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

Aged grist mill awaits scarce federal funds

(Baltimore Sun) PERRYVILLE, Maryland — A 250-year-old grist mill near the mouth of the Susquehanna River has sat mostly vacant since the end of the Civil War, its thick stone walls serving no purpose but the protection of a few old tools.
Though the building is historic — it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places decades ago — it is uncelebrated and receives few visitors. While many old mills are being restored, plans to develop the Cecil County property have stalled.
The lack of interest in the old mill is partly due to its owner: the federal government. Continued

Edgewood man restores wooden crab boat to pursue a career as a waterman

(Aegis) David Peacock, an 18-year-old from Edgewood, just graduated from Harford Technical High School two months ago, but he is already preparing to begin commercial crabbing on a wooden boat he restored himself.
Peacock's grandfather purchased a 40-foot long and 10-foot wide 1969 Deltaville boat in 2010 and turned it over to his grandson.
"We knew it needed some work," Peacock said, so in his sophomore year of high school, he began saving the money he earned by working on commercial crab boats and making crab traps to purchase the supplies necessary to refurbish the boat. 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

Baltimore's oldest black cemetery finally restored, with help of inmates

(Baltimore Sun) ... Founded in 1872, when blacks could not be interred next to whites, Mount Auburn was known as "The City of the Dead for Colored People." The cemetery, which overlooks the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, became the final resting place for many pioneers of Baltimore's black community.

They include Lillie May Carroll Jackson, who led the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP for 35 years; Carl J. Murphy, a leading voice of the civil rights movement, and his father, John Henry Murphy, the founder of the Afro-American newspaper; and Joseph Gans, the first lightweight boxing champion.

"Successive generations of colored people around the Baltimore area have been buried at this site," said the Rev. Douglas B. Sands Sr., an area pastor who was been involved with efforts to restore the cemetery. Continued 

Elk Landing Opens 62-Acres of Park Land to Public

(WoCCP) For those who enjoy the natural beauty of publicly owned lands and the cultural resources found on some of the properties in Cecil County, there’s some great new out of the Historic Elk Landing Foundation (HELF) this morning. HELF announced that the 62 acres of land purchased by the Town of Elkton through grants from the Maryland Public Open Space program is now open to the public for strolling and picnicking from sun up to sundown year round.
The nearly fifteen year old nonprofit overseeing the restoration of the historic structures, caring for the grounds, and providing interpretive programming says it is “proud and pleased” to make this announcement as it provides stewardship for “a lot of land “ that “is some of the most picturesque ground in the Elkton area.” Continued

Fire chief plans to OK temporary repairs at historic York church

(York Dispatch) A historic York church once slated for demolition is getting a second chance.
York City Fire Chief Steve Buffington said Monday that he intends to issue a permit for temporary repairs to the damaged roof of Trinity United Methodist Church, 241 E. King St. The permit hinges on approval from Historic York, which serves as a consultant to the city's Historical Architectural Review Board (HARB).
Buffington, who earlier ordered the 140-year-old desanctified church immediately repaired or demolished, said he is "reasonably comfortable" with the congregation's newly submitted plan to stabilize the building. Continued

Photo: Preserving York

What Remains

(NYTimes) Perhaps the most famous house of 1861 was, by July of that year, no longer standing. The home, called Spring Hill, belonged to Judith Henry, an invalid widow, and stood on a hill overlooking Bull Run. In the battle that engulfed the fields around Spring Hill on July 21, Henry was killed and her home destroyed, save for a few remnant beams and a section of chimney.
Over the next four years of war, countless thousands of homes, from grand mansions to decrepit shacks, would be damaged or destroyed. Many others were simply abandoned by fleeing families, never to be reclaimed. What was left behind was a landscape of human ruin, some of it still standing today, 150 years later. Continued

Museum coming to Aberdeen B&O Railroad station?

(The Record) The old B&O Railroad Station will likely be turned into some type of museum, Aberdeen City Council members were told Monday night. ... The most logical use seems to be for some kind of museum, he said.
"We haven't finalized our uses; we've identified multiple uses," he said. Continued

Group restores neglected North Codorus cemetery

(YDR) Tucked away off a back road in North Codorus Township lies rolling hills and endless wheat fields surrounding the Snyder family farm. A small grove of trees in the middle of a field holds more history than many would have imagined.
The Fockenroth cemetery, also known as Folkenroth or Volkenroth, lies among the brush -- home to the graves of at least 14 people who lived and died in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
But the cemetery wasn't always easy to reach. Continued

Aberdeen historic church to get new life

(The Record) The low-key white church dating to 1866 on the corner of West Bel Air Avenue and Law Street has stood vacant for two decades and has clearly seen better days.
The sanctuary has been allowed to deteriorate, and several congregations who used the property took a bell and pieces of stained glass when they left.
But now, two local men are busy getting the church back on its feet, and hope to see it brought back to life as a house of worship. Continued

Couple restores historic log home in Aberdeen

(Baltimore Sun) In 1988, with only three months to relocate from Fort Monmouth, N.J., to Aberdeen, Stephen Hoffman and his wife, Sharon, set out to find a house in Maryland.
The couple started their search with a historic house in Harford County that had been recorded in the Aberdeen Heritage Trust. According to the entry, the "Cole House" was originally a small log house, built in the mid-1700s on a parcel of some 100 acres that had been deeded to Col. James Cole. Continued

Special tours offered to save historic Port Deposit landmark

(The Record) Port Deposit town administrator Erika Quesenbery will personally give visitors a walking tour of the historic riverfront town for $5. She'll drop that to $2 with a lunch receipt from one of the town's restaurants.
Why the largesse? Quesenbery wants to raise money to restore Beach Fountain, which sits at the corner of South Main Street and Jacob Tome Highway. Continued

Constellation Heading Back To Inner Harbor

(WBAL) The Constellation is heading back to Baltimore's Inner Harbor following repairs for rot caused by rainwater.
The historic warship is expected to leave dry dock Monday in nearby Sparrows Point and head back with the submarine Torsk, which also has been undergoing repair. Continued

Businesses now open in old Baltimore County Jail

(Towson Times) Brody Bond, who graduated from Towson High School before he earned a degree in communications studies from James Madison University, is proud to say the company he and friend Greg Rittler, a CPA, founded was the first tenant to move into the old Baltimore County Jail. Since Jan. 1, the newly remodeled building on the corner of Bosley Avenue and Towsontown Boulevard has been the new home of Blue Ocean Ideas, a firm that specializes in digital advertising, website design, video and social media for clients. Their new digs have come up in the world. The old jail is now called Bosley Hall, and it’s an office building. Continued

Torsk, Constellation will move to dry dock

(Sun) Baltimore's Inner Harbor will look a little bare this week after two of its premier attractions — the submarine Torsk and the 1854 sloop of war Constellation — are towed away for a month of repairs in dry dock. The Torsk will be the first to go as tugs move in around 9 a.m. Sunday to escort the World War II veteran down the harbor to the Sparrows Point Shipyard. The Constellation will follow at about 9 a.m. on Monday, according to Chris Rowsom, executive director of Historic Ships in Baltimore, part of the Living Classrooms Foundation and the ships' caretaker. Continued

Photo: 'The USS Torsk (SS-423) is docked at the Baltimore Maritime Museum and is one of several Tench Class submarines still located inside the United States. Nicknamed the "Galloping Ghost of the Japanese Coast"; the vessel is the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for a food fish of the North Atlantic.' Photo by stevehdc via Wikipedia, some rights reserved.

Civil War Shipwreck's Iconic Engine Gets TLC

(ouramazingplanet) The order to abandon ship came just after midnight. The USS Monitor, a Union ironclad, was taking on too much water, caught in a violent storm. At approximately 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 31, 1862, the Monitor was overcome, engulfed by the crashing waves. Almost 150 years later, conservators are getting the first up-close look at the sunken Monitor's 30-ton steam engine, an engineering wonder of its day, and the mighty heart of a ship that played a notable role in America's Civil War. Continued

Fire-damaged Park Plaza has had storied Mount Vernon career

(Baltimore Sun) The fire-damaged property at Charles and Madison streets, known as the Park Plaza, marks a gateway to Baltimore's Mount Vernon cultural district and serves as a symbol of the neighborhood's vibrancy. Associated with a century and a half of well-known Marylanders, from Baltimore Sun founder Arunah S. Abell to former ambassador to Luxembourg Kingdon Gould Jr. to arts patron Constance Caplan, the five-level building and its carriage house at Charles and Madison streets have been a laboratory of architectural adaptation. The main building, originally a 25-room mansion, has been damaged by fire before in its 168-year history and rebuilt. Continued

Old Trinity Cemetery's Visitation Day Returns Today

(Carroll Eagle) On Sunday, Oct. 31, The Friends of Old Trinity Cemetery will host its annual visitation day to the historic Eldersburg cemetery that the organization began restoring in 1990, and continues to maintain. As in past years, the visitation ceremony and celebration begins at 3 p.m. and will include prayer, music and costumed actors reenacted various distinguished “visitors from the past” who are buried at the cemetery, which dates back to the early 19th century. Continued

Historic Wrightsville unveils restored wagon

(YDR) A horse-drawn wagon used in Wrightsville more than one hundred years ago has returned home and is now a museum exhibit.
The wagon was made by the Columbia Wagon Works in the late 1800s and was purchased by H.P. Kocher, who owned a hardware store on Second Street in Wrightsville, said Ernie Massa of Lower Windsor Township. Continued