How Frederick, Md., saved Washington during the Civil War

It could be argued that Frederick County saved the Union more than once during the Civil War. It was here that General Robert E. Lee’s “lost orders” were found, giving the Union Army the opportunity to stop the Confederate Army’s first invasion of the North at Antietam. It was also here that the Battle of Monocacy was fought to thwart the Confederate Army’s last invasion of the North.

The Battle of Monocacy

By the summer of 1864, the tides of war had turned against the Confederate States. General Lee had been forced to pull back his troops to protect Richmond and Petersburg in Virginia Anxious to press his attack on the Southern cities, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant shifted idle troops from the defensive ring of 65 forts around Washington D.C. to aid in his attack. This left the capital city lightly defended.

“The forts were left poorly manned with third tier soldiers,” said Jack Sheriff, president of the Frederick County Civil War Roundtable. “They were invalids, one-armed soldiers or poorly trained, but they did have a lot of ammunition and guns.”

Lee sent Lt. Gen. Jubal Early and 15,000 troops to the west to secure the Shenandoah Valley, but then to move north and invade Maryland. Early wanted to use his men to threaten or even capture Washington. It was hoped that such an act would erode support for the war in an election year and relieve pressure on Richmond and Petersburg.

“Morale in the north for the war was low. To have the capital taken would have been a huge blow,” Park Ranger Tracy Evans.

Early and his men arrived in Harpers Ferry on July 4. They crossed the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, and then moved east to Frederick and south toward Washington. A railroad telegrapher saw the troops and sent word to John Garrett, president of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, who in turn, sent word to Major Gen. Lew Wallace in Baltimore.

As Early’s men moved through Maryland, they ransomed Hagerstown for $20,000, Middletown for $5,000 and Frederick for $200,000.

“Sen. (Charles) Mac Mathias tried every year to get the government to pay back the money, but it never happened,” said Sheriff.

Efforts to have Frederick reimbursed all of the money it lost date back to 1879. Mathias not only wanted the $200,000 repaid but that amount with four-percent interest compounded since 1864.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore Wallace assembled 3,200 raw soldiers and headed to Monocacy Junction. He was unsure as to whether Early would be heading toward Washington or Baltimore and Monocacy Junction placed Wallace in a good position to intercept the Confederate troops either way.

Wallace knew his small army would be outnumbered. His goal was to delay Early and allow whichever city Early was heading toward time to reinforce their defenses.

On July 9, 3,400 additional troops arrived sent by General Grant. Though this more than doubled Wallace’s men, it still left them outnumbered more than two to one.

The Confederate forces began the battle with an attack on the bridges, which the Union was defending. The two armies fought throughout the day and when Wallace realized he could no longer hold his position, he fell back toward Baltimore leaving 1,300 men behind as casualties.

Early rested his troops that night. The next morning, the Confederate troops headed toward Washington. On July 12, they engaged the troops at Fort Stevens. These were no longer third-tier troops.

“The Battle of Monocacy had stopped the Confederate soldiers for one whole day and that gave Grant time to bring up reinforcements from Petersburg,” Sheriff said. “There’s no way the Confederates had enough men to break through.”

Although the Confederate Army had won their only victory in the north at Monocacy, it was a strategic defeat. Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to enter Washington, General Early took his troops back into Virginia under the cover of darkness on July 12.

“Someone coined the term the battle that saved Washington. It allowed time to get reinforcements into the capital,” Evans said.

Sheriff said that if Early had been able to win his way through the ring of forts and attack Washington, the Confederate Army might have been able to cause some trouble but it couldn’t have held the city.

“They could probably have burned buildings, captured supplies and raided the Treasury, but they would have had to leave because Grant’s men were coming,” Sheriff said.

Overall, the Battle of Monocacy was a small battle involving about 20,000 troops. As such, it tends to get lost among the surrounding and larger battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam and Manassas.

For More Information

• Monocacy National Battlefield: www.nps.gov/mono
• The Official Records of the Battle of Monocacy: www.civilwarhome.com/Monocacy.htm
• Civil War Trust Battle of Monocacy Page: www.civilwarhome.com/Monocacy.htm

 

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Lilypons and Lily Pons

Given the fact that the Lilypons, Md., Post Office was created to handle the increased mail-order demand from Three Springs Fisheries, a Frederick County, Md., business that sold goldfish and water lilies, you might think Lilypons is a misspelling of Lily Ponds.

Yes, it is a misspelling.

Not of lily ponds, but of Lily Pons, a 1930s opera singer.

Three Springs Fisheries

Lilypons the company.

George Thomas started his business in 1917 as a roadside stand in Buckeystown, Md., that sold the vegetables and goldfish he grew on his farm. “He had a keen eye for finding some type of venture where he might be successful,” Charles Thomas said of his grandfather. While customers may have bought his vegetables, they showed more interest in the goldfish bred in his goldfish hatchery, Three Springs Fisheries.

Business grew quickly, and the little town post office where his farm was located couldn’t handle the volume. The goldfish needed to be shipped fourth class through the Frederick Post Office 10 miles away.

A New Post Office

Thomas requested a local post office, and because of the volume of his business, the postal service granted the request. The United States Postal Service allowed Thomas to name the new post office. He chose Lilypons. And so, the only post office in the world to be named for an opera singer became official in 1932.

“I always recall hearing she was elated that there was a post office bearing her name,” said Charles Thomas.

The post office was located in a corner of the fisheries’ shipping room in a pink farmhouse that sat amid the many goldfish ponds. The new post office served about 40 families, most of whom were on the company payroll.

Lily Pons Visits Lilypons

Lily Pons the singer.

Pons first visited her namesake in June 1936. The visit coincided with the release of her movie “I Dream Too Much” with Henry Fonda.

Charles said, “It was also planned for when the water lilies were blooming at their height.”

Maryland State Police escorted Pons and her entourage from Baltimore to Frederick with the police officers changing each time the group crossed a county line.

“Her fiancé Andre Kostelanetz traveled separately,” Charles said. “Since they weren’t married, they didn’t want to create a scandal.”

The mayor of Frederick, Lloyd Culler, escorted Pons on a tour of the historic sites in the city. President Franklin Roosevelt sent a representative to greet her while Maryland Governor Harry Nice was personally on hand to meet her.

“She was very high in her career at the time and people wanted to see her,” Charles said.

The reason for her visit was to see the town named in her honor, though. Thousands of spectators showed up to watch Pons tour the grounds and pick water lilies from the ponds as she sat in J. Paul Delphey’s canoe.

“To this day, the imagery lingers, and the mystique created by the clever name still draws visitors,” wrote Susan Stiles Dowell in Maryland Magazine, Autumn 1989.

George Thomas, Jr. wrote about Pons, “Her many commitments have made frequent returns impossible, more’s the pity, but she often has her Christmas cards and gifts mailed from her namesake post office, and she writes to us and also sends us albums of her latest records.”

As the area developed, the post office was eventually closed.

Pons died on Feb. 13, 1977, but her name lives on in the Lilypons Company.

By 1980, Lilypons, once the world’s largest producer of goldfish, had diversified. It now specializes in water garden supplies and plants more than in fish.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• Was there nothing that could stop the Virginia? (Part 1)
• Unidentified in West Virginia (part 1)
• Lincoln’s Last Visit to Harrisburg, Pa.

 

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Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 3)

On October 27, 1874, John Resley, son of the clerk of the circuit court of Allegany County, shot and killed Lloyd Clary, the editor of the Cumberland Daily Times and a Confederate Civil War hero. It appeared to be an open-and-shut case. After all, Resley had confessed to the shooting.

However, just as a battle plan becomes obsolete as soon as the enemy is engaged, so too, go jury trials once the judge calls the court to order.

Resley’s murder trial began on January 29, 1874, barely three months after the murder.

The importance of the case became clear when Maryland Governor William Pinkney Whyte sent the state’s attorney general Andrew Syester to assist Allegany County State’s Attorney William Reed with the prosecution.

The defense had four lawyers. Col. Charles Marshall of Baltimore was the lead attorney and James M. Schley, J. J. McHenry and William Price, all of the Cumberland bar were assisting.

Chief Justice Alvey, Associate Justice Motter, and Associate Justice Pearre presided over the trial.

Reed gave the opening statement for the prosecution at the trial saying “they would prove, he thought, that Resley had not read the article when he committed the act,” according to the Hagerstown Mail.

However, the most damning piece of evidence Reed said would be that Resley had confessed in front of witnesses. While standing on Baltimore Street, Resley said, “Nobody else would do it and I did it.”

What Reed was starting to do was lay out a case of premeditated murder based not on a newspaper article, but on Resley’s hatred for Clary.

Schley deferred giving an opening statement to the jury until the state had made its case.

Among the witnesses called was another Cumberland Daily Times editor named Thomas McCardle. On hearing shots fired, McCardle has rushed down from the pressroom and seen Clary holding his throat. “He leaned against the wall as if completely exhausted, his body trembling as if from the effort to keep his feet, holding his throat by one hand, and with the other arm hanging down, holding a pistol in that hand,” the newspaper reported.

McCardle testified that he had never seen Resley with a pistol before then. The defense went further to suggest that Clary could have seen Resley coming from a window and gone to get the gun.

Clary had said in his statement he had been shot without being given a chance and he said as much to Resley just before the man shot him the second time. Clary said he hadn’t been able to get his pistol out to return fire.

Schley presented conflicting testimony that Clary had drawn his pistol and furthermore medical evidence showed that Clary wouldn’t have been able to say anything immediately after being shot in the throat as Clary said in his own statement.

A later witness would testify that Clary had hurried him out of his office just before rushing out to meet Resley on the stairs. This same witness had heard Clary and Resley argue, Clary’s pistol misfire and then two shots from Resley. Resley hadn’t gone to the office seeking to kill Clary. Resley had shot him in self-defense.

Other witnesses testified that Clary had hated Resley and said, “if ever he crossed his path again he would fill him as full of holes as a net,” the newspaper summarized Clary saying about Resley at one time.

After two days of testimony, the jury retired for six hours before returning a verdict of not guilty.

“Resley was then escorted home by the crowd, cheering all the way,” the New York Times reported.

Resley would live to be 73 years old and die from a stroke in January 1916.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 2)
• Spanish Flu hits Garrett County, Md.
• Was there nothing that could stop the Virginia? (Part 1)

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Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 2)

They say, “The pen is mightier than the sword” and for Lloyd Clary that indeed proved true. The young newspaper editor of the Cumberland Daily Times had survived the bullets and swords of the Civil War only to be felled because of something he wrote on October 27, 1873.

“Never in our experience have we been called upon to publish the details of an occurrence more truly painful and shocking than that of the killing of Lloyd Lowndes Clary, the brave editor of the Cumberland Daily Times by John H. Resley…” the Hagerstown Mail reported after the murder.

It was in the offices of the newspaper on Oct. 27 that John Resley shot Clary twice, once in the neck and once in the body. The neck shot would kill Clary later that evening.

Though Resley left the scene of his crime, he did not flee. He walked across Baltimore Street and stood on the opposite side looking at the newspaper office. “A considerable crowd gathered around Mr. Resley while be stood on the street. He was very pale and much excited, and moved about nervously. He did not seem inclined to converse, and several times rebuffed persons who spoke to him,” reported the Hagerstown Mail.

Eventually, Cumberland Police Officer Magruder saw Resley and approached him.

“Am I wanted?” Resley asked.

“Yes you are,” Magruder told him and arrested him.

Resley was later indicted for Clary’s murder.

While the newspapers detested Resley’s actions, they seemed to understand the reasons behind it. The Hagerstown Herald and Torch noted, “It is a fact that the editor referred to wielded a caustic pen, and his paper, as long as we received and read it, contained some terribly severe articles against political opponents.”

As with many men of his time, Clary had not been afraid of a fight. He was a Confederate veteran of the Civil War. “Mr. Clary was intensely Southern in his feelings, every pulsation of his young heart beating in unison with the late struggle of the seceding States for their guaranteed and Constitutional rights,” one obituary noted.

He had joined McNeill’s Rangers in 1862. The Hagerstown Mail credits Clary for planning and executing the kidnapping of Union Generals George Crook and Benjamin Kelley from a hotel on Baltimore Street in February 1865.

“Young Clary in company with four others, captured the Federal pickets, dashed into Cumberland and at three o’clock in the morning surprised Generals Crook and Kelley, and brought them safely out,” the newspaper reported.

Both generals were taken to Richmond where they were paroled and exchanged for Confederate Brigadier General Isaac Trimble.

Crook would later say, “Gentlemen, this is the most brilliant exploit of the war!”

After the war, Clary was a reporter and then editor of the Mountain City Times, which merged with the Cumberland Times and Civilian to become the Cumberland Daily Times in May 1872.

“From its first note to its last the Times has not uttered one uncertain sound. It had but one voice—that of condemnation and exclusion from office of the men whom it had convinced of betrayal of their trusts. Thus fighting he fell with his harness on, a martyr to the cause of honesty, truth and Justice,” the Cumberland Daily Times noted in its obituary of Clary.

Though there was no question in anyone’s mind that Resley had killed Clary, there were still unanswered questions that would come to light during the trial that changed how everyone looked at the murder.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• Mystery of the Major League pitcher who disappeared from Emmitsburg solved
• Newspaper editor critical of county official killed after scathing article (part 1)
• War made Christmas 1941 less merry

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Switching over

The past few weeks I’ve been revamping my website. Take a look at jamesrada.com if you haven’t seen it yet. One of the things that has been revamped is my history blog. It is now part of my website. You can visit the new blog here. If I got all the bells and whistles right, everyone who is following this blog should now be following the new blog. At some point, I will delete this blog. Meanwhile, I’ll be posting history stories and news at this new blog. So hop over to the new blog and click on the follow button, just to be sure. You’ll also see my three free novels offer on the sidebar. Sign up for that if you haven’t already.

Thanks!

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Lincoln’s Last Visit to Harrisburg, Pa.

On April 21, 1865, a locomotive slowly pulled out of the depot in Washington D.C. carrying about 300 people. Many of them bowed their heads as the train passed. Others cried. The train was carrying the remains of President Abraham Lincoln who had been assassinated a week earlier and Willie Lincoln who had died in 1862 back to Springfield, Ill.

The Lincoln Special

The train had the funeral car, baggage cars and coaches and the engine, which had a photo of Lincoln mounted on the front of the train over the cowcatcher. The funeral car was decorated with black garland and silver tassels and had a U.S. coat of arms painted on the sideof it.

“With sixteen wheels for a smoother ride, rounded monitor ends, fine woodwork, upholstered walls, [and] etched glass windows” this funeral car surely was a sight to behold,” Scott Trostel wrote in The Lincoln Funeral Train: The Final Journey and National Funeral for Abraham Lincoln.

The journey would essentially retrace Lincoln’s trip as President-elect from Illinois to Washington in reverse. The only change was that it deleted a stop in Pittsburgh and added one in Chicago.

Coming to Harrisburg

The first stop on the journey had been in Baltimore. From there, the train headed to Harrisburg. Gov. Andrew Curtin and a delegation from Pennsylvania met the train at the state line just south of Shrewsbury. They joined the Maryland delegation in the front car and rode to Harrisburg allowing for a short stop in York.

The train arrived in the capital city amid a hard rain around 8:30 p.m. on Friday, April 21. As it passed the west end of the Northern Central Railway bridge, a cannon fired and church bells pealed across the city.

The train halted only when the funeral car sat on Market Street. Thunder and lightning joined the heavy rain as members of the Veterans Corps carried the coffin from the coach to a hearse that Harrisburg undertakers, W. W. Boyer and Peter R. Boyd, specially made for the occasion.

Four white horses then pulled the hearse down Market Street to the square, north on Second Street to State Street, and then up State Street to the capital building. Col. Henry McCormick led the procession that followed the hearse. It included city ministers, Mayor Augustus Roumfort and some of the city’s leading citizens. A band playing a funeral dirge led the next group of mourners that included Gov. Curtin, his staff, state officials, another band, two regiments of Pennsylvania soldiers and one unit of New York soldiers.

“The entire procession was lit by the city’s new chemical streetlights, which gave off a deep orange glow,” George F. Nagle wrote in The Bugle, the Camp Curtin Historical Society newsletter.

At the capital, the President’s coffin was placed in a catafalque in the House of Representatives chamber. The catafalque was made from lots of black cloth placed over the clerk’s desk and speaker’s dais so that neither could be seen.

Paying Respects

 A public viewing began at 9:30 p.m. and for two-and-a-half hours, an estimated 10,000 mourners waited in the storm outside the capital for an opportunity to pay their last respects to the man who had led the country through the Civil War.

They entered the chamber in two lines. The lines separated at the foot of the coffin so that a line filed along either side of the coffin to view the President’s body.

“Each line exited through specially rigged doorways through the large windows on opposite sides of the chamber. So many filed through that the undertaker had to re-chalk the visibly discoloring face and dust the body before the chamber could be reopened the next morning,” Nagle wrote.

Another public viewing began on Saturday morning at 7 a.m. and ran until 9 a.m. The doors to the chamber were then closed and the funeral procession reformed to take the President’s coffin back to the funeral train.

At 8:30 a.m., church bells began tolling and cannons were fired to notify the city to prepare for the funeral procession. An estimated 40,000 people lined the streets of Harrisburg along the route and waited for the procession to pass. This was roughly twice as many people than lived in the city at the time.

Once the procession passed, many of the mourners followed behind to accompany the procession back to the train.

The Journey Continues

The funeral train pulled out of the Harrisburg depot at 11:15 a.m. heading for Philadelphia. As the train left the city, it passed a large American flag that had been spread across a field where it could be seen from the train. Crowds of people stood on either side of the flag and removed their hats as the train passed, according to the New York Herald.

The journey to Lincoln’s final resting place would take two weeks and pass through Washington, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• George Washington: Book Thief
• Forgotten Americana at the Windber Trolley Graveyard (part 1)
• The Civil War Helped Develop Methods to Preserve the Dead

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Mystery of the Major League pitcher who disappeared from Emmitsburg solved

Author’s Note: The following is an article I wrote 10 years ago for The Dispatch newspapers. I’ve reprinted it with a few tweaks and added an update at the end. When I originally wrote this, no one knew what had happened to Tolbert Dalton. I wish I could take credit for solving this mystery, but it was the work of members of the Society for American Baseball Research. I wanted to bring closure to what was a 64-year-old mystery.

Many a young boy picks up a bat, walks to the plate and dreams of slugging his way into immortality. Tolbert “Percy” Dalton was such a boy, and he managed to find his own type of immortality. Not because he is forever remembered as one of baseball’s greats, but because he is one of the few major league players whose death date was unknown for 64 years.

Dalton was also a lay preacher for the Columbia Primitive Baptist Church in Burtonsville, Maryland.

“The church he was an elder in, to my knowledge, had other smaller worship locations in the state of Maryland. As an elder we understand that he would make occasional appearances at Sunday services at the main church He would speak to certain topics relevant to the beliefs the church had. He would also baptize new members,” said Richard Bozzone with the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Bozzone has been researching Dalton to try to find where and when he died.

On August 1, 1948, two deacons from the church visited Dalton’s Emmitsburg home. Dalton had failed to show up for a church meeting on July 4.

Dalton had only lived in Emmitsburg for a year, having moved there from the Catonsville, Maryland, area to become editor of the Emmitsburg Chronicle when it restarted publication after a five-year hiatus during World War II. He and his wife lived with his wife’s daughter and son-in-law, Lois and George Heller.

The two deacons couldn’t find Dalton. No one in his family knew what had happened to him.

Dalton, who went by the name of Jack during his baseball career, played four seasons of professional baseball. He was an outfielder who started in the minor leagues in Des Moines where he batted .208 in 1910. He was invited mid-year to join the Brooklyn Robins, predecessor to the Dodgers. He slumped and was sent to the minor league team in Newark, New Jersey. He returned to the Robins in 1914 and then played for the Buffalo Blues in 1915 and Detroit Tigers in 1916. His best year was 1914 when he batted .319. The following year his batting average was .293 with 28 stolen bases. He finished his career in 1916 playing most of the season for San Francisco in the minor leagues and eight games for Detroit.

However, by 1948, at 62 years old, his glory days were forgotten. Dalton was living in Emmitsburg with his second wife, Thelma Bradshaw.

Though Dalton was too old to steal bases, he possibly found one thing he could still steal. Ralph Harris, a former member, and editor of the Primitive Baptist Church newspaper, knew two of Dalton’s sisters (now deceased). He asked them what happened to their brother.

“Their response was that he had absconded with the subscription funds for the church paper. Although Cary did not have firsthand knowledge of the theft, the story was confirmed by several of the church leadership when he became editor,” Bozzone said.

Dalton happens to be one of the very few 20th century Major League players for whom death information is not known.

“There are 15 20th century players for whom we do not have death details, but Dalton is, by far, the most well-known of the players,” Bozzone said.

Bozzone has been assisted in his search for Dalton by a SABR member Al Quimby. What has made the task so difficult is that not even the family of Jack Dalton has information on what happened to him.

No missing person report appears to have ever been filed with the Maryland State Police. No articles about his death have ever turned up. He simply vanished.

SABR member Bill Haber of Brooklyn, New York, also worked on the Dalton case. Though now deceased, Haber’s research over 20 years has corrected errors in more than 200 professional baseball players’ biographies. Haber tracked some of Dalton’s relatives to Emmitsburg in 1978. He was told that Dalton had seemingly fallen off the face of the earth and never made contact with any of his relatives after he left Emmitsburg. He did not even show up for his brother’s funeral in 1954.

Dalton was born July 3, 1885, in Henderson, Tennessee. He had three sisters Lura, Lena, and Lola and one brother Pleasie.

Following Dalton’s baseball career, SABR determined that in 1921 and 1922 he was a salesman living in Baltimore. In 1930, he was residing in Elkridge, Maryland. By 1940, he was living at Catonsville at 2 North Prospect St. In April 1942, his World War II registration cards lists him as a clerk in the Finance Office of the U.S. Army’s Third Corps headquarters in Baltimore. After the war, he became involved with the Primitive Baptist Church and moved to Emmitsburg.

This was all that was known about Dalton for decades until Quimby came across Dalton’s death certificate in Pittsburgh. The document stated that Dalton died of a heart ailment in Allegheny General Hospital on February 17, 1950. He was 64 years old. The certificate was discovered in 2012 when Pennsylvania allowed access to death records before 1961. The Social Security number confirmed that it was the same Tolbert Dalton who had disappeared from Emmitsburg.

What happened during the two years that he was missing and why he left are still unknown. One interesting point from the death certificate is that it stated Dalton was unmarried. This is incorrect. He was still legally married to Thelma Dalton at the time of his death. She died in 1966 in Royersford, Pennsylvania, which is across the state from Pittsburgh.

While there are still unanswered questions about Dalton, at least the mystery of his disappearance has been solved.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• Play ball!: Western Maryland’s pro baseball era
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• Cracker Jack continues to hit a homerun with baseball fans

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Secrets of the Gettysburg Battlefield coming this month

Introducing the cover of my next book, Secrets of the Gettysburg Battlefield: Little-Known Stories & Hidden History From the Civil War Battlefield. It may still get a few tweaks, but I would say this is 95 percent there. The book will be available near the end of this month, but I was excited to show you the cover.

Like the other books in my Secrets series, it’s a collection of true stories that highlight an area’s forgotten stories, and, in my opinion, sometimes, they are the most interesting stories. The purpose of the series is to bring stories to readers.

The Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War. The July 1-3, 1863, battle saw the greatest number of casualties during the war. Beyond the fighting, the battlefield is the site of many other true stories of war, legends, reconciliation, and fantasy.

• Discover the first great battle that took place at Gettysburg.
• Learn about the prisoners of war who were kept on the battlefield.
• Read about the out-of-this-world visitors to the battlefield.
• Learn about how fairy tale creatures came to life on the battlefield.
• Discover Gettysburg’s connection to not only the Civil War but World War I and II.

Secrets of the Gettysburg Battlefield: Little-Known Stories & Hidden History From the Civil War Battlefield tells stories of dinosaurs, warriors, interesting people, and unusual incidents. These are the types of stories you won’t read about in history textbooks. Collected from the writings of award-winning author James Rada, Jr., these fascinating stories and dozens of photographs tell some of the hidden history of the Gettysburg Battlefield.

This book is the fourth in my Secrets series, joining Secrets of Garrett County, Secrets of Catoctin Mountain, and Secrets of the C&O Canal.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• Smoldering Betrayal is available!
• Secrets of the C&O Canal coming in February
• “Am I a historian?”

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George Washington: Book Thief

He might not have been able to tell a lie, but he could steal a library book.

George Washington, yes, THE George Washington, checked a book out of the New York Society Library on October 5, 1789. It was finally returned in May 2010. Just in case you’re wondering, the overdue fee on the book has been calculated to be around $300,000.

The New York Society Library, New York City’s oldest library, loaned Washington The Law of Nations by Elmer de Vattel, according to the library’s charging ledger (borrowing records). At the time that Washington checked the book out, the library and the federal government shared the same building in Manhattan.

“The missing book came to light when the New York Society Library was restoring its 1789-1792 charging ledger, which features the borrowing history of Washington, John Adams, John Jay, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, George Clinton, and others,” according to Belinda Goldsmith who wrote the Reuters article.

When the library checked its book inventory, it found the book that Washington checked out was still missing. No one said anything about the find, or non-find as the case may be, until the New York Daily News recently announced the situation in an article.

“A few days after learning of the situation, staff at Washington’s home in Virginia, Mount Vernon, offered to replace Vattel’s Law of Nations with another copy of the same edition,” according to a statement from the library.

The missing book was returned to the library’s shelves on May 19, 2010.

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• U.S. Goes Off the Gold Standard
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War made Christmas 1941 less merry

The “date which will live in infamy” cast a large, dark shadow over Christmas 1941 in Allegany County.

As Thanksgiving 1941 approached, the war in Europe was on people’s minds but it wasn’t the dominant story of the day. Residents were more concerned about a coal strike that had started in Pennsylvania and was spreading around the country. At times, it appeared more dangerous to Americans than the war. The headlines on the Cumberland Evening Times the day after Thanksgiving showed Allegany County’s priorities:

GUNS CONTINUE TO BLAZE IN MINE STRIKE

Roosevelt Indicates Federal Action Is Probable

BRITISH-AXIS SHOWDOWN IN LIBYA NEAR

The day before Thanksgiving, an editorial in the Cumberland Evening Times noted, “Although some American ships have been sunk, some American lives have been lost and we are far nearer war than we have been at any time since the new conflagration was lighted in Europe, we are in a manner of speaking, still at peace. Whether this condition will continue we do not know, but at least we should be thankful for the blessings we enjoy at present.”

The Christmas season kicked into gear with ads for sales and specials for stores like Rosenbaum’s and Lazarus. However, officials encouraged early shopping because shortages were expected before the end of the year. Although the United States had not declared war against Germany, Japan, and Italy, many people expected it to happen, and with war, came a reallocation of resources to provide the soldiers on the front with the equipment and food they needed. However, this also meant that on the home front, there was often rationing.

City workers made for a gala on Dec. 27 to honor servicemen from the area. It was thought that about 1,000 men who had already enlisted could get passes to return to Cumberland for the celebration.

That was before Dec. 7.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States became a country formally at war. The focus shifted to war-time production of goods and raising a fighting army. Even the coal strike, which had caused so much worry at Thanksgiving, was set aside as the government drafted miners. The United Mine Workers and management agreed to work together for war production.

Though not a heavy presence in daily life at this point, what presence there was was growing, and the newspaper noted that it put a “damper” on the holiday celebrations. Notes about the selection of air raid wardens for 26 different areas of the city crept in among the notices about holiday parties. Even editorial cartoons reflected both the holiday and the war. The city’ conducted its first blackout test the day after Christmas with every home and business within a 10-mile radius of Cumberland expected to douse their lights for 15 minutes once the warning went out.

While a gift-buying boom was expected at Christmas, Christmas 1941 saw another boom. “War brides’ brought a boom yesterday at the marriage license bureau with Court House clerks swamped with altar-bound couples before noon, and the usual Christmas business for Dan Cupid will be increased by khaki-clad young men getting married while home on brief furloughs,” reported the Cumberland Sunday Times. The newspaper noted that 49 couples applied for licenses on Dec. 20.

The city also organized a Civil Air Patrol to protect the skies over Allegany County. About 100 pilots in the area volunteered to help in this endeavor. The need was only heightened when two days before Christmas bombers were seen flying over the city. Fortunately, they were American bombers on maneuvers.

Not so fortunate was the report from the WPA supervisor in the area that a cache of dynamite at the airport was tampered with. “Fifth column” sabotage was suspected and the dynamite was moved.

The newspaper tried to put everything in perspective for its readers with an editorial that read, in part: “It is important that we bring about a condition of worldly peace and that this may be accomplished we must vanquish those responsible for its disruption. The thought of Christmas and all that it means should strengthen us in this task. If we are to make such a peace enduring, then we must cultivate that spirit of good will without which there can be no real peace. If we do not do this, then all our sacrifice, all our anguish, all our suffering shall have been in vain. If during this Christmas season we seek that peace of which the herald angels sang, then we can hope for that lasting peace promised unto us. So it is not incongruous to observe Christmas in time of war for the peace of Christmas is in the heart.”

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