing Hurricane Betsy, and it would not be surpassed until Hurricane Frederic in 1979. Agnes was also the only Category 1 hurricane to have its name retired at the time. Continued

Penn Central Goes Belly Up

(Wikipedia) ... The American financial system was shocked when after only two years of operations, the Penn Central Transportation Company was put into bankruptcy on June 21, 1970. It was the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history at that time. Although the Penn Central Transportation Company was put into bankruptcy, its parent Penn Central Company was able to survive. The PC's bankruptcy was the final blow to long-haul private-sector passenger train service in the United States. The troubled company filed proposals with the ICC to abandon most of its remaining passenger rail service, causing a chain reaction among its fellow railroads. In 1971, Congress created Amtrak, a government corporation, which began to operate a skeleton passenger service on the tracks of PC and other U.S. railroads.
The PC continued to operate freight service under bankruptcy court protection. After private-sector reorganization efforts failed, Congress nationalized the Penn Central under the terms of the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976. The new law folded six northeastern railroads, the Penn Central and five smaller, failed lines, into the Consolidated Rail Corporation, commonly known as Conrail. Continued 

West Virginia

(LoC) - On June 20, 1863, West Virginia became the thirty-fifth state in the Union. The land that formed the new state formerly constituted part of Virginia. The two areas had diverged culturally from their first years of European settlement, as small farmers generally settled the western portion of the state, including the counties that later formed West Virginia, while the eastern portion was dominated by a powerful minority class of wealthy slaveholders. There were proposals for the trans-Allegheny west to separate from Virginia as early as 1769. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the residents of a number of contiguous western counties, where there were few slaves, decided to remain in the Union. Congress accepted these counties as the state of West Virginia on condition that its slaves be freed. "Montani semper liberi," "mountaineers always freemen," became the new state's motto. Continued

Aegis: 50 Years Ago

(Aegis) ... The Lamm Brothers Inc., owners of the Bel Air Manufacturing Company, broke ground at the site of the company's new manufacturing plant on Williams Street. The company originally manufactured summer clothing when the business started in 1910. Lamm Brothers grew to a be known nationally as a manufacturer and distributor of Gleneagles men's wear. Other plants in operation at the time were in Baltimore, Fallston and New York. Continued

Wayside markers tell the story of York, Pa. during the Civil War

(Cannonball) York, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War hosted a major U.S. Army Hospital, a large military training camp for the Union army, and important manufacturing concerns which made such military items as railroad cars. The borough of some 8,600 (according to the U.S. Census of 1862) in late June 1863 became the largest town in the entire North to fall to the Confederate Army when Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s division of more than six thousand veteran soldiers marched into the area.
A series of full color wayside markers now commemorates the events, people, and places of York during the war years. These are part of the popular Civil War Trails program sponsored by www.VisitPA.com. Continued

The War of 1812

(LoC) On June 18, 1812, President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain, marking the beginning of the War of 1812. Frustrated by Britain's maritime practices and support of Native American resistance to western expansion, the U.S. entered the war with ambitious plans to conquer Canada, a goal that was never realized.
The strength of the British army proved too great for U.S. forces. Both on land and at sea, U.S. troops suffered great losses. In August 1814, British troops entered Washington, D.C., and burned the Capitol and the White House. By December, both the Americans and the British recognized that it was time to end the conflict. Representatives of the two nations met in Belgium on December 24 and signed the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war and restored previously recognized boundaries between the United States and British territory in North America. Continued

War of 1812 bicentennial: USA shrugs as Canada goes all out

(USA Today) When the first big battle of the War of 1812 is re-enacted this fall, the U.S. 1st Artillery regiment will mount an ear-splitting barrage. The Yanks will point their cannons at British redcoats across the Niagara River in Canada. They will wear blue. They will curse King George. Unlike 200 years ago, they will all be Canadians.

Many Americans aren't that into the War of 1812 — not like Canadians, anyway — so the latter often play the former in re-enactments along the international border here. Continued

Flag Day

(LoC) - On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the design of a national flag. Since 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation establishing a national Flag Day on June 14, Americans have commemorated the adoption of the Stars and Stripes by celebrating June 14 as Flag Day. Prior to 1916, many localities and a few states had been celebrating the day for years. Continued

Photo: The Birth of Old Glory [detail], Percy Moran, artist, copyright 1917 (Library of Congress).

Jeb Stuart’s Wild Ride

(NYTimes) “Gentlemen, in ten minutes everyone must be in the saddle.” It was 2 a.m. on June 12, 1862, and a 29-year-old Confederate brigadier general named James Ewell Brown Stuart — Jeb to his intimates and posterity — was about to write history with his famous “Ride Around McClellan.”
Throughout the spring, Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac had been edging its way up the Virginia Peninsula between the York and James Rivers. Its destination: Richmond, the Confederate capital. McClellan, a very tentative, deliberate fighter, was perfectly matched in his adversary, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, whose slow, careful retreat finally brought both armies to the gates of Richmond at the end of May.
But on May 31 Johnston was seriously wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, and the next day he was replaced by Gen. Robert E. Lee. The patrician Virginian was Johnson’s polar opposite, extremely aggressive and unafraid of risks. In the aftermath of the inconclusive battle, Lee suspected that the right flank of McClellan’s army was “in the air” — not anchored to any natural formation, and thus vulnerable to attack. To be certain, he decided to send Stuart to reconnoiter. Continued

The Stephen Colbert of the Civil War

(NYTimes) “A nickel-plated son of a bitch.” That was how David R. Locke, an Ohio newspaperman and the most daring comedian of the Civil War, described his alter-ego: Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby. Locke’s persona made him the most influential humorist of the era.
His jokes seemed to be in everybody’s mouth, and he became so popular in England that readers there assumed all Americans spoke in Nasby’s tattered dialect. Continued

Photo: Portrait of P. V. (Petroleum Vesuvius) Nasby by Thomas Nast 

5 Beloved Ethnic Foods Invented for Americans

(mentalfloss.com) Who is General Tso and why is his chicken everywhere? No one seems to know. While there was a General Tso (or Zuo Zongtang) in 19th-century China, little about him suggested he was a whiz at whipping up deep-fried, sweet ‘n’ spicy chicken. Especially since, by the time it first appeared, he wouldn’t have been alive to taste it. Continued

Another Tilghman involved in a historic moment

(Frederick N. Rasmussen) Several readers wrote me about last week's column that told the story of federal Judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes, a Baltimorean who swore in Lyndon B. Johnson as president aboard Air Force One after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.
They pointed out that Hughes' Maryland lineage included Tench Tilghman, who, like Hughes, had been at the center of one of history's most momentous events.
Tilghman, Revolutionary War aide-de-camp to Gen. George Washington and one of Maryland's most famous patriots, carried the news of the British surrender in 1781 at Yorktown, Va., to the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, in a ride that has been compared as being second only to that of Paul Revere. Continued

Archaeologist Searh For War of 1812 Fort at Elk Landing

(WoCCP) Dozens of people from the Archeological Society of Maryland were at Elk Landing on this beautiful Sunday afternoon working to dig up new clues about Fort Hollingsworth and the pre-historic period at a strip of land located at the confluence of the Big and Little Elk creeks. The former farm and Chesapeake Bay port bustled with activity as professional and avocational investigators carefully scrapped, swept and sifted the soil with small trowels, brushes and other hand-tools looking for the smallest fragments of evidence that might shed light on the past. Continued

Historic Photo Archive Re-Emerges

(NYTimes) Roy Stryker, founder of the Farm Security Administration’s photography project, was determined to compile a visual encyclopedia of the United States in the 1930s and ’40s and preserve it for future generations.
So, while photographers like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee crisscrossed the country, Mr. Stryker was sending boxes of prints to Ramona Javitz, the director of the New York Public Library Picture Collection, to make sure there was a repository other than the National Archives. ... None of the prints Mr. Stryker had donated were cataloged until Stephen Pinson, a photography curator, came to the New York Public Library in 2005. He hired two catalogers and they discovered that some 1,000 photos in the New York collection were not among the negatives in the Library of Congress collection. Continued

The Galvanized Yankee

(NYTimes) It is unlikely that Henry Stanley knew, upon joining an Illinois artillery unit on June 4, 1862, that his action validated a central Darwinian principle — namely, that it is not necessarily the biggest and strongest that survive, but the most adaptable.
Stanley was a Confederate soldier who had been captured at the Battle of Shiloh and imprisoned at Chicago’s Camp Douglas, a cesspool of a prison where over 200 of the 8,000 prisoners died in the first week. Later he would write of camp conditions: “It was lavish and wasteful of life…a stupid and heartless age guilty of enormities that would tax the most saintly to forgive.” He took the first way out, even if it meant fighting for the other side.
By switching sides Henry became one of the first of 6,000 so-called Galvanized Yankees to switch from wearing gray to blue. Continued

Credible Amelia Earhart radio signals were ignored as bogus

(Discovery) Dozens of previously dismissed radio signals were actually credible transmissions from Amelia Earhart, according to a new study of the alleged post-loss signals from Earhart's plane. The transmissions started riding the air waves just hours after Earhart sent her last in-flight message.
The study, presented on Friday at a three day conference by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), sheds new light on what may have happened to the legendary aviator 75 years ago. The researchers plan to start a high-tech underwater search for pieces of her aircraft next July. Continued

Old Line Museum celebrates Ma & Pa Railroad Month

(Aegis) All rails, trails and highways will again this June lead to the Old Line in Delta, Pa., for the 37th annual presentation of Ma & Pa Railroad Month.
The Old Line Museum, 602 Main St. in Delta, will present Ma & Pa Railroad Month each Sunday during June from 1:30 to 4 p.m. The famous short line returns to life through photos, memorabilia, drawings, scale models and oral accounts of its history. Continued

Photo: MDRails