Falmanac: The Fallston Almanac of American History
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(NYTimes) Early spring, in the Depression year of 1935. A poor girl from coal-mine country, a dark-haired girl of 4, rocks beside her mother and two sisters in a car moving through the rain-swept night. Soon they will join her father, a Great War veteran who pads his shoes with cardboard. He has been working for months on some distant government relief project. When the car finally stops, the sleepy girl can see only a blur of mud and midnight. Continued
Photo: Red House, West Virginia. Ben Shahn (FSA/OWI/Library of Congress).
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) - Just as cold, damp weather couldn't quench John Brown's incendiary fervor, it didn't discourage those determined to follow the radical abolitionist's footsteps Friday, 150 years after he launched the raid that kindled the Civil War.
As many as 300 people, some in period attire, planned to march nearly five miles from a well-preserved log farmhouse along dark rural roads and across the Potomac River to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. Continued
Photo: Steven Montana (after John Steuart Curry's "Tragic Prelude")
(Wikipedia) The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War. The purpose of the proclamation was to organize Great Britain's new North American empire and to stabilize relations with Native North Americans through regulation of trade, settlement, and land purchases on the western frontier. The Royal Proclamation continues to be of legal importance to First Nations in Canada. Continued
(msnbc.com) - If you can’t get free admission to a museum, a park, or some sort of walking tour, music performance or a national park on Saturday, Sept. 26, then you’re just not trying. Smithsonian Magazine’s fifth Annual Museum Day and National Public Lands Day both fall on the same day this year, and that means entry fees are waived and special events are planned at museums, cultural attractions, historic sites and parks across the country. Continued
Photo: Display at the National Watch & Clock Museum, Columbia, PA (Falmanac).
(Wikipedia) - The Battle of Shepherdstown, also known as the Battle of Boteler's Ford, took place September 19–20, 1862, in Jefferson County, Virginia (now West Virginia), at the end of the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War.
After the Battle of Antietam, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia prepared to defend against a Federal assault that never came. After an improvised truce for both sides to recover and exchange their wounded, Lee's forces began withdrawing across the Potomac River on the evening of September 18 to return to Virginia. Lee left behind a rear guard of two infantry brigades and 45 guns under his chief of artillery, Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton, to hold Boteler's Ford. Continued
Photo: "Ford near Shepherdstown, on the Potomac. Pickets firing across the river. Alfred R. Waud, artist, Sept. 1862." (Wikipedia/Library of Congress)
(Wikipedia) - Dixon Stansbury Miles (May 4, 1804 – September 16, 1862) was a career United States Army officer who served in the Mexican-American War and the Indian Wars. He was mortally wounded as he surrendered his Union garrison in the Battle of Harpers Ferry during the American Civil War. Continued
Miles sorry ass is buried in St. James Cemetery, Monkton, Maryland. Photo by Kim Choate. Photo of Miles is from the Library of Congess.
(Wikipedia) - The Battle of Harpers Ferry was fought September 12–15, 1862, as part of the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War. As Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate army invaded Maryland, a portion of his army under Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson surrounded, bombarded, and captured the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), a major victory at relatively minor cost. Continued
Photo: Library of Congress
DARGAN, Md. - The spears that John Brown ordered for his abolitionist army were fearsome, primitive things. Nearly seven feet long, the pikes had 10-inch steel blades made for slashing and impaling those who resisted the slave rebellion Brown envisioned. ... One bearing the serial number 846 was sold through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries in 2007 for $13,000. Continued
I seem to remember somebody selling these out of the back of Civil War Times Illustrated when I was a kid, at a pretty low price too. - Falmanac
Photo: Smithsonian Institution
(Wikipedia) - Thomas Lewis (April 27, 1718 – January 31, 1790) was an Irish-American surveyor, lawyer, and a pioneer of early Virginia. He made major contributions to the settlement of western Virginia and West Virginia. Lewis was born to John (1678-1762) and Margaret Lynn Lewis (1693-1773) in County Donegal, Ireland. His father came to Philadelphia in 1728, then brought his family including Thomas and his brothers Andrew and William over in 1730. The Lewis family moved west, following the Shenandoah River south into Virginia and finally settling near the headwaters of the south fork in what was then Spotsylvania County in the summer of 1732. John established the family farm, building a stone house for defense against the Indians. Continued
Photo: "house of Thomas Lewis, the King's first surveyor of Augusta and Rockingham County." ( Society of Port Republic Preservationists).
(Wikipedia) - Lewis Robert "Hack" Wilson (April 26, 1900 – November 23, 1948) was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball from 1923 to 1934. He is best known for his record-setting 191-RBI season of 1930. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979. Continued
While many are familiar with the Confederate cavalry raider Harry Gilmor, few remember T. Sturgis Davis. Davis, like Gilmor, was a member of The Baltimore County Horse Guard, a southern leaning militia based in Towson. After the horse guard was disbanded, shortly after the beginning of the war, many of its members headed across the Potomac to Confederate territory. Davis first shows up in the records as a cavalry scout, and then as a captain and one of Turner Ashby's Assistant Adjutant Generals. (Gilmor also served under Ashby around the same time as a Sergeant Major.) It was Davis who accompanied the general's body to Charlottesville, after Ashby was killed in battle near Harrisonburg, Virginia in 1862.
In 1863, Davis, now a major, formed an independent band of guerrilla cavalry, which were commonly known at the time as "partisan rangers." He served, like "Hance" McNeill, "Lige" White (another Marylander), and Harry Gilmor, in the general area of the Shenandoah Valley, though they ranged anywhere from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wardensville, West Virginia, to Harpers Ferry and beyond. Confederates of draft age were generally banned from partisan ranger service because it was too popular an assignment, thus the ranks were filled with Marylanders, who weren't eligible for the Confederate draft. Davis reported to General John Imboden.
Imboden's Brigade, at the time of the order mentioned above, was composed of the Sixty-second Virginia Mounted Infantry, commanded by that distinguished officer, Colonel George W. Smith, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute; the Eighteenth Virginia Cavalry, by the General's brother, Colonel George W. Imboden, now a prominent lawyer in West Virginia; White's Battalion, by Major Robert White, late Attorney-General of West Virginia; the Maryland Battalion, by Major Sturgis Davis, of Maryland, who had won his laurels under Turner Ashby; Gilmor's Battalion of Rangers, by Harry Gilmor, of Baltimore, who was as rough and daring a rider as ever drew a saber; McNeil's Rangers, of Hardy and Hampshire counties, West Virginia, commanded by Captain John H. McNeil. This was the company that later in the war, under the immediate command of Jesse McNeil, son of Captain J. H. McNeil, first lieutenant of Company D, rode into Cumberland, Md., and brought out two major-generals, Crook and Kelly, from the very midst of their commands. Finally, McClanahan's Battery, commanded by Captain John H. McClanahan, a Texan, who had served under Ben McCullough in Texas until it got too peaceable there for him. So, as may be seen, our General had in his brigade a lot of choice spirits, and was well equipped to make a daring raid into the enemy's lines. - "Imboden's Dash into Charlestown"
Davis appears most in the records concerning the battle of New Market in the spring of 1864. Sigel's advance ran into Confederates posted at Rude's Hill under the command of a Maryland Confederate, Capt. T. Sturgis Davis. Davis and his commander, Gen. John Imboden, were able to delay the Federal advance until Gen. John C. Breckinridge arrived at New Market with his small army, including the Virginia Military Institute Cadet Battalion. - Historical Marker at Rude's Hill.
Davis fought through the summer until he was captured at Winchester, Virginia on September 19th, 1864. Captain Thomas B. Gatch, also a former member of the Baltimore County Horse Guard, took command of "Davis' Maryland Battalion," though it was later broken up, with part of it going to the First Maryland Cavalry, and part to Colonel Gilmor's command.
After the war, Davis and Gatch both returned to Maryland and both served in the state legislature.
I found a letter by Gatch on an auction site:
A Confederate Veteran Recalls Gettysburg and General Lee's Orders. Autograph Letter Signed ("Thos. B. Gatch").Two pages, 9 x 6½", Baltimore, December 13, 1920. To John Boos. Mailing folds, spot on second page, penciled notation at upper left corner. In very good to fine condition. A remarkable Civil War reminiscence. Thomas Gatch, a First Sargeant in the Seventh Virginia Cavalry (commanded by Turner Ashby), recalls meeting Robert E. Lee as he and his detachment were crossing the Potomac on their way to Gettysburg: "...I was in command of all the Cavalry in immediate advance of Genl Lee's Army 30 men. Genl Lee rode up to me and asked 'who is in command of this detachment,' I saluted & replied I am Sir, he asked 'what is your rank' I replied 1st Sergt Sir, 'how many men have you?' I replied 30 Sir, he then asked 'are they well mounted,' I answered I suppose we were selected looking to our mounts He then said, 'you with your detachment will remain at my Head Quarters as couriers until relieved. I have issued Genl orders that all Citizens be treated with courtesy and that no plundering of any kind is to be permitted. if you or any of your men should witness any infraction of that order, I want them brought to my head quarters & turned over to Col Marshal.': this is the only instance in which I came in personal contact with Genl Lee. I was wounded at Fairfield takeing[sic] a dispatch to our Cavalry...I was taken Prisoner during Genl Earleys campaign in the Valley and spent the last 9 months of the war in Fort Delaware which was worse than the war itself..."
Gatch also wrote an article for the June 1926 (Vol. XXXIV) of Confederate Veteran Magazine, but I have not read it.
I was assigned to the command of The Valley District Shenandoah and kept McNeill with his Rangers Major Harry Gilmor and Major Sturgis Davis both of Maryland and each with a small battalion from their State always on the go scouting capturing trains of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad assailing and breaking up foraging parties of the enemy capturing horses beyond our established lines and in a general way harassing the enemy and keeping our side well informed of all movements of the enemy in our front They soon knew every road and path and almost every family in the Virginia counties between the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge Mountains and within sixty miles of the Maryland line Indeed so many young men over the border in that State joined one or the other of these Partizan bodies that they often crossed the Potomac at night to procure horses and cattle for Confederate use from people they knew in Maryland as sympathizers with the South. - Gen. John Imboden
Photo: "Charge of the First Maryland Regiment at the Death of Ashby" G.A. Muller, after a painting by William Ludwell Sheppard, A. Hoen & Company. (See "The Confederate Image" by Neely, Holtzer, & Boritt for more on this illustration.)
(Wikipedia) - The Greenbrier Ghost is the name popularly given to the alleged ghost of a young woman in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States, who was murdered in 1897. The events surrounding the haunting have led to it becoming a very late instance in American legal history in which the testimony of a "ghost" was accepted at a murder trial. Continued
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - The election of an ambitious new president in hard times is evoking comparisons with President Franklin Roosevelt, and the 75th anniversary of FDR's New Deal is sparking renewed interest in how Americans survived the Great Depression.
Now historic preservationists and tourism officials are hoping for increased tourism in places associated with the New Deal, like the town of Arthurdale, W.Va., which was built in the 1930s as a planned community for the rural poor. Continued
Photo: Arthurdale Homestead. Reedsville, West Virginia. Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer.
(Wikipedia) - John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to end all slavery. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas and the unsuccessful raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859.
President Abraham Lincoln said he was a "misguided fanatic" and Brown has been called "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans." His attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation. Continued
Painting: Tragic Prelude by John Steuart Curry
(LoC) - On October 10, 1850, the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal was completed and opened for business along its entire 184.5 mile length from Washington, DC to Cumberland, Maryland. Sections of the canal opened for navigation as they were completed; from Georgetown in Washington, DC to Seneca, Maryland in 1831; then to Harpers Ferry in 1833; to Hancock in 1839; and finally to Cumberland in 1850. Continued
Photos: Various cameras, New Freedom, PA. We have some more track speeder pictures posted here.
(Wikipedia) - ... The great railroad strike of 1877 started on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O). Striking workers would not allow any of the stock to roll until this second wage cut was revoked. The governor sent in state militia units to restore train service, but the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers and the governor called for federal troops. Meanwhile, the strike spread to Cumberland, Maryland, stopping freight and passenger traffic.
When Governor Carroll of Maryland directed the 5th and 6th Regiments of the National Guard to put down the strike, citizens from Baltimore attacked the troops as they marched from their armories towards B&O's Camden Station for the train to Cumberland, causing violent street battles between the striking workers and the Maryland militia. When the outnumbered troops of the 6th Regiment fired on an attacking crowd, they killed 10 and wounded 25. The rioters injured several members of the militia, damaged engines and train cars, and burned portions of the train station. On July 21-22, the President sent federal troops and marines to Baltimore to restore order. Continued
Illustration: "Sixth Regiment Fighting its way through Baltimore," an engraving on front cover of "Harper's Weekly, Journal of Civilization," Vol XXL, No. 1076
"The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising national awareness of the unparalleled history in the region, which generally follows the Old Carolina Road (Rt. 15/231) from Gettysburg, through Maryland, to Monticello in Albemarle County, VA. From its communities, farms, businesses and heritage sites, we have an opportunity to celebrate and preserve this vital fabric of America which stands today in the historic, scenic and natural beauty of this region.
The Journey Through Hallowed Ground® is dedicated to encouraging both Americans and world visitors to appreciate, respect, and experience this cultural landscape that makes it uniquely American." Link
Photo: Antietam Battlefield, Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Canon EOS 30D & EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens
