Removal of old bridge piers completed at site of Amtrak’s new Susquehanna River Bridge

 

(Trains) An Amtrak contractor has completed the removal of 10 bridge piers dating to 1866 from the Susquehanna River, a required move in advance of construction of new bridges connecting Havre de Grace and Perryville, Md. Continued

Aberdeen mayor promises continued city help with restoration of historic B&O station

(The Aegis) Aberdeen Mayor Patrick McGrady pledged this week that the city would continue to support the ongoing community project to restore the historic B&O Railroad station off West Bel Air Avenue.
"The City of Aberdeen wants to see it done as much as you do," McGrady told Bob Tarring, who is the head of an ad hoc citizen committee formed to oversee the restoration, as Tarring and his associates gave the mayor and City Council an update Monday.
Tarring, along with Rick Herbig, of the Historical Society of Harford County Board of Trustees, and Jon Livezey, treasurer for the Aberdeen Room Archives and Museum, provided the update during Monday's city council meeting. Continued

Harford officials hope to preserve historic Bel Air house, golf course barn being dismantled

 

(Aegis) Harford County officials and the Historical Society of Harford County are working to move and preserve the historic Joesting-Gorsuch House, which had been slated for demolition to make way for five new houses to be built on the north side of the Winters Run Golf Club property near Bel Air.
The historic red barn next to the house is being dismantled this week, however, as golf club officials and Forest Hill home builder Gemcraft Homes go through the final stages of obtaining county approval to build the new houses on nearly 12 acres off of North Tollgate Road near the club entrance.
The Joesting-Gorsuch House dates to the 1730s, making it one of the oldest standing structures in Harford County. Continued

Harry Gilmor's Raid

(Wikipedia) Gilmor's Raid, also known as The Magnolia Station Train Raid, was a foraging and disruptive cavalry raid that was part of an overall campaign against Union railroads, led by Maj. Harry W. Gilmor with 135 men from the First and Second Maryland Cavalry regiments. It was authorized by Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early during his Valley Campaigns of 1864, which threatened Washington, D.C., during the American Civil War.
As Early advanced north and east toward Baltimore, Maryland, a Union force led by Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace met Early's forces and was defeated in the Battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864. The cavalry brigade of the Second Corps, led by Brig. Gen. Bradley T. Johnson advanced further eastward into Maryland, led by cavalry forces under the command of Maj. Harry W. Gilmor. Upon reaching Westminster, Maryland, on July 10, Gilmor attacked Union cavalry forces, driving them out. Johnson's main cavalry force continued pressing Wallace's retreating Union troops, pursuing them into Cockeysville-Hunt Valley, Maryland, north of Baltimore, and then turned south destroying tracks and trestle bridges along the North[ern] Central Railroad. Upon reaching Timonium, Maryland, Johnson divided the Second Corps cavalry brigade. Continued

Images: 1. "The invasion of Maryland--capture of a train on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad at Magnolia, near Gunpowderb sic [B]Ridge, July 11" 2. Harry Gilmor. 3. Bradley Johnson. 4. Wade Hampton and Bradley Johnson, long after the war.

James J. Archer: A Confederate General from Bel Air, Maryland

(Wikipedia) James Jay Archer (December 19, 1817 – October 24, 1864) was a lawyer and an officer in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War, and he later served as a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Taken as a prisoner of war at the Battle of Gettysburg, Archer was the first general officer captured from Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Continued

Photos: 1. "Annotation from negative, scratched into emulsion: Briggen J.J. Archer," (Brady-Handy/Library of Congress) 2. "Old R.R. cutting where Archers Brigade of A.P. Hills Division was captured by the 14th Brooklyn 6th Wisconsin and 95th N.Y. ... 1863 July 1 (Alfred Waud/Library of Congress)

James J. Archer: A Confederate General from Bel Air

(Wikipedia) James Jay Archer (December 19, 1817 – October 24, 1864) was a lawyer and an officer in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War, and he later served as a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Taken as a prisoner of war at the Battle of Gettysburg, Archer was the first general officer captured from Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Continued

Photos: 1. "Annotation from negative, scratched into emulsion: Briggen J.J. Archer," (Brady-Handy/Library of Congress) 2. "Old R.R. cutting where Archers Brigade of A.P. Hills Division was captured by the 14th Brooklyn 6th Wisconsin and 95th N.Y. ... 1863 July 1 (Alfred Waud/Library of Congress)

Cal Ripken, Sr.

(Wikipedia) Calvin Edwin Ripken, Sr. (December 17, 1935–March 25, 1999) was a coach and manager in Major League Baseball who spent 36 years in the Baltimore Orioles organization, also as a player and scout. He played in the Orioles' farm system beginning in 1957, and later served as manager of the parent club, on which his sons Cal Jr. and Billy played.
Ripken's 13-plus years in the Baltimore farm system was the longest tenure of any minor league manager in Orioles history. As a manager in the minor leagues for 13 years, Ripken won 964 games, and later compiled a 68-101 record managing the Orioles. Several of his students, including Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, and most prominently his son Cal Jr., went on to Hall of Fame careers. Continued

Photo: jimmyack205, some rights reserved.

Richard Cassilly

(Wikipedia) Richard Cassilly (14 December 1927 – 30 January 1998) was an American operatic tenor who had a major international opera career between 1954 and 1990.
... Born in Washington D.C., Cassilly spent his childhood on a farm near Aberdeen, Maryland before moving to Baltimore, Maryland with his family in his early teens. He first became involved in music through singing in his high school's glee club. In 1946, at the age of eighteen, he entered the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University where he studied singing with Hans Heinz. As a student he sang in college productions of The Flying Dutchman (as the Steersman) and Madama Butterfly (as Pinkerton). During this time he also had the opportunity to study under Rosa Ponselle who had retired from her career and was residing in Baltimore. Continued

Photo: Wikipedia

Peppi's building coming down

(Aegis) Razing of the former Peppi's Meats building in Bel Air got under way Friday. Continued

Education pioneer Williams dies

(Aegis) ... Dr. Williams was one of 10 children of the late Hattie Brown and Vandellia Armitage Williams, a sharecropping farmer whose family was uprooted from the Perryman peninsula during the creation of Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1917 when Dr. Williams was just 3. The Williams children grew up in the era of segregation when black children in Harford County were not allowed to attend school with white children and were shunted into crowded, older buildings, where they were taught only by members of their own race and classes stopped at seventh grade. To earn a high school diploma, a black child had to leave the county to attend school in neighboring counties or Baltimore City, usually in a “colored only” school.
... The Harford County school system Dr. Williams left in 1962 was still segregated by race, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the so-called separate but equal doctrine in education eight years earlier. The Harford school system was not fully integrated until the 1965-66 school year and then, only after pressure from the state department of education, of which Dr. Williams was then a part. Continued

Photo: Federal Hill Colored School, Route 165, above Jarrettsville, Maryland (Falmanac).

Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America

Hey, this reminds me of Fallston, and Bel Air, and, well, inceasingly more of Harford County.

Edwin Booth

(Wikipedia) Edwin Thomas Booth (13 November 1833 – 7 June 1893) was a famous 19th century American actor. He was born near Bel Air, Maryland into the English American theatrical Booth family. Booth toured throughout America and to the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespeare; in 1869 he founded Booth's Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time. Some theatre historians consider him the greatest American actor and Hamlet of the 19th century. Continued

Photo: Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).

"Jarrettsville" book signing

(HCPL) “Based on a true story from the author’s family history, Jarrettsville begins in 1869, just after Martha Jane Cairnes has shot and killed her fiancé…”
‘The story is set in Northern Maryland, six miles below the Mason-Dixon line, where brothers literally fought on opposing sides, and former slave-owners live next door to abolitionists and freed men.’
Meet Cornelia Nixon, author of Jarrettsville at the Jarrettsville Branch on Monday, November 2 at 6:00 pm for an exciting discussion and book signing.
For more information and to register for the program, call the Jarrettsville Branch at 410-692-7887. Link

"A Young Lady Shoots her Seducer in Maryland"

Here's some background on the Cairnes-McComas affair, portrayed in Cornelia Nixon's new novel "Jarrettsville." (No spoilers included.) (New York Times, April 13, 1869) On Saturday evening at Jarrettsville, Harford County. Md., Miss CAIRNES shot and killed NICHOLAS McCOMAS. About twenty persons were seated on the porch of the village hotel, when Miss CAIRNES suddenly appeared and drew a pistol and fired three shots at McCOMAS. The alleged cause of the murder was seduction. (NYTimes May 9, 1869) THE MARYLAND HOMICIDE; Trial of Miss Cairnes for the Murder of Her Alleged Betrayer. Sympathy for the Prisoner--She is Furnished Rooms at a Hotel--Her Appearance and Demeanor. The trial of Miss MARTHA J. CAIRNES for the murder of NICHOLAS McCOMAS, her alleged seducer, on the 10th of April last, at Jarrettsville, commenced here yesterday. From the large number of talesmen summoned and the regular jurors, (after the rejection of a good many on account of having formed all opinion. Continued

Photo: Grave of Nicholas McComas reads : "In the memory of our murdered friend; who was murdered April 10, 1869 in the 36th year of his age." Courtesy of Donna Jones at Find A Grave.

Jarrettsville

(NYTBR) In her third novel, “Jarrettsville,” Cornelia Nixon has the advantage of telling a true story, one that took place in her own family. Just after the Civil War, a distant ancestor, Martha Jane Cairnes, made national headlines after she shot and killed her sometime lover, Nick McComas. With the steady hand and steely nerve of a practiced marksman, Martha gunned Nick down on the porch of the barroom at the local hotel. The ensuing trial blended all the elements that, then as now, thrilled and fascinated the prurient American imagination: illicit sex, betrayal, murder — and the specter of race, since local rumor held that Martha had also had a liaison with a black man.
While Nick was a Union Army veteran, Martha and her family had been Confederate sympathizers. Their town, Jarrettsville, lay in northern Maryland, just a few miles below the Mason-Dixon Line, occupying its own strange no man’s land between North and South. Continued

Stevenson Archer (1786–1848)

(Wikipedia) Stevenson Archer (October 11, 1786 – June 26, 1848) was a United States Representative from Maryland, representing the sixth district from 1811 to 1817, and the seventh district from 1819 to 1821. His son Stevenson Archer and father John Archer were also U.S. Congressmen from Maryland.
Archer was born at Medical Hall, near Churchville, Maryland, and attended Nottingham Academy of Maryland, later graduating from Princeton College in 1805. He studied law, was admitted to the bar of Harford County, Maryland in 1808, and commenced practice the same year. Continued

Photos: 1. Medical Hall, 1936 (Library of Congress). 2. Stevenson Archer (Find A Grave)

Stop putting on airs - you live in Frogtown!

Historically speaking, a lot of us don't live where we think we do. Take Fallston, Maryland for example. It was once a little village, but now it appears to be tens of miles long. The village never grew, just the definition. A lot of this has to do with the post office. Postal codes (and before that, railroads), have had a huge influence on place names and the distortion of said names. (Most famously perhaps, is Albuquerque, New Mexico, which used to be Alburquerque, until the railroad's sign painter dropped an "R.")
I live in Fallston, Maryland, but not Fallston proper. A hundred years ago, living in the same place, it may have been referred to as Laurel Brook, or maybe Lancaster Corner (sometimes mistakenly called Lower Crossroads, which is in Churchville), or perhaps Overshot Branch (a stream that feeds into Laurel Brook) - as in "he lives along the Overshot Branch of Laurel Brook." Lately, I hear there's a Walmart going in "Fallston," but it isn't really, it's being built in Benson.
Which brings us to the other reason places get renamed: cachet. Fallston has a higher status than Benson. {In its heyday, Benson was home to some impressive estates, such as Mount Soma. It also had a sizable African American population (large enough to rate a "colored school"), both of which are mostly gone, fragmented, and forgotten.} Fallston also seems to have eaten up Bagley, Wilna, Mountain, and is encroaching on Clayton.
Another good example of this is Rock Spring. Go to Google maps and find Rock Spring in Harford County, it isn't there. Instead, the map reads Frogtown. But Frogtown sounds a bit seedy. Why buy a cheap crap-shack in Frogtown, when you can lord it over a froufrou McMansion in Rock Spring? Ostentation always trumps geography.
Was there ever a Rock Spring in Harford County? It isn't listed in the index of place names at the Maryland State Archives. However, Martenet's Map of Harford County, Maryland (1878), does list Rock Spring Episcopal Church. I'm guessing that's the origin of the name. Indeed, "Our Harford Heritage" (OHH), lists "Christ Church at Rock Spring" as being founded in 1805. So there was, in some form, a real Rock Spring, but it was much smaller than Frogtown - Wright refers to Rock Spring as a "neighborhood." OHH also states that "Frog Town" (2 words), was the terminus and collection point of a toll road from Bel Air.
There is also a Rock Springs in Cecil County. (It used to be the location of a chrome mine.) Interestingly, Route 222, right off Route 1 in Cecil County is marked on the map as Rock Spring Road (singular) and then turns into Rock Springs Road (plural) closer to Rock Springs. Could Harford's Rock Spring Road have turned onto what is now Route 1 and meandered its way to the now forgotten town of Rock Springs? Maybe, but the church seems the more likely answer, especially considering that the road next to the church is still called Rock Spring Church Road. Rock Spring Road was probably the new road name after the demise of the turnpike.
Personally, I'd much rather live in Frogtown than Rock Spring. It would be fun to revive some of those old Harford names: Bodt Corner, Carea, Drybranch, Ferncliff, Macton, Minefield, Rutledge, Sharon, Weldonbet, etc. They are still on the maps, all you gotta do is look.

Photo: 1. Laurel Brook Station (MARYLAND AND PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD HISTORICAL SOCIETY) 2. Christ Church - Rock Spring Parish (Nightening)

Garrett Island area reopened to public

(Baltimore Sun) - Part of Garrett Island is open to the public again. Suzanne Baird, the manager of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, said Friday that public access has been restored to one-quarter acre of beach across from Perryville's municipal pier. Continued

Photo: Garrett Island, Canon EOS 20D & EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L IS lens (MDRails)

Navy's first ship in HdG?

(The Record) - ... A nonprofit organization has selected Havre de Grace as the shipyard to build a replica of the Andrew Doria, the Continental Navy vessel that flew the first American flag.
A sign placed at the future shipyard, about 100 yards away from the Lockhouse museum, was unveiled during a special ceremony Tuesday. The project, entirely funded by the organization, is expected to cost more than $8 million. It would be an impressive project. But ... Continued

Photo: Lockhouse Museum, Havre de Grace, Maryland (Falmanac).

A look at historic Harford sanctuaries

(Aegis) - When the writing team of Henry Peden Jr. and Jack Shagena Jr. did research on their first four books in the Harford County’s Rural Heritage series, they were often asked, “Why don’t you do churches?” After the successful publication of books about blacksmiths, barns, spring houses and mills, they have just come out with their latest book, “Churches: An Illustrated History." Continued

Photos: Falmanac