Frederick County Characters: Innovators, Pioneers and Patriots of Western Maryland

By John W. Ashbury and Christopher Haugh

Since its founding in 1748, Frederick County has been home to some of the nation's most celebrated and dynamic historical figures. The quaint towns and farmlands with their serene mountain vistas of the Catoctin Ridge have played host to the likes of the famed Francis Scott Key and Thomas Stone, one of Maryland's signers of the Declaration of Independence. Later, Dr. John Tyler--Frederick's pioneering oculist--established his practice on the town's West Church Street and performed the first cataract operation in the region. Burkittsville's Outerbridge Horsey gained fame by producing over ten thousand barrels a year of America's finest rye whiskey from his warehouse distillery. In the twentieth century, beloved local educator Emily Johnson helped cultivate generations of young minds. With this collection of the best of his articles from "Frederick Magazine," local author John W. Ashbury profiles the most remarkable and fascinating figures in the history of Frederick County.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625847508

John W. Ashbury

John W. Ashbury is a contributing history columnist for Frederick Magazine and a member of the Historical Society of Frederick County. He has written for The Glade Times & Mountain Mirror in Walkersville, Maryland, and The Gazette Newspapers of Frederick County. He is a volunteer with the Francis Scott Key Association and lives in Thurmont, Maryland. Christopher Haugh is a documentary filmmaker and the Scenic Byways and Special Projects Manager for the Tourism Council of Frederick County. Haugh is the producer for Up from the Meadows: History of African Americans in Frederick County, Maryland.

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Introduction

I suppose there are other places with a rich history not unlike what we find right here in Frederick County. You can walk the streets of even the smallest of communities and feel the pull of those who have gone before and left their mark. But unlike other places, the people—and I mean all of them—in Frederick County celebrate that history and uncover more and more of the unique events and personages that have made this place such a treasure-trove of exciting happenings and special people.

From earliest days, these have included men such as Thomas Johnson, a true Patriot of the American Revolution and first governor of the Free State, and women like Margaret Byrd Rawson, the Grande Dame of Dyslexia, who chose to retire in Frederick after a life of giving to those afflicted with this malady.

Then there is McClintock Young, whose inventions kept Ox Fibre Brush Company among the nation’s manufacturing leaders fifty years after his death in 1913. Holmes Davenport Baker and Emory L. Coblentz were born and raised here and led the local banking industry for generations. The legacy of Miss Emily Johnson, the daughter of a renowned physician and an unassuming lady, engendered hundreds of children through a nursery school she ran long before such facilities became the norm.

There were educators like Joseph Henry Apple Jr., who led Hood College for forty-one years, and John Casper Henry Dielman, professor at Mount Saint Mary’s College, who became the first in America to be awarded a doctorate of music. And William O. Lee Jr., a physical education teacher at the all-Negro Lincoln High School, who rose to be a principal and later a Frederick City alderman.

And journalists abound. L. Victor Baughman published the Citizen for many years before entering politics as Maryland comptroller. Thomas John Chew Williams and Folger McKinsey wrote and edited what is known as Williams’s History of Frederick County.

The attorneys so excelled that their names grace the pages of not only Maryland history but national as well—from Thomas Stone, who signed the Declaration of Independence, to Luther Martin, who was Maryland’s attorney general for more than thirty years and defended Aaron Burr in his trial for treason. And lest we forget, there was Leo Weinberg, so gifted an orator that when he argued a case before the Maryland Court of Appeals, other local lawyers closed their offices and traveled to Annapolis just to hear his presentation. Glenn H. Worthington, who as a child witnessed the Battle of Monocacy, became a local jurist and later penned the definitive narrative of The Battle that Saved Washington during the Civil War. James McSherry became chief judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, and Enoch Louis Lowe rose so quickly in state politics that he became Maryland governor at age thirty.

Local merchants’ names ring in our ears even today. Men like Casper Ezra Cline, who bought his first furnishings business at just sixteen years old and became a household name through much of the twentieth century. Charles Baltzell Rouss, who was born in Woodsboro, became the Colossus of New York. Louis McMurray invented a process to hermetically seal packaging and operated perhaps the largest packing plant in Frederick’s long history. Then there was James H. Gambrill Jr., who inherited a mill from his father and grew the business to untold heights, providing hardtack for World War I soldiers.

Local philanthropists abound, perhaps none more prominent than Samuel H. Rosenstock, whose gifts to Hood College, Frederick Memorial Hospital and the Salvation Army won’t soon be forgotten. John Loats willed his property to a local church for the establishment of an orphanage that descended into scholarships for local students attending Maryland colleges and universities.

The military heroes of today almost pale in the glow of those Frederick County men who went before—Revolutionary War men like Roger Nelson, Lawrence Everhart, Otho Holland Williams and James Wilkinson; David Geisinger in the War of 1812; Bradley T. Johnson and William Nelson Pendleton in the Civil War; Admiral Winfield Scott Schley in the Spanish-American War; and Randolph Russell Waesche, who was born in Thurmont and became head of the United States Coast Guard during World War II.

And we can’t leave out the physicians who served our communities, men like John Tyler, who performed the first cataract surgery in this part of the country and perhaps in all the nation. Victor F. Cullen’s recovery from tuberculosis led to his lifelong devotion to those with this dreaded disease; William Schnauffer III was a gifted surgeon who founded a hospital in Brunswick, his hometown; and Bernard O. Thomas Sr. delivered both the first and last babies to be born in the old Montevue Hospital.

There are others included in this volume—some whose names you will know and others, plucked from the obscurity of history, who left an indelible mark on our beloved county. They will all resonate when you read their stories.

Authors

THOMAS JOHN CHEW WILLIAMS

Newspaperman and Distinguished Historian

Who is this man whose name you hear so often when discussing Frederick County history? How did he happen to write History of Frederick County? And why was Folger McKinsey, the Bentztown Bard, selected as co-author?

Looking back now more than 150 years after his birth, even the barest of details about Thomas John Chew Williams are difficult to find. He was born on a five-hundred-acre tobacco farm in Calvert County, the son of the Reverend Henry Williams, a native of Hagerstown, and Priscilla Chew Williams, the granddaughter of Bishop Thomas John Clagett, the first church prelate consecrated on American soil. Less than a year after Thomas was born, his father died, leaving a widow and five children, the oldest of whom was just twelve.

Over the next several years, the family moved frequently, first to a home in Prince George’s County, then to the Clagett homeplace and then back to the farm. Life was a struggle, and the boys received only a minimal formal education. Tom Williams’s first school was three miles from home and would play a significant role many years later when he taught there for three years.

Just sixteen years old when he began teaching, he wanted something more, so he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Prince George’s when he was just twenty. However, there was little in the way of legal work there, so he moved to Hagerstown, where many in his mother’s family resided. Another likely reason for the move was Cora Maddox, another descendant of Bishop Clagett, and his