4>. .-&' o ^•^ -^^ .s- ■^. ^-^■ -.)-• -S' '"^- < A"" <^%~ ■-y •/- ,._'?-■ ^^^ -^•^^, .>?-^ -o > ./>_ A^'' •% '-^V^ ^^.- v^ -^ .\' ^c^ ''V-. A^ vX-^ 'V. ' * ^ " " ^ ^ ' a"^' ^j ■/^, 1 B « V- '^.c>?^' C" ^"^A V^^ ,-^^\v ,-0- «, •# '%^^ aV^ o / .^^ '^'^^ ■^ v.. r > <^o '^c. > - .^^ O^ -i-r ri^ '^'^Z' -^ V .V^^' .X' * ^•'' '^j. ■i^. 4 ■-_, A^'f tp .^ ■ - .^^ .^ C ct- i (/ / /J4:- 'j^A^^ -' By Helen ^sKe Hays The Antietam and Its Bridges The Annals of an Historic Stream A Little Maryland Garden The Antietam and Its Bridges The Annals of an Historic Stream By Helen Ashe Hays IVith 17 Photogravures from Photographs by John C. Artz G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London (Tbe f;nicf;erbocf!ec pvces 1910 fj Copyright. 1910 BY HELEN ASHE HAYS • * • Vbe Ytniclierbociier press, tXew ]?ork CCI,A265500 Contents PART I. THE COUNTRY HAPTE I. R Along the Antietam PAGE ,3 II. The Valley II III. The Making of Roads . . 19 IV.. The Masonry Arch . 30 V. The Levy Court .... . 40 VI. The County Commissioners . • 47 VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. PART II. THE BRIDGES Old Sharpsburg ...... The Lower Antietam and Burnside's Bridge Keedysville and the Hitt Bridge The Bridge at Delemere .... The Bridges at Roxbury, Claggett's, and Rose's Mills ...... 61 74 86 97 109 121 139 The Bridge at Funkstown .... The Bridge at Hagerstown . . . , The New Bridge and the Bridge at Old Forge 157 The Two Bridges at Leitersburg . .168 111 Illustrations PAGE The Bridge at Devil's Backbone Leitersburg Road Bridge Trovinger's Mill The Bridge at Old Forge . The Bridge at Roxbury The Second Funkstown Bridge . The Bridge at Antietam Iron Works Burnside's Bridge The Hitt Bridge The Bridge at Delemere . The Bridge at Rose's Mill The Bridge at Claggett's Mill Claggett's Mill Funkstown Turnpike Bridge Hager's Bridge The Bridge on the Cavetown Turnpike The Leitersburg Turnpike Bridge . Frontispiece ^ 8 ^ 14. 24 44. . 54-' . 68 . 76' . 88 . 98-^ . 112 . 118 124. . 128 ''' . 142 . 160 . 172 Part I: The Country Chapter I Along the Antietam THERE is a stream running through Washington County, Maryland, from the Pennsylvania line to the Potomac River, whose name will be famous as long as America endures, the placid Antietam. It has been impossible to trace the meaning of its name, but tradition says that it is of Indian origin. It is probably the name of an Indian chief, and in early times its musical syllables were spelled in various ways. We find it written "Anteatem, " and oftener yet in the rather cannibalistic form of "Anti-Eatem. " It is a beautiful, wide stream, meandering slowly through a country of great beauty and interest. Sycamores lean their dappled trunks across it, and water willows mark its course with soft masses of grayish foliage while they hide it from view. A tangle of blackberries and wild roses, of papaws and hazel bushes, of elder and poisonous ivy, fringes its banks. Its waters are not sparkling; they often carry a large amount of muddy matter which gives the stream a thick and turgid appearance, and after heavy rains it will carry this earthy charge for days. But it is peacefully beautiful, and flows through one of the richest farming lands in America. Before the days when its name passed into history, many 3 4 tTbe antietam settlements of early colonists grew up along its banks. Germans from the Fatherland and English from the Mother- country came to the valley of the Antietam, bringing with them the habits, the beliefs and industries of the old world. Relics of these pioneer days are found in plenty along the stream. Its banks still bear the traces of those early times, and of the initial conquest of the land from the wilderness and the Indians. When we think of those early settlers we must remember their relation to the outside world. Between them and the coast, with its towns and its shipping trade with Europe, was the blue wall of the Alleghany mountains, isolating the valley and making it a thing apart. It was entered only after a toilsome journey, and the people who settled in it cut themselves off, to a great extent, from the coast land to the East and the trading posts of the West. They found themselves in a cradle between the mountains, whose ranges to the east and west they somewhat inconsequently called the North and South mountains. Here they went patiently to work to establish settlements which should be safe from Indian interference, and give them the easy subsistence which the fertility of the soil promised. The Antietam flows under the slopes of the South Moun- tain, gathering up the waters of smaller streams on its way to the Potomac. It rises in Pennsylvania, and flows through the eastern part of the Hagerstown valley till it enters the Potomac below Sharpsburg. The Little An- tietam joins it near Keedysville, Beaver Creek below the Delemere bridge, and many little streams and brooks add their tribute to its waters. What various scenes, and what a strange procession of along tbe Hntietam 5 peoples this Antietam Creek has mirrored ! In the old days, the Indians travelled along its banks, and waded in its shallows. There were then no crossings except such as the kindly fords allowed. Perhaps a tree trunk thrown across the stream at its narrowest would serve for a bridge until the next high water bore it away. But the Indian, always able to bide his time and adapt his journey to the physical features of the country, did not force the passage of the stream. In the earliest days of which we have records, the Shaw- nees came to the banks of the Antietam, and after them the Delawares and Catawbas, painted and clad in skins, with feathered heads. Many a naked babe was dipped in the stream, even when ice clung to the banks, to harden its muscles and fit it for life in the open. Many an Indian girl studied her face in the waters, and admired her bright eyes and slender figure. But these wandering people left no imprint on the country, building neither monuments nor bridges nor altars to their gods. Always moving to and fro, roaming through forest and by stream, and warring against other tribes, passed the Shawnees, the most restless of them all. They moved to the West and the Antietam saw no more of them. But others came who were powerful men and great fighters, the Delawares from Pennsylvania and their hereditary enemies, the Catawbas from the Carolinas. When the earliest settlers began to raise their log houses, they were on friendly terms with the Indians, and were not molested by them. The savages, however, fought among . themselves, and we know of two great battles which took place in the valley, one where the Antietam, the other where the Conococheague, empty their waters into the Potomac. 6 Zhc antietam It is interesting in this connection to notice the occurrence of fords at the mouth of streams, which were of such impor- tance to the Indians who made no bridges. In his work on historic highways, Mr. Hurlbutt tells us that the sagacity of the Indian led him to the conclusion that where one stream empties its waters into another was often found the best and safest ford. This would seem an anomaly, for it would naturally be supposed that in such places the water would be deep and the crossing dangerous. In his studies of Indian highways, the mass of evidence on this subject pointed to a law. He considered Braddock's ford over the Monongahela at the mouth of Turtle Creek, and the fords over the Muskingum at the mouth of Sandy Creek, and over the Ohio at the mouths of the Wheeling and Sunfish creeks, and the Little and Great Kanawha and Licking rivers. And studying it out he arrived at this explanation, that streams in their natural state, where their course has not been altered by dredging or any work of human agency, carrying down a certain amount of sand and mud, de- posit this sediment when they meet the waters of another stream or river; and this deposit makes a sort of bar which can be followed, and makes a fairly safe and shallow cross- ing. It was an important factor in Indian travel. At the mouth of the Conococheague where Williamsport now stands, and where the creek enters the Potomac, there is one of these crossings. Here a great battle was fought between the Delaware and Catawba tribes, and all the implements of Indian warfare have been unearthed beside the stream. Again, below Sharpsburg where the Antietam flows into the river, there was a famous fight, and bones, skulls, and arrowheads can be scratched out of the earth along tbe antietam 7 to-day on the scene of the conflict. This fight was so illustrative of Indian character that the story is worth telling, for the sake of an understanding of the tribes with whom the white men of that day were brought in contact. It took place in 1736, a few years before the earliest grants of land were made to settlers along the Antietam. The valley was so fertile, and so full of game and fish, that it was a favorite hunting ground for warriors both from the North and South, and parties were constantly passing through it. Before the great battle was fought, the Dela- wares hunted through it, and being successful and daring, they moved farther and farther south until they came into the country of the Catawbas. As they were fat with good things they became insolent, and did unspeakable things to the Catawbas. This roused the latter to such rage and resentment that they armed themselves, and as the Dela- wares started northward again they were followed by their enemies. At the mouth of the Antietam, where it deposits its burden of silt, the retreating braves made their camp, and here the Catawbas came up with them and gave battle. This time the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong. The Delawares met their pursuers J05rfully, turn- ing the lust of the chase to the lust of fighting. The valley rang with shoutings and the horrid cries of Indian warfare. One by one the Catawbas were struck down; smaller and smaller grew their numbers till where they had stood by tens, they fought by twos and threes. The triumphant Delawares annihilated the enemies whom they had stirred up by their evil deeds — all but one. One man of the Cataw- bas fled, while the scalps of his tribe were bleeding in the 8 ^be Hntietam hands of his foes. As if by a miracle he escaped from the battlefield, and fled northward. Now comes an instance of Indian character, vindictive, merciless, and tireless. After the battle, when the warriors displayed their dangling scalps, one man alone of the Dela- wares had no trophy to show. He had not a single scalp, and something must be done to retrieve his disgrace. He started in pursuit of the one enemy who had escaped. For a long journey of one hundred miles he tracked the unfortunate Catawba, and finally coming upon him on the banks of the Susquehanna, he tomahawked him and took his scalp back to the tribe. There is another story, of Indian love, quite as terrible in its way as of Indian hate, which took place at this same time beside the Antietam. A young French girl, named Rosaline, lived with her father and mother and little brother on the Red Hill, near Keedysville by the Antietam. No doubt she was slender and dark-eyed, and had the grace of her countrywomen. That she was attractive enough to inspire a savage passion we learn from her story. This French settler and his family lived in a log house, leading a life which, with all its simplicity, was not necessarily one of privation in this rich and fertile valley. When Rosaline was growing to womanhood, the battle be- tween the Catawbas and Delawares was fought. Hearing the dreadful sounds of the battle, the settler and his family fled to the South Mountain, where they took refuge in a hiding place known to them. Here they stayed for days, afraid to venture back to the house for fear the Indians might still be in the neighborhood. For though ordinarily aiona tbe antletam 9 on friendly terms with them, the father feared that when fired with the rage of battle, they might kill anything that came in their way. For days they lay hidden, suffering for want of food, and exposed to the weather. Added to this, the women and the child suffered from fear, the most demoralizing agent that tender organizations can be subjected to. The shouts of the savages rang in their ears and the constant dread that painted men with tomahawks might find out their hiding place reduced them to such a state of terror and weakness that when Orlando thought it safe to return the poor wife sickened with a fever. The little boy, whose soul had been tortured with the dread of the red men, fell ill with her, and these poor victims of the frontier died. Rosaline, stricken with grief, and suffering as the others had done from ex- posure and agitation, was so weakened by these trials that she left the house and its melancholy associations, and went to stay with neighbors. While with these friends she drank the waters of a spring near-by, and in a short time was wonderfully better. The recovery was attributed to the waters of the spring, which were really of a healing nature, and afterwards became famous through the country as the "Belinda Springs." Strong and w^ell again, Rosaline went back to her father on the Red Hill, Perhaps it would have been better for her to have died with her mother and little brother, than to have regained her health and beauty, for the next act in her eventful life was that a Catawba chief, a tall and handsome savage, saw her and going to her father demanded her in marriage. One can imagine the terror of the young girl with such a lover, the dread of him by night and day; lo Zbc Hntietam how she would fear to be alone in the cabin and follow her father whenever he was near, and fly to the neighbors when hunting or trading took him away from her. The unfor- tunate Rosaline lived in daily fear, and trembled at the sight of every deerskin robe and feathered head. One night when she and her father sat by the open cabin door, a sudden shot struck Orlando and he fell dead at her feet. The terrified girl hardly realized what had happened when a tall figure appeared in the doorway, and her Indian lover triumphantly bore her away to his tribe. There was no one to save her, none but savages to see her terror, and Indian women to give her such comfort as they could, and reconcile her to her lot. Nothing more was ever heard of her. She had no chance of escape, and one can only hope that the life of the woods and the wanderings of the tribe became endurable to her, as we know from old records they did become to other captive women. It must be said, how- ever, that these recorded instances have been of those taken as children and reared in Indian ways. It was another thing for a girl who had grown almost to womanhood among her own people, and had been taken at the price of her father's life, to reconcile herself to a wandering existence with savages. chapter II The Valley BEFORE the time came when men could build bridges over the Antietam, the valley passed through a period of storm and stress. The friendly relations between the white settlers and the Indians did not continue, but it was through the differences between the white races on the continent that they came to an end. The French and Eng- lish, hereditary enemies, could not live in peace together even in such wide spaces as America afforded, and their strife brought about a warfare with the Indians which let loose savage passions, and drove white men for a period entirely away from the valley of the Antietam. The Indians loved the French much better than the English. The Frenchmen were kind and sensible in their treatment of them. They tried to save them from the demoralization of drink, and if a trader sold liquor to them he was punished by being forbidden the sacrament. French- men married Indian wives, and were kind to them, and the red men looked upon them as friends. The English were respected but not loved. "Kicks, not kisses," is the rule for British mastery the world over, and the dominant race is loved accordingly in its foreign pos- sessions. The Delawares told an Englishman, four or 1 1 12 Zl)c Hntietam five years after the French and Indian War was ended, that while the sun shone they would be at enmity with them. The French and Indian War not only called the settlers away from their cabins to fight, but it had a much worse consequence; the Indian allies of the French were loosed upon the settlements to murder women and children. The results in the Antietam valley were desperate. Indians raided it again and again, murdering the settlers whenever they could, and destroying their property. For a time the valley was practically deserted. George Washington wrote of it in 1756, when the war was at its height: "The whole settlement of Conococheague " (the name given at that time to all the country between the mountains) "in Maryland is fled, and there remains but only two families from thence to Predericktown. That the Maryland settle- ments are all abandoned is certainly a fact, as I had the accounts transmitted to me by several hands and confirmed yesterday, the 28th, by Henry Brinker, who left Monocacy the day before, and who also affirms that 350 wagons passed that place to avoid the enemy within the space of three days." There were a few houses strongly built for defence which served as forts for the people w^ho remained. One was the house of Moses Chapline near the Antietam, in the neighbor- hood of Keedysville, where a number took refuge. An- other was the house of Thomas Cresap, the old Indian fighter, on the Long Meadows, still spoken of as Cresap 's Fort. Fort Frederick was built near Hancock, and was put in command of Joseph Chapline, who left his home near Sharpsburg and did not return till the close of the war, and many families took refuge in it. Zl)C IDallep 13 For more than three years the desolation of the valley continued, and the sound of the settler's axe was stilled. The Antietam no longer turned the mills, nor did traders cross its fords. The<^spell of fear was on the valley, and animals returned to the stream as in the days before the white man came. An historic name was at this time written in the annals of the valley. Many years must pass before the mark that Braddock made will be obliterated. A part of his army, which was described by Franklin as "a slender line almost four miles long, " marched direct from Alexandria to Win- chester. But Braddock himself went to meet Franklin at Frederick, and from that point a regiment under Colonel Dunbar passed over the South Mountain by Turner's Gap, and crossed the Antietam twice, at Keedysville and at Delemere, on their way to the Potomac at Williamsport. At the Hitt bridge near Keedysville a road is pointed out, coming down to the water by a steep declivity, now almost abandoned in favor of one that approaches it by a more gentle slope. This abrupt and difhcult track is Braddock's road, and characteristic of his methods. He chose the straightest way, and marched on in spite of all obstacles, tearing out forest trees so that it is said that where Brad- dock's army passed, trees never grew again. He had a disdain of details, and did not inform himself very well of the country he was to pass through. When he heard that the Antietam had to be crossed, he sent a de- tachment on with orders to seize all the boats and canoes on the river for the use of his army, taking it for granted that it was both wide and deep. When the troops reached it, they found good fords at both places. 14 ITbc Hntietam Poor British bulldog, marching to his death; not in the least appreciating the skill of his foes, and disdaining any way of fighting that was not time-honored and English. He was one of many victims who have fallen through this fatal slowness of apprehension. Tradition tells us that he started out on this expedition in a handsome travelling chariot, and damned the roads heartily when he found he had to give it up. Most characteristic is the account given by the aide-de-camp who brought him off the field wounded, and attended him till his death. He tells that for all of the first day General Braddock lay, and said not a word till night came, and then only, "Who would have thought it!" Again he was silent for all of the next day. Then saying, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time," he turned and died. When the war was over the settlers returned to their homes, once more to get their livelihood from the soil. Again the banks of the Antietam echoed to the sounds of hammer and anvil, of axe and saw, and once more its flow gave the impulse to numerous mills. The stream was like the fairy godmother of the old tales, ready with her gifts to all who favored her. To-day we still have some of these mills standing, nearly a century and a half old, massive buildings with thick walls, sleepy and venerable by the sleepy stream, toned by time into a perfect harmony with the hoary tree trunks and gray rocks beside them. Others are in ruins, their broken walls pierced by arched waterways and window openings, half veiled with creepers and guarded by beds of nettles and thistles from too curious approach. :^^.ii /■ / Zhc IDalle^ 15 Now too was laid the foundation of a town which was to grow into a city and give its name to the valley : Elizabeth- Hager's-Town. In the earliest Hagerstown newspapers which we still have, there are numerous references to and advertisements of the mills. There was a large stone paper- mill, and small grist-mill, and saw-mill situated on the Antietam Creek, contiguous to Hagerstown on the main road through Charlton's Gap to Baltimore. This road we now know as the Cavetown turnpike. There was the dyeing and fulling-mill of Martin Baechtel, where they would receive woollen yarn for thick cloth and linsey, and the paper-mill of John Rohrer, lying near the Marsh. Stull's mill was close to Hagerstown, and an advertise- ment with reference to it makes one realize that boys were boys one hundred years ago, just as they are to-day. A miller living near the stream complains in the paper that, "Whereas a number of boys and young men have again commenced the indelicate habit of bathing within sight of Stull's Old Mill and dwelling house, to the annoyance of the subscriber's family, all persons are forewarned to abstain from the practice in future, between the Mill and the Mouth of Bowman's Run " That the boys cared very little for the feelings of these decorous persons is evident from the further notice inserted at a later date on the same subject, ending with the words, "Boys in general, and apprentices in particular, would do well to be cautious how they conduct themselves." Among the places advertised for sale was a tract called "Salubria, " having the advantage of being only one mile i6 Z\)c antictam from three large and very extensive Merchant Mills, where a ready sale for the produce of the farm could be had on any day in the year. The description goes on to say that this farm is called a dry farm, "but it has this immense advan- tage over other dry farms. It lies within a short mile of the Antietam Creek, on the public and resorted road, and the stock can be driven at all times over this road to the creek." Another tract called "Hopewell" is near it, and within three hundred yards of the Antietam and near to two Merchant Mills. A good still-house was a very common adjunct to the mill. One often sees such advertisements as, "A good dwelling house and two distilleries"; "A log house, and distillery in full operation"; "A two story dwelling house, Spring house, and Large Stone House, used alternately as Brew House and Distillery." One has not far to look to find the reason for this. In the wretched condition of the roads it was easier for the farmer to make a profit by turning his corn and rye into whiskey, and so reduce its bulk and find a ready sale for it, than by transporting it to the market in Baltimore. Whiskey was therefore cheap because it was plenty, and pure because there was no reason to adulterate it, and the valley had a reputation for being a great drinking place. Travellers often made mention of it, and said that the inns where they put up were generally scenes of carousal before the evening was over. As early as 1748 we have a reference to Maryland as a great whiskey producing place, in a speech made by Conrad Weiser to the Indians at their village of Kuskuskis, where he met the Delawares, the Mohawks, and deputies from several nations. These Indians complained to him that the tTbe IDallci? 17 English traders brought in Hquor, and protested against its being sold to their people. The envoy from Philadelphia replied that it was in their power to have it stopped if they were in earnest. "You go yourselves," he said in reply, "and buy horse-loads of strong liquor. But the other day an Indian came to this town out of Maryland, with three horse-loads of liquor, so it appears you love it so well you cannot be without it. " Before the passing of the excise law reduced its output, whiskey was used to a certain extent as a medium of ex- change in Maryland. A gallon of whiskey was equivalent to a shilling of money, in making a trade. The passing of the law raised the celebrated Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania, but though it was equally unwelcome to the small farmers in the Hagerstown valley, and along the slopes of the South Mountain, where there were many little stills, the resistance diminished in violence as it spread away from its centre. The best element of the community upheld the government, and tried to reconcile the small producers of whiskey to the payment of the tax. For several years before the Whiskey Rebellion broke out, the country was at war with the Indians of the North- west. Hagerstown was a sort of recruiting camp where companies were raised and drilled. Captains Lewis and Price, and Lieutenant-Colonels Orndorff, Davis, Sprigg, and Van Lear, were among the most active in fitting out com- panies and drilling them. When, however, a draft was called for men from each regiment to march into Pennsylvania and help enforce the excise law, rioting broke out, absurd stories were spread among the most ignorant people about the new tax, and all the baser element of the community i8 ZTbe Hntietam was in an uproar. It is said that the outbreak was quite as much the result of private spite, which vented itself in this way, as of a real determination to resist the govern- ment. The best citizens armed themselves and patrolled the town. A message was sent to the Governor at Annapolis, who immediately came to Hagerstown to judge of the extent of the disaffection. General Bailey marched to the town with over three hundred troops and made arrests among the most turbulent mischief makers. In a few days order was restored, and he left Hagerstown; but an- other regiment on its way to the West was detained at the town for a short time, to make sure that the community had settled down again to a state of order and security. Perhaps the preponderance of orderly and law-abiding Germans among the settlers of the valley was the cause of the comparative ease with which the new law was enforced, unpopular as it was, while in the neighboring State there were numbers of Scotch- Irish, a stubborn people whose fighting blood was easily roused, and hot for a disturbance. Whatever the cause, the wave of insurrection which spread from Pennsylvania subsided without causing serious dis- affection in the Antietam valley. The owners of the numer- ous small stills were obliged to give way before public opinion and pay the tax, or else put their com and rye to some other use. To-day whiskey is manufactured in large quantities in the county, but instead of the little stills on every farm, the ugly buildings of a modern distillery disfigure the banks of the Antietam, in the neighborhood of one of its old bridges. chapter III The Making of Roads TPHE new century found a fairly settled community in the '"' valley of the Antietam. The patriots who had left their farms to fight in the Revolutionary War were once more cultivating them. The county seat had grown into an attractive town. Many new industries had sprung up, and it became a matter of importance to have good and practicable communication with the world outside the valley. The seaports to the east and the great prairie country to the west offered markets for their wares, and the thrifty settlers were anxious to reach them. We have a pleasant sketch of Hagerstown in the early part of the century, in a book of travel written by William Faux, an Englishman. He speaks first of the beautiful, fruitful vale, forty miles long and seven broad, partly in Maryland and partly in Virginia, which is the only really fertile spot which he has seen north of Carolina. "Here, " says he, "I found a fine people, trees full of fruit, evidently planted as are many other choice trees, by the hand of nature." After passing through Frederick Town, which he calls quite English in appearance, he mentions the fertility of the valley once more, and says that it yields the finest 19 20 ^be antietam Indian corn he has yet seen, and is the best wheat land in America, and has the best farms and farmers in the land. Crossing the mountain he comes down into the valley of the Antietam, and thus describes the town: "We supped and slept at Hagers-Town, a market town, with three Dutch gothic churches, adorned with tall spires, and a good courthouse. This town is highly delightful, and almost surrounded by small mountains, the scenery is beautiful, and both in and around an air of grandeur prevails ; except indeed at our tavern, where, though it is Sunday, all is smoke and fire, and Bacchus is god. " Like all travellers of that day he complains of the wretched condition of the roads, and says that one must have nerves of iron and brass to survive a stage journey through the country. Every variety of discomfort was endured. On the mountains were stumps and rocks, steep declivities and dangers of every sort. In the valleys they stuck deep in the mud. The crossings of the streams were dangerous. The limestone ridges between the mountains had nothing done to smooth their roughness. The traveller was bumped and tossed about till he was black and blue ; and sometimes thrown out altogether at the risk of his bones, when the stage turned over in some specially bad part of the road. The tendency of the times was still to move westward. Faux, who was an observer of men as well as countries, says, "The American has always something better in his eye farther West. He lives and dies on hope." Tales of the western country continued to unsettle men, and create an atmosphere of unrest. The constant temptation was to sell out and move on. It is therefore much to the credit ^be HDaF^tnG of 1Roat)9 21 of the people of the Hagerstown valley that they set them- selves to making a permanent community, and in the in- dustries which sprang up so thickly along the Antietam, there was something to keep the restless spirits from fretting at the chain. One of the most prominent men of the day was Nathaniel Rochester, who afterward founded the town of Rochester in the State of New York. He was a man of many interests, and while he lived in Hagerstown he owned a flouring mill, and had an interest in a rope walk, and a nail factory. He held the various offices of Judge of the County Court, Postmaster, and Sheriff, and contrived to make frequent trips to Kentucky and New York, to look after other interests in those States. He was the first Presi- dent of the Hagerstown Bank, and there his portrait can be seen to-day, done in pastel. It shows a handsome man, with a fine sensitive face, and rather poetic expression. He wears a drab coat and light blue stock, and there is some- thing very winning in his serious look. He moved to New York State in the early part of the new century, with his family, but not before he had made a strong impression on the community which he was leaving. He had always taken a great interest in public improvements, and he threw all the weight of his influence in the scale to help on the serious movement which began at this time, for better roads. The opening up of the Antietam valley by fine turnpike roads was the direct result of the building of the great National Road to the West. This road began at Cumber- land, in Maryland, and went from thence to the Ohio River. It then became a matter of great importance to have a good road from Baltimore to Cumberland, so that direct 22 Zbc Hntietam communication might be established between the port of Baltimore and the Ohio. In i8 17 an act was passed author- izing a company to build a turnpike road from Hagers- town to the Conococheague Creek. It was the first link in the chain. The next was the turnpike road from Balti- more to Hagerstown. In 18 19 the road to the west of Hagerstown was built, and the Conococheague spanned by a noble bridge built by Silas Harry. It was the initial bridge, and set the standard for those which were later to cross the waters of the Antie- tam at so many points. We can easily imagine how, after seeing it, the Commissioners of the Antietam Hundreds must have determined to bridge their stream in the same substantial way. There was a very interesting controversy on the subject of the construction of bridges on the National Road in the western part of the county, which shows the determination of the men of that day to have the best models followed in bridge building. The government had agreed to bridge the streams with well made stone bridges; but owing to the expense this entailed an effort was made to substitute bridges with stone piers and a superstructure of wood. The men of Maryland were firm in their determination to have stone bridges complete, and no compromise. They be- lieved that in a few years the wood would rot, and require constant repairing. They stood for stone throughout, with pointing of hydraulic mortar. The Legislature of Maryland, they said, authorized the change in the location of the road through the State, provided the bridges were all made of stone. Zbc HDaMriQ of IRoabe 23 John Hoye, of Cumberland, wrote to the Department at Washington, " I am sure the State will not receive the road without the stone bridges. " He referred them to the agreement, which stipulated for " substantial stone bridges, wherever the same may be necessary. " As the War De- partment contracted to have bridges built of stone, he could not report in favor of the State receiving the road until permanent stone bridges were erected. On the part of the government, Brigadier-General Gra- tiot wrote that there was not enough money appropriated to admit of stone bridges, and suggested that good wooden superstructures, well covered and painted, would last with a little care at least forty years, and perhaps longer. The Secretary of War approved of this suggestion, but they were held to the terms of their agreement. The Marylanders were not to be cajoled into the belief that stone piers and a superstructure of wood, even when nicely painted with three coats of white lead, and with a shingle roof, would be as good as stone throughout. Richard Delafield of the engineers tried his persuasions. Might they not be built with stone abutments and wing walls, with wooden superstructures? He said that the bridge over Wills Creek would cost $15,000.00 or more built of stone, but built of wood it would not cost more than $7000.00. But no persuasions would avail to turn them from the agreement, and the enduring stone was used throughout. The result has justified them, for after nearly a hundred years of travel, from the time of the prairie schooner and the Conestoga wagon to the automobile of to-day, they still stand an honor to their builders and an ornament to the country. 24 ^be antletam In 1822 work was begun on the turnpike road from Boonsboro to Hagerstown, which was a continuation of the Baltimore and Frederick turnpike, and that between Frederick and Boonsboro. When the section of road be- tween Boonsboro and Hagerstown was finished the line of travel from the seaboard to the West would be complete, and through the valley so long isolated would pass the long- dreamed-of highway to the "back-country." The work on the roads brought a rough class of laborers to the country. The same William Faux whom we have quoted above writes at this time in his journal: "I learn that travellers to the West were last week publicly assaulted and plundered by hordes of labourers at work on the great Western road, who stopped the United States mail demanding dollars and guineas from all the travellers, and lifting up their axes to strike all who refused to deliver up their cash. " The same rough class of laborers when working on the Boonsboro and Hagerstown turnpike stirred up a great excitement in Funkstown when working near that sedate and peaceful village. On St. Patrick's day a wag paraded about the streets with a scarecrow in the likeness of a Paddy. This excited the Irishmen so much that it led to a grand fight. Stones flew, spades and mattocks were put to war- like uses, and Pat-riotism broke out in full force. The Hagerstown militia had to be called out to put an end to the fight. It was twenty-four hours before complete order was restored, and the affray was always referred to as the " Battle of Funkstown. " Another instance of the mischievous disposition of the laborers is indicated by an advertisement inserted in the Zbc ADakinG of IRoabe 25 Hagerstown paper of that time. Mr. Lloyd offers a reward for the apprehension of an Irishman who set upon him murderously one night in Funkstown, with intent to kill. The Lloyds were the builders of the bridge across the Antie- tam for the turnpike company, and it would seem that one of his laborers tried to settle a difficulty in this way. It was, perhaps, owing to this lawlessness and turbulence on the part of the laborers, that in 1823 a bill was presented to the Legislature, asking that the United States mails should be carried in the daytime only, except when transported by water. In spite of all these difficulties and dangers, the turn- pikes were completed, and we find an enthusiastic account of travel over them by a writer of the day. This was a Mrs. Roy all, of Baltimore, whose account of her trip contrasts well with that of Mr. Faux, who had made the same journey over the old road. This lady was not likely to err on the side of mercy, for in her comments on men and manners she displays a sharp spirit of criticism. Her comments are so biting that we should have certainly taken her for a dis- appointed spinster, if there were not record to the contrary. She could find no fault, however, with the newly completed turnpike. "Better horses, or a better road," she writes, "is not to be found in the world, than the road from Boonsboro to Hagerstown. The road is a great curiosity, being turn- piked with white stone, broken into small regular pieces, and laid as firm as the original rock. No floor could be more level; it was one entire smooth pavement. It appeared more like sailing or flying rather than riding over land: not a jar nor a jolt the whole way. " 26 ^be Hntietam Over this turnpike poured the tide of travel between Baltimore and the West. A little later coaches ran from Hagerstown to Gettysburg, and another line crossed the mountain by Nicholson's Gap, and reached Baltimore by way of Westminster. The travel by road of that time has no parallel to-day. The railroads many years ago took the heaviest class of vehicles off it, and more recently the trolleys running through the farm lands and over the mountains have furnished an easy way for the farmers and their families to come to town. Then the roads were filled with a lively mass of horses and vehicles. From the iron works came the great wagons with their teams of six, eight, and ten mules, gayly decked. Their owners were very proud of them, and the mules were as proud as all animals are that get such petting and grooming. It used to be a saying, when something hard to move was under discussion, that "All hell and Brien's mules could n't pull it out." The stage lines which travelled over the turnpikes were a credit to the country. Any one who has read Frederick Law Olmsted's account of staging through the Carolinas, with poor wrecks of horses, and rattletrap coaches driven by incompetent drivers, must draw a very favorable com- parison. The hauling of grain to the mills, of wool for manufacturing into cloth, of cotton and tobacco, the herds of cattle driven over the roads, the gay riding parties from Manor to Hall, made a spirited scene. The papers began to advertise turnpike, as well as plantation, wagons for sale. In the ten years between 1822 and 1832 six stone bridges were built across the Antietam. One was at Funkstown on the Boonsboro turnpike ; another near Sharpsburg at the ZTbe flDaMng of IRoaba 27 Omdorff mill. Two were on the Gettysburg road, one near Hagerstown and the other near Leitersburg. One crossed the Antietam near Keedysville at Samuel Hitt's farm, and another at the Iron Works, below Sharpsburg. The workers in stone, finding themselves in demand, immediately began to combine for their own protection, just as they do to-day, and it is amusing to see so early in the nineteenth century the beginnings of trades-unions. Advertisements in the old newspapers call upon "Brick- layers and Stone Masons" to meet in order to form rates and regulations for the government of the trade, and to prevent misunderstandings and underbiddings. The stone masons were in demand to build something beside bridges for the Antietam. A company was formed to make it more useful for navigation by the use of locks, so that merchandise and produce could be shipped down it to the Potomac River. A notice was put in the papers offering liberal terms to such master masons as could be depended on, and who would employ hands adequate to the completion of one or more locks in the course of the season. Each lock was to contain about four hundred perches of stone work. Shortly after this notice appeared, there was an announcement to the subscribers to the Antie- tam Loan, that the first instalment of one fifth was payable at the Hagerstown Bank, and that a number of locks were already contracted for, and the work was progressing. The work was never finished, but the idea of making the stream navigable did not die out. A few years later an- other project was exploited for uniting the headwaters of the Conococheague and the Antietam, and making the former stream navigable as far as Chambersburg. If it 28 Zbc antietam could have been carried out, it would have been a great help to the farmers and manufacturers of the valley, but it came to nothing, and the only water craft that enliven the Antietam are pleasure boats and the flat-bottomed boats of fishermen. We find another evidence of the increased interest in the Antietam about this time. A company was formed for stocking it with fish not native to its waters. At a meeting held in Hagerstown certain gentlemen set forth their desire to introduce fish of other streams into the creek. They said that the experiment had been already tried in the States of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, and that in three years they had an abundance of fine fish. A bill was in- troduced into the Maryland Legislature, and an act passed entitled, "An Act for the preservation of the Breed of Fish in the Antietam Creek." After stating that several species of fine fresh-water fish not common to the stream were to be introduced, they prayed for the interference and aid of the Legislature for their pro- tection. It was, therefore, forbidden to fish with nets, baskets, gigs, or in any other manner except with the angling rod, nor should fishpots be erected as far up as the first mill-dam on the Antietam. If any free person should whip or beat the waters in the Antietam Creek or its tribu- tary streams, "with polls or sticks or other things," for the next three years, there was a forfeit of ten dollars, one half of which was to go to the informer and the other half to the Charity School Fund. For a slave the penalty was not more than ten lashes on the bare back, unless the master or mistress wished to redeem the forfeit by the pay- ment of ten dollars. Or, if it had been done by the Zbc fIDaMng of IRoabe 29 order of the master or mistress, they should pay the fine themselves. The names signed to the petition were among the best in the community. Colonel Frisby Tilghman was the Presi- dent of the association, John Harry its Treasurer, and George Boerstler, Peter Sailes, David Claggett, William Booth, Edmund McCoy, Samuel Hitt, John Nafe, Daniel Boerstler, Joseph Graff, George Sheiss, and Seth Lane were members. We shall find, in following the bridges up the stream, that a number of these names were connected with the history of the stream from its earliest days. chapter IV The Masonry Arch THE Antietam runs through a Hmestone country. The Great Valley, which is here called the Hagerstown valley, is floored with limestone which swells and sinks along the valley trough with wave-like regularity. Be- tween the North and South mountains these limestone ridges, rising and falling, give diversity to the scenery, making dales and hollows in which farmsteads shelter and villages nestle. The limestone is of economic value. It fertilizes the fields under the natural action of frost which disintegrates it, and also when burned in kilns and spread upon them. It plays an important part in making Washington County one of the richest farming lands in the world. It is also used in making roads, and all the turnpikes which spread like a network over the country are macadamized with it. It is, moreover, a good building stone; when first quarried it is dark blue, and very agreeable in color, but by exposure to the weather it becomes a rather dusty gray. In every direction the limestone breaks through the soil and comes to sight, exposing the naked floor of the valley. Around these outcroppings the plough turns, and marks the fields in fantastic lines. On these rough islets thickets of 3° Zhc nDasonrp Hrcb 31 flowering shrubs take sanctuary, or groups of small dark evergreens give variety to the scene. Sometimes a hill- side is all masses of shelving rock, with cup-like hollows holding scarcely enough soil to give nourishment to the roots of mullein and thistles. Again it is seen in buildings which give a special char- acter to the country. We come upon large farmhouses, built of it more than a hundred years ago. These houses are not very attractive at first sight. They are severely simple stone structures with thick walls, and the doors and windows are of the greatest simplicity. Very rarely does an eyelet window in a gable vary the monotony with a touch of originality, or an arched doorway, set with fan- lights, break the rectangular lines. When these occur they are delightful variations, but for the most part the architec- ture is as plain and straightforward as the material. The richest farms have houses of an almost monastic severity. Yet when one becomes accustomed to the type it pleases by its repose and solidity. Again, throughout the country, one can find small stone churches. These are the houses of worship for sects which stripped religion of all outward adornment, and as is the faith which worships within, so is its outward manifesta- tion in stone. They are often of great age, gray and color- less, with clear glass in the windows, and without steeple or tower. They express in stone the convictions of the men who built them. The worshippers had fled from the beauty which concealed corruption, but beauty itself they could not flee from, and the forest trees, the wealth of wild vines, and all the irrepressible loveliness of nature outside the walls gratified a natural instinct in spite of them. 32 Zbe antictam Besides the houses and the churches, there were many delightful little things built in stone throughout the country by the early settlers. There was the spring-house set under the hill, as solidly built as the house itself, with the green- sward about it, and perhaps a rose to trail its pink bloom over the roof in spring. Stone chimneys, wide and thickset, were built on outside the log houses and cabins. Occasion- ally a stone projection behind the chimney itself, with iron hooks on either side and an iron rod across, showed where the great outdoor feats of cooking were accomplished: the apple-butter boiling, the soap-making, and water heated at pig-killing time. But in none of these structures is there any evidence that the builder sought to express beauty, though often, especially in these little homely things, there is a great deal of charm. He aimed at solidity and strength. Fancy then the feelings of a stranger visiting for the first time this limestone country, who has driven through its hills and dales, seen the stone walls enclosing the fields, the oblong house, the great stone barn, the square spring-house. Every- where he has found the straight line, the simplest form. Only in the woodlands where the stone is untouched, has it taken beautiful shapes, domed and arched, painted with lichens and delicate mosses. He turns a hill slope, and sees before him a picture of great beauty; a silvery stream reflecting the blue sky, and spanning it a gray bridge of three arches, making hoops of light through which the landscape shines like a framed picture. In the dreamy light the stone seems ethereal, too lovely to be substantial. Castles and abbeys might neighbor these exquisite arches, and in the country through which he has just come, the transition ^be fH>a6onr^ Brcb 33 from the buildings to the bridges is like the change from prose to poetry. And if a stranger could feel this emotion of pleasure at the first sight of the bridge, we can well appreciate the feeling of one whose home was near it and who would know that at a certain turn of the road, its familiar arches and swelling abutments would come into sight. We shall have a better understanding of their real value if we glance back over the history of stone arched bridges, and see through what vicissitudes they have held their own. And first we must recognize that there is nothing that ap- peals to men more powerfully than lasting and beautiful work in stone. The material comes straight from nature, and the use of it in enduring works is the proof of man's power. The Egyptians are still the wonder of the world for their great feats in quarrying and moving vast masses of stone. Their massive temples, their graven figures and great tombs, have made an indelible mark on the globe. Yet with all their wonderful work in that material they have left us no masonry bridges. The character of the country did not call for such structures. The oldest example of the masonry arch is to be found in China, where it was used two thousand years before the Christian era. To-day there still exist arched bridges of great antiquity in this remarkable country, where every form of human knowledge seems to have been arrived at ages ago. In the western world it took centuries to de- velop the stone arched bridge. Greece, in spite of her noble architecture, never learned to bridge streams in this way. For a long time the nearest approach on the continent of Europe to the stone bridge now in use, was in the building 34 ^be antictam of strong, thick piers and abutments, which were con- nected by a straight superstructure of wooden planks, or stone lintels. There is a stream on Dartmoor spanned by what is called the Celtic bridge, which is constructed in this way. In the Romans we find the master-workers in stone on the continent of Europe. It was a material which suited their powerful and dominating genius. They built high- ways to last for ages, and as they marched farther and farther on their way, conquering the remotest people of their time, they maintained communication with Rome by a magnificent system of roads and bridges. In all the coun- tries where they established their empire, we find traces of these works, but in a very different state of preservation. In Spain are perhaps the most perfect specimens for in Spain there was a people enlightened enough to give them the care required for their preservation, and to appreciate their grandeur and importance. The Moors, with their supe- rior intelligence, preserved the Roman bridges from decay. The same thing was true in Asia Minor. The Mohamme- dans and the Byzantine rulers valued this legacy of Roman occupation, and kept them in good condition. In Rome itself there was a special department for the care of bridges ; and those in the provinces were under military protection as long as the power of Rome lasted. After the fall of the empire a very different condition obtained throughout Europe. The great works of the Romans were neglected and allowed to fall into ruins. This was especially the case in France where Charlemagne gave the care of the bridges into the hands of the Bishops. The prelates exacted heavy tolls for their maintenance, but ^be flDasonr^ Brcb 35 they neglected the bridges, and in the dark middle ages of European history these public works were allowed to fall into decay. A very few specimens are now left in France. One of them, the bridge at St. Chamas, is an example of a certain sort of Roman bridge, erected with a memorial arch at either end. These can still be seen, though in ruins. But on the whole the matter of adequate crossings for the streams and rivers lapsed, and the art of bridge building was almost forgotten. The story of its revival in France is a very charming one, and essentially French; for the French can do the most practical things exquisitely, and the revival of the art came about in a way to please a poet. There was a shepherd boy in the south of France, about the middle of the twelfth century, named Benezet, who was told in a vision that he must build a bridge across the Rhone at Avignon. It is a strange subject — the messages given through the ages to shepherds. In the dawn of history shepherds left their sheep to become Kings of Egypt ; and from the days of the shepherd boy of Israel, to the Maid whose sheep pastured by Domremy, they have dreamed dreams and seen visions. To-day the shepherds of the Sierras, and the hot inland valleys of California, hear voices, but to no purpose, and if they listen to them too eagerly they are called mad. The solitude in which they live creates a world of unrealities; the silly sheep look up, but cannot bridge the vacancy between them and their masters. They are only fond and dumb; and to each of these words can be given its secondary meaning, to the one its old English use, and to the other its meaning in the vernacular of to-day. 36 ^be antletam To a few men this discipline of loneliness has given the opportunity to nurse a great thought to maturity. They have heard voices saying, "Save the kingdom, " "Save the people," "Save the poor." Such was the voice Benezet heard. He thought of the heavy tolls and burdensome taxes exacted from the poor for crossing streams. It seemed to him that a man ought to cross a river as he would follow a road, as freely as he would breathe the air, so when the vision revealed to him that he was to help them in this way, he was not disobedient. With his heart full of joy he went to the Bishop of Avignon and asked for his approval and help. But the ecclesiastical ear is sometimes deaf to things out of the accustomed rou- tine. The Bishop listened coldly, and refused to give him any help. The ardent boy then went to the Provost of the town, and here he found a listener. This official gave him help and encouragement, and the great bridge was begun. It was years in the building, and before it was finished the shepherd-builder died and was buried in one of the col- umns of his bridge, and was afterwards canonized, and is known now as St, Benezet. But the building of the bridge at Avignon was not all that he accomphshed. He estab- lished a Brotherhood, called the "Freres Pontiers, " whose purpose was, "To build bridges and keep ferries," It spread through France and Italy, and existed and worked for three centuries. It is pleasant to know, after the coldness of the Bishop of Avignon, that the Pope sanc- tioned and encouraged the Brotherhood, and that what the lesser prelate had refused was granted by the highest author- ity in the Church. By it a great impulse was given to bridge ZTbc riDaeonrp Hrcb 37 building in France, which did not die out. By the eigh- teenth century the French had a very fine department of "Fonts et chaussees. " It seems strange that a Frenchman should have been the architect of the famous London bridge, but it is a fact. London bridge was built in the latter part of the twelfth century, while the other bridges over the Thames, Blackfriars and Westminster were not erected until the eighteenth. All through rural England one sees such bridges as those over the Antietam, perhaps not so perfectly proportioned as our own. They were a matter of great pride for Eng- lishmen, and Fuller in his Book of Worthies, written in early 1600, makes special mention of the bridge at York, which had the highest and greatest arch of any in England, of the stately bridge at Bediford with twenty-four arches, of the beautiful bridge built by Queen Maud at Stratford Bow, which was before called Stratford but from having such a "fair arch or bow therein" was then called Stratford Bow. According to him it was from the peculiar formation of English rivers, too deep for fords, and too narrow for ferries, that there came to be so many eminent bridges, accounted amongst EngHsh excellencies. "Far be it from me," he says, "to wish the least ill to any. . . Yet this I could desire, that some covetous churls, may in their passing over waters, be put into peril without peril — understand me, might be endangered to fright, but not hurt — that others might fare the better for their fears, such misers being minded thereby to make or repair bridges for public safety and convenience." There are certain features appearing in some of the English bridges which have not been repeated in the bridges s8 JLbc antietam of Antietam. One is the making of recesses or nooks in the curtain walls, into which foot passengers can step aside and take refuge, when horses and vehicles cross the bridge. They are made by an elongation of the abutment, which instead of tapering to a point half-way up the walls of the bridge, are prolonged so as to form the floor of these recesses. The abutment is thus made to serve two purposes — the original one of a projection which advancing beyond the line of the bridge divides the ice packs and debris brought down in times of flood, throwing these obstacles off to either side so that they pass under the arches, instead of piling up against the piers of the bridge ; and the secondary one of furnishing these retreats for people crossing the bridge on foot. Although the bridges over the Antietam are nearly a hundred years old, they are still models for bridge build- ing. They have withstood the wear of time, and travel, of flood, and ice packs, and of war, that most terrible enemy of bridges. Above all, they are beautiful with a beauty that familiarity never lessens. The objection often made to stone bridges is, that the action of the weather injures them. There is a certain amount of disintegration of the mortar from frost, and from moisture working in between the stones. But this damage can be repaired, and to a great extent prevented, by keeping the copings in good condition. There are people who praise the iron bridge with its spidery superstructure and rigid lines, and its disagreeable vibration. As against these it is good to quote from a leading authority on scientific bridge building, as follows : "The close of the nineteenth century saw the metal Zbe riDaeonri? Hrcb 39 bridge paramount over the masonry arch, in all respects except judged from the standpoint of beauty and durability. These points of superiority have maintained and will main- tain the masonry arch prominent among the bridge types of the engineer.'! Chapter V The Levy Court IN 1823, when the turnpike bridge at Funkstown was * built, the affairs of the county were regulated by the old Levy Court. Under its authority the first five stone bridges were built. The contract for the first, as well as for that which crossed the Antietam on the Leitersburg road, was given to a Pennsylvania firm, the Lloyds. The Om- dorff bridge, and that on what is now called the Cavetown turnpike, were both built by Silas Harry. The three now in existence bear tablets with the builders' names, and the dates of construction. The Hitt bridge near Keedysville unfortunately has no tablet, but the records show that it was built by John Weaver whose name first appears in connection with this bridge, in the county records. His later bridges were carefully marked with tablets, w4th but one exception, bearing not only the date, and the name of the builder, but sometimes in addition the names of the Commissioners under whose authority the bridge was erected. On looking over the records of the Levy Court before 1823 one finds noted the constant expenditure of sums of money to keep the bridges in repair. There were repeated claims made for bridge money. What was spent in main- 40 ^be %cv^ Court 41 taining the wooden bridges would have gone far towards paying for structures which would last for years. To quote a few instances: there was an order given in 18 1 2 to repair the bridge over the Antietam at Stull's mill just outside of Hagerstown, as it was almost impassable. In 181 7 John Booth was authorized to build a new bridge over the Antietam, at his mill. He was allowed $550.00 for it, of which he was to have $225.00 for the first year, and $225.00 for the second. In 1820 he came again before the Commissioners and was given permission to cover his bridge with a roof. In 18 19 the Levy Court allowed Seth w^ Lane a certain sum for repairing the bridge at Harry's mill, and another man was paid for the repairs he had made to the bridge at Samuel Hitt's mill. All these sums, required season after season to repair and replace the various bridges, would have gone far, in each instance, towards paying for the erection of a substantial and permanent stone bridge. In 18 1 9 the stone bridge over the Conococheague on the western road was built; and as one public work breeds many, and as each wave of the rising tide strikes higher up the sand, the example of this well built and handsome bridge set the standard for bridge building all over the county. As the result of this impulse we have to-day the following bridges, still standing with but one exception, across the Antietam. To name them in their order from the mouth of the stream to the Pennsylvania line, they are as follows: The bridge at the Iron Works, The Orndorff bridge, Burnside's bridge on the battlefield, The Hitt bridge near Keedysville, 42 Zhc Hntietam The bridge at Delemere, The bridge at Roxbury, The bridge at Emmert's mill, The bridge at Rose's mill, The two bridges at Funkstown, The bridge at Hager's mill, The bridge on the Cavetown turnpike, The bridge at Old Forge, The two bridges at Leitersburg. Chronologically they would be placed in different order. They were built as the demands of travel were greatest. The bridge at Funkstown, the first to be built, was on the through route to the West. It is a handsome bridge of three arches, standing high out of the water, with a look of dignity worthy of its purpose and history. The southern end of the county next required a bridge. Sharpsburg, where at an early date industries had been established, churches built, and a thriving settlement fostered, now asked for one. The contract for it was given to Silas Harry, the man who had built the bridge over the Conococheague on the western road. In view of the work done on that bridge, which is a fine one still in constant use, he should have done well with the smaller one. But for some reason the "bridge at Mumma's Mill," known later as the Orndorff bridge, did not stand the test of time. The piers weakened and began to settle before the high waters in the year of the Johnstown flood. During that season of excessive rain, floods prevailed all over the country, the Antietam was swelled far beyond its normal size, and the Orndorff bridge gave way. We have pictures of it, ^be Xev^ Court 43 showing a quaint structure, solid and thickset enough, one would think, to have withstood many floods and freshets. These two earliest bridges were ordered to be built in the same year. The bridge at Funkstown, which was spoken of in the records as the "bridge over the Antietam at or near John Shafer's Mill, on the public road past the Mill," was completed in 1823; the Orndorff bridge was finished a year later. The Commissioners were empowered to raise $1800.00 for each of these bridges by taxation, the collection of the sums to extend over a period of three years. The Justices of the Levy Court were to make three annual levies, but it was stipulated that they should not be re- quired to levy "unless upon such compromise or arrange- ment with the Boonsboro turnpike Company as they may in discretion deem just and proper." In 1824, the year in which the Orndorff bridge was com- pleted, the Lloyds built another bridge across the stream on the road to Leitersburg. This Leitersburg road was the main line of travel to Philadelphia, and was also a way of reaching Emmitsburg (the Catholic settlement in the mountains), and Taney Town and Westminster. It led the traveller through the Dutch country of the Dunkers and Mennonites, a fertile, cultivated stretch of wheat lands, hemp fields, and tobacco farms; a most interesting tract, one of the favorite haunts of the Indians, from whom it had been wrested with difficulty. So we see the two ends of the county, the neighborhood of the Potomac River, and the Pennsylvania line, first to follow the example of the Baltimore Turnpike Company, and have permanent stone bridges. After this, six years passed before any others were 44 ^be Hntletam built. The Commissioners of the Levy Court must have stopped to take breath after spending so much money on pubHc improvements. To-day the cost of the bridges seems reasonably small. The one which was built by the Lloyds on the road to Leitersburg was erected at a cost of $2 1 7 5 .00. In 1830 another period of activity in bridge building began. An act was passed in 1829 authorizing the building of a stone bridge across the Antietam near Mr. Samuel Hitt's. We have the advertisement for sealed proposals for this bridge, with description, and dimensions. It was to have three arches, the centre one to be thirty-four feet span, the two outside ones twenty-six feet span. The piers and abutments were to be five feet high above low water mark to the spring of the arch, the width of the bridge sixteen feet in the clear. A good many improvements were being made at the same time in the neighborhood of Mr. Hitt's mill. Shortly after the bridge proposals were advertised for, there was another notice printed in the Hagerstown paper, calling for repairs to the road from the bridge over the Antietam near Samuel Hitt's to the summit of the hill toward Hesses mill; and also for making a road from the site of the old bridge near Hitt's to the same point. The road which crosses the stream here is the one connecting Keedysville and Sharpsburg, and it is also joined by a road coming down from the South Mountain by Crampton's Gap. The Hitt bridge was built by a man whose name we encounter for the first time, John Weaver. To one who studies the stone arches across the Antietam, the name of John Weaver calls up interesting and beautiful pictures. He was a man who, out of his rough and hard material, ^be %cv^ Court 45 wrought poems in stone. There is a charm in the propor- tion, a perfection in the detail, of John Weaver's bridges, which marks them out for special notice. The originality he shows in the turns of wing walls, the welding of bridge- way and roadway, gives a distinct character to all his work. It is plain to see that he was in love with it, and gave to it not only the mind of a practical man, but the heart of an enthusiast. No one could have made the series of bridges which he built along the stream, who had not the joy in his work that marks the artist, Silas Harry worked with him in the construction of the Hitt bridge, as is shown by the records of the Levy Court, which paid him the sum of $1413.66 as the agent of John Weaver, The place where they threw the bridge across the stream is interesting as the ford by which Braddock's army marched on its way to Williamsport, where he crossed the Potomac River. In the same year that the Hitt bridge was built, we find the proposals advertised for the building of a bridge on the Cavetown road. The dimensions for this bridge were given. It was to have two arches of thirty-six feet span each, and the piers and abutments, height and width, were to be the same as in the Hitt bridge. The curtain walls of each bridge were to be four and a half feet in height, and covered with seasoned plank. The order was signed by Frederick Dorsey, as President, It was a name to appear later on other bridges, and was not only one of the most familiar names in the county then, but is well remembered still. He was a country doctor of the old school, of calomel, quinine, and bleeding; a personality, loved, honored, and laughed at with the laughter that was a 46 ZTbe Hntietam tribute. Anecdotes innumerable were told of him, which became legends in the course of time. Vehement, untiring, a bom physician whose practice took him over every road in the county, it might be said that he knew every foot of it, every stone and tree, every farmhouse and cabin; and there was no one better fitted to pass upon the need of road improvement than old Doctor Dorse y. chapter VI The County Commissioners IN 1830 the old Levy Court was abolished, and the work *■ of supervising and maintaining the county roads was carried on by the County Commissioners, as they were now called instead of "Commissioners of the Levy Court." They took up their duties vigorously, and within three years had as many bridges built across the Antietam. The first of these was the stone bridge near the mouth of the creek, at the old Iron Works below Sharpsburg. It is a large bridge of four arches, carrying the road from Sharps- burg to Harpers Ferry, and was built by John Weaver. Unfortunately he did not carry out the practice which he adopted later of putting a tablet upon the bridge, with his name and the date of its construction. At the same time that this bridge was bemg built, he had in hand the con- struction of a bridge across Beaver Creek at Hesses mill. In the same year George Weaver was building the second bridge at Funkstown, while Charles Wilson was replacing the old wooden bridge at Delemere with the present stone structure. An order was also given to build a bridge across the Antietam at Hagerstown. An uncommon parsimony was shown in this case, for with every incentive to place a bridge at this point which should be an honor to the town, the Commissioners hung fire, advertised for one of "stone or wood, " and finally gave the order for a wooden bridge. 47 48 Zhc antictam A wooden bridge was accordingly built, and the present stone one was not erected until seventeen years later. The bridge at the Iron Works was undertaken just after the new County Commissioners had examined into the condition of the road from Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry. The Commissioners in charge of these improvements were John Grove, John Miller of J., and Daniel Piper. How quaintly sounds the old distinction, at one time so common in the South, "John of J." A noted character in San Francisco in early days was always spoken of as "James King of William, " leading to the childish belief, in one case, that he was of royal descent. Even to-day the custom survives to a certain extent through Maryland and Virginia. While John Weaver was occupied with the work at the Iron Works, an order was passed authorizing Charles Wilson to build a stone bridge at Booth's mill. It was to be twenty feet in width, and to cost $2700.00. Historic Delemere was to have its stone bridge in place of the wooden one with a roof, which had been kept up at such expense in the past. No doubt it had been one of those wooden tun- nels, such as can be found to-day throughout Pennsylvania, dark as a snow-shed in the Sierras, and hiding all the lovely water view from the traveller as he crosses the stream. The builder of this bridge appears only this once as a bridge-builder on the Antietam. His name, however, had been in the records of the Levy Court at the time that the Lloyds built the stone bridge over the Conococheague at Williamsport. In 1829, when the bridge at Williamsport was being built, Charles Wilson was paid several sums of money as the agent of the Lloyds. Under them he learned the best traditions of bridge building, for the bridge across ^be County (Tommis^ionera 49 the Conococheague at this point is unusually fine, and as beautiful as any of those across the sister stream. Looking down from the cliff in the village upon its distant arches, leading from shore to shore, one sees in imagination the robber knights of the Rhine crossing it with their spoils, its high arches and slender piers making one think invol- untarily of mediaeval days. The bridge at Delemere is one of the most satisfying of the series. It is well placed at the turn of the stream, well planned and carried out. It is worthy of its setting, and to be that much was required of it, for the surroundings at Delemere are romantically beautiful. The bridge was completed in 1833, and it is a pity that the builder did not mark it with his name. The other bridge built in this same year was the second bridge at Funkstown, spoken of in the records, as the first had been, as "The bridge at Shafer's Mill." It was built by George Weaver, who may have been a brother of the other builder of that name. It is almost within sight of the turnpike bridge built by the Lloyds, but does not suffer by comparison. It is a fine, workmanlike bridge, well built, well set in its place, and connected deftly with the rocky, rugged limestone bank upon which it abuts. It is marked with a tablet bearing the following inscription: Geo. Wever, 1833. Commissioners, J. Whitmer, Sr., Pres., D. Claggett R. Wasson H. Fiery S. U. Hitt J, Gelwicks a. Rentch. 50 Jl\)c Hntietam It will be noticed that the name is here spelled Wever and not Weaver. In the records we constantly find it spelled either way, but the preponderance is in favor of the latter spelling, and so it has been used throughout for the sake of consistency. The County Commissioners in 1833 appointed a com- mittee for "viewing the site of a bridge over the Antietam on the Sharpsburg and Maple Swamp road. " After they had determined upon the most advantageous site, the contract for building was given to "John Wever, bridge- builder, to build the same of stone, with width 12 feet in the clear, for $2300.00. " This bridge is famous in history as Burnside's bridge, and was one of the most bloodily contested points in the battle of Antietam. "John Wever, bridge-builder," put into the construction of this bridge all his perfection of de- tail, all his instinct for proportion, and made of it a perfect gem. It is a small bridge of three arches, a modest but exquisite structure, making a picture for all time. No bridge across the Loire beside the old chateaux, no arches thrown across English streams, can outdo in beauty this little bridge of our own country. Compared with many of the same size by Tweed or Thames, across Dee or Indre, we find in the foreign work a certain clumsiness, a massive effect which this historic and lovely structure avoids. At the place where it crosses the Antietam the surround- ings are pastoral in character, there is no ruggedness of limestone banks, and no wildly romantic environment. It is a bit of sloping field and meadow, with hills rising on one side. The stream winds placidly between its buttonwoods and willows. In harmony with these surroundings stands ^be County Commieeloners 51 the rather narrow and simple bridge; yet so graceful are its gray arches, and so well wrought out its whole scheme of softly swelling abutments and gently rising wing walls, that all thought of detail is lost. The builder must have loved it, from the time that his imagination first projected it across the stream, and thought out its little individual touches, until he saw its graceful arches reflected in the calm water, giving the seal of man to the lonely landscape. Looking at its delicate curves, he might have remembered the first meaning of the word bridge, "a brow." It is so harmonious and beautiful that if this bridge alone had been built across the Antietam, we should have felt proud of the work of the men of the last century. In the three years following the building of Burnside's bridge, two more were thrown across the Antietam, the bridge at Rose's mill, and that beyond Leitersburg, on the country road near Strite's mill. They were both built by John Weaver, who had by this time proved himself a thoroughly competent bridge-builder. In 1838 we find in the records of the County Commissioners the proposals of John Weaver and William Grubb to build "a stone bridge across the Antietam at Sharer's Mill." This is now known as Rose's mill. Here we have a rather massive structure. The stream is wide, and the mill-dam placed almost against the piers of the bridge. The creek sometimes spreads at this point to a dangerous width, and here a man once saw his two sons drown at high water, and was powerless to help them. The mill was so near the end of this bridge that, with one of his practical touches, deftly used to make a feature in the bridge, John Weaver threw the wing wall at a right 52 Zl)c Hn tie tarn angle, widened the floor of the bridge, and made a plat- form under the mill wall, so that wagons might drive under its upper door, and have their loads lifted straight from the bridge into the mill. There is a marble tablet set in this angle, with the following inscription : Washington County Permanent Bridge No. 15 Built by John Weaver for The Commissioners, viz.: Jacob A. Grove, Prest. Andrew Rentch Michael Smith Horatio Harne Samuel Lyday James Cowdy Eli Crampton Robert Fowler John C. Dorsey June 24th, 1839. There is a great contrast between this bridge, part of a well travelled road, where the stream was wide, and which as an adjunct to a mill required a wide roadbed, and the little arches thrown across the stream where it was small and young, on the "dirt road" leading from Leitersburg among the country farms. In the very next year John Weaver submitted proposals for building a bridge at "Claggett's mill." This is now known as Emmert's mill, and is only a short distance from Rose's. It was built at a cost of $2800.00. This bridge is so much a part of its surroundings, and there is so much Zbc County (rommi00ioner0 53 stone work in the neighborhood, that it is not as conspicu- ous as the others. The whole spot is full of interest, and is, collectively, one of the most delightful on the Antietam. Here we have, not only the stone bridge, but an immense old stone mill with hip roof, three stories high, and in a good state of preservation. Across the road from the mill, backed up against the hill, is a stone house of three stories, with galleries running across the upper stories. The mill- race is crossed by a stone bridge of one arch, so good that one thinks involuntarily of the master-builder, John Weaver; and the county records show that a year after he finished the bridge over the Antietam, he bridged the mill-race at Claggett's mill with a single arch. The bridge at Claggett's mill was completed in 1840. Eight years later the stone bridge which stands at the crossing of the Antietam just outside of Hagerstown was built. This is always spoken of as the bridge at Hager's mill. The original mill which stood at this spot antedated the milling days of the Hagers, however, and was always known in the oldest records of the county as Colonel Stull's mill. It was bought from him by the Hagers, and William Hager lived in the old brick house which stands across the road from the mill; a house which with its old trees, and low stone wall around the garden enclosure, looks much more like a relic of old times than the bridge or the mill. Fifteen years passed before the county records noted the building of another bridge across the Antietam, and in connection with it we find another set of names. In 1863 a stone bridge was built at the Old Forge, where the Hughes brothers had their nail factory in Revolutionary times. The 54 ^be antictam name of the builder was W. H. Eierly. There are two tablets on the bridge which read as follows: Built in 1863 John Reichard, Prest. Dan'l Startzman Michael Newcomer Lancelot Jaques Wm. Roulette W. H. Eierly, Builder. Opposite this, on the other wing wall, is another tablet with this inscription: Rebuilt in 1893 G. C. Snyder, Prest. Jacob Friend Wilfred R. Stouffer R. F. Stottlemeyer Alex W. Davis JosiAH Hill, Builder. We have traced the history of the Antietam valley from the time when it was an Indian hunting ground, until it became a valley of homes. Hardly won in the beginning, the courage and industry of the pioneers changed it from a wilderness to the rich pastoral country which we see now. The great obstacle to its development was the difficulty and danger of travel, which cut it off from intercourse with the CTbe County Commiseionere 55 surrounding country. It was a problem which the early settlers had to face, and when good and safe roads were made, it seemed as though the life of the country were relieved from pressure, and sprang forward toward new prosperity and growth. In the stone bridges which their forefathers built, the people of the valley have inherited legacies which a more advanced state of knowledge has not taught them to improve upon ; and to preserve them for future generations must be a matter of pride. If we study the environment of each bridge, and the traditions of its neighborhood, we shall feel a still livelier interest in them, and a greater appreciation of what they did for the people of those days. List of the bridges chronologically arranged : 1823. Funkstown turnpike bridge, 1824. Leitersburg turnpike bridge, 1824. Orndorff bridge, 1830. Hitt bridge, 1830. Cave town turnpike bridge, 1832. Bridge at Iron Works, 1833. Delemere bridge, 1833. Second Funkstown bridge, 1836. Burnside's bridge, ■ 1839. Bridge at Rose's mill, 1839. Leitersburg road bridge, 1840. Bridge at Emmert's mill, 1848. Bridge at Hager's mill, 1863. Bridge at the Old Forge. s6 ITbe antictam SIR JOHN ST. CLAIR BUILDER OF THE FIRST ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS His name is lost save in a brook of water That darkly plunges down a forest glen, Like that lean army pioneered to slaughter Through lonely shades to horrible Duquesne : But in the road he hewed across the mountains, Where Braddock sleeps beneath his wagon wheels, A living brook goes on from Eastern fountains, No wars arrest, no killing frost congeals. His was the skiff that hardily descended The wild Potomac to the roaring falls, His were the floats the soldiery befriended To pass the torrent, under mountain walls. His were the bridges over the Opequan And the Antietam in the morn of time, Crossed by a multitude no man can reckon To sceneries and destinies sublime. Behind his axes formed the van of movement. His picks and shovels were the conquering swords; And in the rift of Hght he ope'd, Improvement Went single file, through hidden savage hordes, Until the pack mules with their bells were merry Where rolling drums in vain inspired the fight. And sheep and shepherds tarried by the ferry That drowned a host amidst the battle's fright. Z\)c Counti? Commi00ioncr6 S7 High-mettled Scot! thine is no glory hollow: Shall we forget thee in our Westward Ho? — When thy canoe the laden barges follow And up thy path the steaming engines blow? No ! while the sky the Alleghany arches, The good road builder's name shall be revealed : Sir John St. Clair's victorious army marches Above the army lost on Braddock's field. Part II: The Bridges 59 Chapter VII Old Sharpsburg THE country at the mouth of the Antietam is rich in historical associations. One of the first settlements in the valley was made here. Sharpsburg, which lies near the Antietam, was only a year behind Hagerstown in its incorporation. It seems strange that neither town should have grown up actually on the banks of the stream, but kept away from it, leaving it outside the corporate limits. So, close to the Antietam, but not on it, we find Sharps- burg, known in song and story for the great events which marched by it for three days, through crowded hours. It is a town which has achieved its crown of age; for as we measure time not by years but by the pressure of living, these three days of Antietam outstripped years of peace, and forestalling time have given to Sharpsburg its place in history. The Sharpsburg of old is a subject to linger over, it was so characteristic of the days when English rule and English customs prevailed in the colonies. Its founder was an English gentleman named Joseph Chapline, who had the quality of leadership to a great degree, and was the ruling spirit of the community. He owned the land on which the town was laid out. The tract was called, "Absalom's 6i 62 ZTbe anttetam Forest," and was thickly covered with a growth of hazel- wood and chinquapin. Perhaps it was so called because the fate of Absalom would have overtaken any one who tried to ride through its thickets. The traditional witchery of the hazelwood should linger here. There is a little Irish song one thinks of when visiting Sharpsburg for the first time, beginning, I went into the hazelwood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel-rod. And put a berry on a thread. And when white moths were on the wing. And stars, like moths, were shining out, I dropped the berry in a stream, And caught a little silver trout. It tells how the fish turns into a laughing girl, with apple- blossoms in her hair, and how he follows her, Through hilly lands and hollow lands. To pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon. The golden apples of the sim. Even so the genius of Sharpsburg, evoked from the hazelwood, flits by "hilly lands and hollow lands," where the hill country crowds down, fold on fold, to the river. In the quaint fashion of the day Joseph Chapline called the tracts he acquired by different names. That on which the first bridge across the Antietam from its mouth stands, is "Little I thought it." It was the scene of the battle between the Catawbas and Delawares, and the words have something of a prophetic ring in the light of after events. "Little I thought it!" those Indians might have cried, if Qlb Sbarpeburg 63 they could have seen their favorite hunting ground turned into the facsimile of an English dale, with villages and farms; and "Little I thought it!" the fox-hunting, sporting colonists might have said, if there had come to them a vision of white men in arms against each other, and the roar of battle along the Antietam. In the earliest days of the settlement of this region, the two brothers, Joseph and Moses Chapline, came to it from the North, where they had spent some little time after leaving England. Joseph Chapline was a lawyer by pro- fession, but when he settled down on the Lower Antietam Hundred, and acquired large grants of land, he led the life of a country gentleman. To his first grant, which consisted of the land for three miles around Sharpsburg, others were added, and there is a certain flickering light thrown on the character of the owner by the names he gave them. Some were sentimental, such as "Love in a Village," "Little Friendship," and "Contentment"; others were of a sporting nature, such as "Hunting Ground," and "Hunting the Hare " ; and there were the purely fanciful "Little I thought it, ""Bachelor's Delight,"and "Loss and Gain." Tradition says he had an imperious disposition, and was something of an autocrat. His marriage shows that he carried matters with a high hand if his will was crossed, for he eloped with his wife, who was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister living in Virginia. This Welshman must have been a stern gospeller, for each of his three daughters made a runaway marriage, one with Colonel Chapline, one with the founder of Chambersburg, and the third with a lawyer of prominence named Price. It is, therefore, perhaps not to Colonel Chapline's discredit that he 64 Zhc antietam took his wife from her father in this way. It seems rather the irony of fate that the old minister, who forced his daugh- ters into such irregular conduct, should have gotten into trouble with his own church by juggling with the marriage laws of Virginia, in consequence of which he left it for the Church of England. When Joseph Chapline laid out the village of Sharps- burg, he gave the land for a church to be built in it. The deed was made to the Lutherans, with the considera- tion attached that he, his heirs and assigns, should receive the yearly payment of one pepper corn, if demanded on the 9th day of July. There is a church in Chambersburg which is required to pay an annual tribute of a red rose, and the stipulation in the deed has led to the pretty custom of taking red roses to the church on the day when payment falls due. It would be interesting to know if it was Colonel Chapline's brother-in-law, Mr. Chambers, who gave the church lot for this consideration. That, at least, has led to a pretty custom, but Joseph Chapline must ask for a whimsi- cal pepper corn, to which no possible sentiment could attach. The old Lutheran church in Sharpsburg lasted until the time^of the Civil War, when it was so injured by shells that it had to be pulled down, and another church was built on a different piece of ground. His second gift of a church lot was to a German Reformed congregation. The Chaplines themselves were members of the Church of England, but there were many Germans in the settlement, making up the two congregations named, and a good many years passed before an Episcopal church was built. These Germans consisted mainly of skilled artisans, who were brought over from the old country. ®lt> Sbarpsbura 65 Among them were glass-blowers, brickmakers, potters, and millers; and they made a valuable addition to the settlement. In time an English clergyman came to the village, the Reverend Benjamin Allen, a man of gentle and lovable disposition. He established there the first Sunday-school that was held in the country, and in the beginning it was taught in the Lutheran church. The Germans were not very well pleased to have their building put to such uses, but the Sunday-school was extremely popular with the townspeople, and in time numbered one hundred and seventy scholars. There was a public examination held in the winter, which was quite an event in the village life. Joseph Chapline's daughters, Jane and Sarah, were warm friends of Mr. Allen, and helped him not only with the Sun- day-school but in all his good works. Besides the Sunday- school in town, they opened another at the little village of Antietam, which stood just across the stream from the Iron Works. The Chapline chariot often crossed the stream at this point, carrying the gentle Mr. Allen and the ladies Jane and Sarah Chapline on their errands of mercy. After Joseph Chapline's death his son gave the land for an Episcopal church building, and his wife, who was burdened with the name of Mary Ann Christian Abigail (Ferguson) Chapline, sent to England for a bell, which she presented to the church. For a very short time Mr. Allen was in charge, but not long after the church was finished he left Sharpsburg on a visit to England, and died at sea. He was buried between the country of his adoption and his native land. The Antietam Iron Works, spoken of as across the 66 ^be Hntletam stream from Antietam village, was owned by Joseph Chap- line, and was in active operation before the Revolution. Iron ore was mined in the neighborhood on both sides of the river. Not far away, in West Virginia, were the Ore Banks, owned by Lord Fairfax, which have been worked, not continuously but with intervals of idleness, to this day. Cannon balls and shells were cast at the Antietam Iron Works for the Revolutionary War, and in times of peace it turned out such useful articles as nails and kettles, Dutch ovens, stoves, and skillets. At a later time, when Rumsey was making experiments with his first steamboat, some of the parts for it were cast here. / When the French and Indian War broke out, Joseph Chapline left his home, and took command of Fort Frederick. In a house in Sharpsburg to-day a copy of his muster roll is preserved, with the names of his officers and men. Brown ink and careful handwriting bring back to us the days when the Indians were the problem of the times. To-day there are other problems to reckon with, but none that can arouse the fierce fighting spirit, the heart-sickening terror which the war-cry and the murderous trail of the red man wakened in the old days of Sharpsburg. Moses Chapline, whose log house with loopholes in the walls, built for defence, was a place of refuge for his neighbors, lived farther up the Antietam, on his tracts of "Bounded White Oak," and "Josiah's Bit." He had not the dominating personality of his brother, but was greatly respected, and made warm friends among gentle and simple. Both brothers entertained distinguished company on their estates. Generals Washington, Braddock, and Gates visited them; and the Governor of Maryland, General Horatio Qlb Sbarpebura 67 Sharpe, was a great friend of Joseph Chapline, who named the town in his honor. When the country was at peace, there was much gayety and hospitality in the village and the country around. The Sharpsburg races drew a lively crowd. Purses of forty and sixty dollars were offered for three-mile and four-mile heats, and a handsome sweepstakes for two miles, so one may read in the old Hagerstown papers. Four horses must start each day at eleven o'clock a.m., or there was no race. The rule was strict for silk jackets and jockey caps, and horses must be entered on the day preceding the race, "or double at the post. Entrance one shilling in the pound." The good old sport of cock-fighting was as much in favor then as it is in the Philippines to-day. One of the anecdotes told of old Doctor Dorsey is, that he was met by a stranger from Virginia in the neighborhood of Sharpsburg, jogging along with a bag slung over his horse's neck, balanced by a jug in one end and a game-cock in the other. The contents of the jug was harmless, being no more than gruel which his wife had made for a sick woman. But the game-cock promised sport, for, said the old Doctor, "I 'm going to stop on my way back at Sharpsburg, to meet my friend Harrison of Martinsburg and have a round. And I shall certainly whip him," said he, "for I 've never had one of my brass- backs whipped in a fair fight yet. " A Hagerstown anecdote on cock-fighting can "lay over" this, as Br'er Rabbit would say. A distinguished citizen there tells, as one of his earliest recollections, that while still a little tacker in dresses and petticoats, he sat upon the knee of the second Doctor Dorsey, watching a chicken-fight with absorbed interest, in a quiet comer lot. Suddenly 68 Zhc antietam he was handed over to a neighboring lap, while the Doctor sprang to his feet. "Here, hold this child," he cried, "while I go up to the vestry meeting and vote. If I don't that d — d Doctor McGill will get himself elected." And away he hurried to St. John's to save the situation, getting back in time to see the finish of his cock-fight. Fox-hunting was another favorite amusement. It some- times brought the hunters into trouble with the farmers, and advertisements were printed bidding "Fox Hunters, Beware, " and complaining of the damage done to the crops. The Belinda Springs near the town attracted people from the country round. They were considered at that time as good as the Bedford Springs, and attracted people from the North by their medicinal waters. The resort was so well patronized that at times companies of actors would come down to amuse the guests. A boat went up and down between the Springs and Harpers Ferry, carrying pleasure parties, and a cave near the Antietam, which was said to have been an Indian hiding place, was a favorite picnic ground. We smile over the magniloquent wording of old advertisements. What newspaper to-day would venture to assert of a resort that "a numerous assemblage of fashion and beauty, every morning, " skip o'er the mountain like the wanton fawn." Yet this was printed in all seriousness of some neighboring springs, which tried to rival the Belinda Springs in public favor. The Springs are now no more than a name. When the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was built, along the river, 0si Qlb Sbarpeburo 69 cholera broke out among the laborers with such severity that it caused a panic. The Springs were deserted by all the guests, and closed, never to be reopened. Many of the laborers who died of the epidemic were buried in a field- corner on the road between Sharpsburg and the Springs, and no doubt the sight of the crowded graves was enough to keep people from passing that way. Charming old Sharpsburg, with its sporting gallants, and its lovely women. Where gentlemen gathered the most distinguished guests around their mahogany; where the winters were spent in dancing and gaming, and the summers in visits to Springs and neighboring country houses; when parties of young men and girls visited about for a week at a time, waited on by admiring slaves who doted on the quality, and enjoyed the excitement and good living as much as did their masters. It was a mode of life which has passed away from Maryland; gay, kindly, and neighborly; just provincial enough to be intimate in the best sense of the word, yet with a touch of the dignity which distinguishes an aristocracy. Those who regret the good old days are always laughed at, yet there was really something in that time, the youth of Maryland, to make one echo the sigh of the poet, that When youth, the dream, departs, He takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again. One other bridge must be mentioned in connection with old Sharpsburg, the Orndorff bridge which crossed the Antietam a short distance outside the town on the road from Sharpsburg to Boonsboro. This was the second 70 ZTbe Hntietam bridge built over the Antietam, the first to follow the build- ing of the turnpike bridge at Funkstown. Unfortunately, it no longer exists. At the time of the high waters, when the Johnstown disaster occurred, the piers of this bridge, which had already weakened, gave way, and the bridge was condemned and torn down. The oldest mill in the neighborhood was the Orndorff mill which stood just at the crossing of the stream. On a slight rise above the water on the Sharpsburg side, lived Major Orndorff, or Orendorff, a wealthy man and a person of distinction. It is said that he entertained all the officers of the Continental army who passed through the place. His house was built just forty years before the mill, and this in turn just forty before the bridge; things moving in Mosaic numbers on the calm banks of the Antietam. We have a picture of the old bridge, with two arches, and very much rounded abutments, and a pretty sweep of the wing walls as they joined the road. Over it, in the old print, passed a line of Conestoga wagons, with hoods like Shaker bonnets. A thriving trade was done at this mill, which had a fertile country to draw on. Major Orndorff was a man of note, when he lived at Sharpsburg, but fame clings to the memory of his two daughters, and makes the scene echo to the names of Rose and Mary. Mary Orndorff was a celebrated beauty, so be- witching that it was said no man could come within sight of her and not love her. When she was only fifteen, the handsome and affable General Gates met her on one day, and implored her to marry him on the next. There is a pretty story told of their meeting. Major Orndorff had twelve children, and Mary was one (S>l^ Sbarpebura 71 of the youngest. In those days, children were kept in the background instead of being put forward as they are apt to be to-day. On one occasion, however, when General Gates was visiting his friend, the two gentlemen were standing in such a way that, themselves unseen, they saw the lovely "backfish " Mary pass through the hall. She had on a new cap from Hagerstown, of the latest fashion, and, anxious to see how it became her, she went into the parlor to study the effect in the pier glass. General Gates, who happened never to have seen her before, exclaimed, "Who is that lovely creature?" When he heard that she was Major Orndorff's youngest daughter, he begged that she might be at the tea table, so placed that he could see her. The opportunity completed his conquest, and the next day he was begging her to be his bride. The little beauty laughed at his elderly courtship, and was much amused at being made love to by her father's contemporary. Suitors she had a-plenty, and youth turning to youth, she married young Jonathan Hager, son of the founder of Hagerstown. It is, as Carlyle would say, "significant of much," that he married her on the day after he was accepted, too wise to risk a chance by waiting. So the lovely Mary Orndorff went to Hagerstown to live in a house in the Square, and was left a widow while still young and beautiful, and again had many suitors. . One of them was the distinguished lawyer, Luther Martin, who courted her vainly through several years. Some of his letters to her were preserved, and it is amusing and touching to read of his devotion. In one alone he calls her by all of these endearing terms: "My dearest Mrs. H.," "Best and most beloved of women," "My dear, my 72 ^be antic tarn tenderly beloved," "My charming widow," "My best beloved, dearest Woman." He had begged that she send him an invitation to eat his Christmas dinner with her, but she would not give him so much encouragement. The letter quoted from is his reply to her cruel decision. But, like a gallant lover, he sent her a jug of choice madeira and asked, "On Xmas day at exactly J past 12, drink a glass of the wine to the health of your lover, and I will also drink a glass to the health and happiness of my mistress" ; ending with the words, "Bless with another dear letter, Your Martin. " Rose Orndorff was as celebrated in her way as her beauti- ful sister. She must have been a frail, delicate girl, for she was subject to cataleptic trances, and when in this condition was believed to have the gift of second sight. People thought she communicated with spirits, and crowds came from all the country round to see her. They consulted her about the future, and tried through her to get into com- munication with their loved ones, lost through death or separation. We can imagine many a widow, left to endure her hard life in loneliness, trying through Rose Orndorff to get a message from the other world. Or parents whose child had disappeared after the passing of a band of Indians, distracted with grief, would seek through her a clue by which to follow after the little one. In these days, when a vast machinery is set in motion, and the most eager interest is awakened in every State for the recovery of a kidnapped child, it is sad to think of the hopelessness of their search. The blue-eyed girl, the rosy-cheeked boy, passed into the silence of the wilderness, to lose his identity in that of the ®lb Sbarpsbura 73 race which carried him away. The Antietam has reflected many of these Httle ones, wading in its shallows, fishing in its pools, their faces browned by exposure to the hue of the race that carried them captive. It is told by a gentle- men in Hagerstown to-day, that for years, whenever a tribe of Indians came through the town, his father would visit the camp with presents, in the faint hope that a long lost sister might be found among them. Every woman's face would be carefully scanned to see if some trait might connect her with the lost child ; but though once or twice some face seemed to indicate an alien race, it would be so browned by exposure, and so moulded by life with the savages, that it was impossible to hope that she had been found. So Rose Orndorff exercised her strange gift for the help of people who came to her with their troubles. We have the testimony of papers of that day that people came in crowds to consult the young girl, — "Sta. Rosa Vitoza, " as she was fancifully called. In her cataleptic state she was insensible to pain, and curiosity of a more common order moved many of her guests to stick pins into the uncon- scious Rose, to see if she would wince. Finally some of her family or friends were obliged to stay in the room, when she had visitors, to protect her from these experiments. After the marriage of his daughter Mary, Major Orn- dorff moved to Kentucky with Rose. Beside the constant fever for the West that fired men's blood, he may have been moved by the wish to escape from the annoyances caused by his daughter's notoriety. But she made him promise that if she died there, he would bring her back to Sharps- burg to be buried, and he kept his word and laid her to rest near the Antietam. Chapter VIII The Lower Antietam and Burnside's Bridge THE largest of the bridges over the Antietam is that which is situated at the mouth of the stream, a short distance from the spot where it empties into the Potomac River. At this point the Antietam is crossed by the road from Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry. At the time of the battle of Antietam, the troops which came up from Harpers Ferry to reinforce General Lee passed over this bridge, and after the battle a part of the Southern forces retreated along the same road. It is the only bridge of the series which has four arches, and is a fine structure, picturesquely situated where the stream is wide, and flows over a rocky bed. The little village called "Antietam" on its northern bank, the home of the laborers employed at the Iron Works, is as old as Sharpsburg itself. The three bridges standing within a short distance of each other from the mouth of the creek were seen for the first time on a June evening when the flowers of spring made the country beautiful. The wheat fields were a vivid green, and the forest trees clothed with fresh verdure. The coun- try between Sharpsburg and the Potomac River, through which one drives to reach the Antietam bridge, is a succes- 74 tHower antietam anb Burn0i^e'0 Brlbge 75 sion of rolling hills, which as the river is neared become steeper and more crowded, like the foot-hills of the Cali- fornia coast ranges. In one place the mountains break, and one looks back through the opening to range on range, growing fainter in the distance. Among these crowded hills are farmhouses built on slopes, surrounded by stone walls. The houses themselves are of gray limestone, with great barns and clustering out-houses. Little paths lead through pasture bars down steep hillsides, and places which the plough cannot reach are lit up with pink redbud, and dog- wood's snow. There is something Japanese in the character of both of these, in the knotted boughs of the one, and the horizontal planes of the other. Here and there on rock breaks in hilly fields, dark cedars throw out in high relief their peach-like blossoms, and sheets of snow. The country between Sharpsburg and the river, with its "hilly lands and hollow lands," with its untamable bits, and old, old homesteads, is too full of sad memories. Those stone houses and barns were used as hospitals during the battle. Behind these walls along the roadside, the soldiers lay and fired through long hours before they were driven from their position. The road passes a field-comer marked off with trees. This is where the Irish dead were buried at the time of the cholera epidemic. So many laborers on the canal died, that the authorities became alarmed, and forbade their burial in Hagerstown or Sharpsburg. So a priest came from the former town and consecrated this field-corner and here were laid five hundred dead. It seems incredible that such a small space should be so thickly peopled. But one is told that the farmers, ploughing the fields for their 76 Zbc antietam crops, gradually lost their reverence for the spot by too much familiarity, and have encroached upon it by degrees. In any case, the bones of the dead must lie thick in this comer. Many and many a son of Con, the Hundred-fighter, In the red earth lies at rest. Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers. (We may not add, "Many a swan- white breast.") At the mouth of the creek is a scene of great beauty. That soft haze which seems to linger over the Potomac in every season clothes its banks with mysterious loveli- ness, and gives a dreamy indistinctness to the distant reaches of water. The Antietam runs merrily over its rocky bed, for once hurried out of its slow meandering, as if in haste to join the river. A sunset sky, and the faint purple tones of evening, give color to the landscape. Great buttonwoods lean out over the creek, and elms in full leaf stand along the river banks. Wild violets make splashes of blue along the fences, and the stems of the papaw are set with its curious flowers. At this stage, not yet matured, they are a vivid arsenic green, with calyx of brown velvet. The flower turns purple when it comes to maturity, but now its kinship to the poisonous families of plants is shown by its strange green coloring. An aqueduct carries the waters of the canal across the creek mouth, and just here is the old Indian battle-ground. One is told that if he so much as scratches the ground, arrowheads and bones can be uncovered. A few yards up the stream stands the large bridge of four arches. There is no tablet to tell that it was built in 1832, by John Weaver. The water brawls beneath the bridge, over the stones, making a pleasant sound. On the opposite bank Xowcr antietam an^ Burneibe's Bridge 77 are the ruins of the Antietam Iron Works, half hidden by trees, and lying at the foot of a steep, wooded hill. On the Sharpsburg side of the stream is the old village of Antietam. In its decay, it has that look of paralysis that is so melancholy in places where human beings still make their homes. The houses rise steeply up the stony hill. A high retaining wall above the road is draped with a drooping vine called "wild jessamine" in this part of the country. Great mulleins grow between the stones of the wall, spreading out fiat, woolly rosettes. And in the comer of a yard is a great clump of white and purple lilacs, in full bravery of bloom and fragrance, as it is the mission of flowers to redeem the dreariest places with their immortal beauty. This is the village where the Chapline sisters came with Mr. Allen each Sunday to hold Sunday-school. Then it was a thrifty place. Now the only evidence of energetic life about it is in the swarms of children, who seem to multiply in every part of Maryland, even under the most untoward circumstances. A memory attaches to this spot. On the morning of the 1 6th of October, 1859, a man employed at the Iron Works saw a stranger going past on the tow-path. He noted the tall figure and singular face, with no thought beyond an idle curiosity. The next day the news of John Brown's raid startled the whole country. His house in the mountain was searched for information about the conspiracy, and among the searchers was the man from the Iron Works. In a picture which was found of one of John Brown's sons, he was able to identify the traveller who had passed so early along the tow-path. A sinister figure was this that haunted 78 ^be Hntietam the Maryland hills; the old man, with the manners and appearance of a patriarch, coming to his work stained with the blood of women and children, and at heart what would be called in the West, simply a ' ' Bad Man. " The drive back from the old bridge to Sharpsburg was taken over the road which goes through the battlefield. Along this road are many monuments. On some of them, young men with eager faces lean forw-ard to scan the field. They call up too poignantly the many high-spirited youths who died here. It is a melancholy sight, and gives rise to uncanny thoughts. For if the dead along the Antietam should rise, what numbers, of what various nations, would be here! Indian warriors, painted and feathered; red Irishmen and blue-eyed, black-haired Celts; young Ameri- cans, descendants of the Cavaliers, and men of the North; mercenaries of all nations, and black Africans with rolling eyes. Perhaps people living here and accustomed to these surroundings are as little affected by them as we would be on visiting the pyramids; but one would think the ploughman turning up bones and bullets in his furrows would be too sharply reminded of the shortness of human life, and of the tragedies which took place on this ground. '■ Burnside's bridge, the most famous of the bridges over the Antietam, is a small bridge of three arches; but so perfect in its proportions and so satisfying in its lines, that it is perhaps the most delightful of the series. Its narrow road- way leads from the lea of a steep hillside, on one bank, to a low meadow on the other. Water- willows, like silvery clouds, follow the bend of the stream, and sycamores with dappled trunks and broad leaves lean over the water. Against the middle arch of the bridge a young sapling Xower antietam anb Burnsibe's Brtbge 79 springs, and between the arches spreads a fan-hke growth of beautiful green. But this decorative vine turns out to be the poisonous ivy, too dangerous to touch, and is symboHcal of the history of the bridge, too bitter to be closely looked into. Below, the Antietam wanders slowly, the embodiment of peace, never more calm in all its unruffled wanderings. The trees are reflected in its mirror-like surface, doubly beautiful as they rise above it or dip into the stream. Wild roses peep from the thickets, vervain and daisies and deep blue thistles grow along the banks. The scene suggests no more arduous pursuits than following the fishes up their cool retreats, or spilling the purple juice of blackberries. The monuments of the battlefield are out of sight, from this place beneath the hill. ' There is nothing to remind the visitor of the battle except the two tablets at the end of the bridge with the names of men who fell during the fight, and on a distant hill slope something can be seen which looks like a low headstone, half hidden by evergreens. This very aloofness and seclusion, when one comes to know the story of the bridge, makes it seem all the more violent and shocking. We must try to picture the scene briefly. It was Sep- tember, and the fertile Sharpsburg country w^as in full autumn beauty. The fields were yellow with stubble, the corn was ripening, and the grapes in the farmhouse gardens turning purple. The Southern army had come down from the battle of South Mountain,' fought at the two gaps, Turner's Gap where the Dahlgren stone house and chapel stand on either side of the road, and Crampton's Gap where now the War Correspondents' Monument stands and looks 8o ^bc antietam out over two valleys on one of the most beautiful views of Maryland. Hundreds of these soldiers had marched down the road from Keedysville, crossing and recrossing the Antie- tam by bridge and ford, and wading it waist deep. \ This army, first to arrive, encamped about Sharpsburg. Next came the Federal troops, and we have a picture of their coming described by General Longstreet. He says they began to appear over the crest of the hill which over- looks the Antietam creek from the east. "The number increased, and larger and larger grew the field of blue until it seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see ; and from the tops of the mountains down to the edges of the stream gath- ered the great army of McClellan, ninety thousand strong. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle, as this grand force settled down in sight of the Confederates." I 'Now on either side of the Antietam the armies were en- camped, ready for the battle which was to rage for three days. During that time there were certain points where the fighting focused, which it became of supreme importance to take and to defend, at the cost of no matter how much life and blood. One of these was the bridge at the crossing of the Maple Swamp road. In the reports of the Generals on the field, we find the simplest and most concise accounts of the taking of the bridge. General Burnside reports on the morning of the 17th: "I received an order from the General commanding to make my dispositions to carry the stone bridge over the Antietam, nearly opposite our centre. -i^The disposition of the troops at this time was as follows: General Crook's Brigade, and General Sturgis' Division immediately in front of the bridge and the ford. The nth Connecticut Xowcr antietam an^ Burnei^e'e Bridge Si thrown out as skirmishers (Col. Kingsbury), General Rod- man's Division with Scammon's Brigade in support three- quarters of a mile below the bridge, and General Wilcox and General Benjamin's battery in the rear. '' Detailed General Crook's Brigade to make the assault, and General Rodman was directed to cross over at the ford below the bridge and join on to the left of the command which was to be thrown over the bridge." (This was at ten o'clock in the morning). "They were driven back. He then com- manded the batteries on the left to concentrate their fire on the woods above the bridge at all hazards. At one o'clock they commenced their charge and carried the bridge at the point of the bayonet. Our loss at this place was fearful.^ y^ General Sturgis's report says: "I now received orders from General Burnside to move still farther to the left and front, and across Antietam Bridge. The bridge was strongly defended by the enemy, and the approaches to it were ex- posed to a murderous fire from behind breastworks. The importance of carrying it without delay was impressed upon me by General Burnside. I went in person to the vicinity of the bridge and ordered the 2nd Maryland, Colonel Duryea, and Colonel Griffin, 6th New Hampshire, to move over at a double-quick and with bayonets fixed. They made a handsome effort to execute this order, but the fire was so heavy on them before they could reach the bridge that they were forced to give way, and fell back. " Again General Sturgis reports: "Orders arrived from General Burnside to carry the bridge at all hazards. I then selected the 51st Pennsylvania and the 51st New York. They started on their mission of death full of enthusiasm, and taking a route less exposed than the regiments which 82 Zbc Hntletam had made the effort before, rushed at a double-quick over the slope leading to the bridge, and over the bridge itself with an impetuosity which the enemy could not resist, and the Stars and Stripes were planted on the opposite bank at one o'clock p.m., amid the most enthusiastic cheering from every part of the field from where they could be seen. " The last word was from General Burnside, who says, * ' Receiving an order from the commanding General to hold the bridge, and the heights above at any cost, this position was maintained until the enemy retreated on the morning of the 19th." It is interesting to note that the rage of battle spent itself most fiercely about two objects peculiarly characteris- tic of the Antietam country, the old stone bridge, and the Dunker church. |\ A trip to the lower Antietam would have been incomplete without a visit to the site of the Orndorff bridge. The ruins of the mill are on the bank of the creek, low down by the water. Having been told that there was a tablet in the wall of the mill with the date of building, it was carefully searched for ; but even at the cost of wading through beds of nettles which bristled in defence at the foot of the old stones, and creeping around where the creek bank shelved away, no such tablet could be found on any side of the ruins. As it was said to have been there two years before, some indigna- tion was felt at the vandalism which could tear down old ruins to make a barnyard wall, and even take an "original document" to build, perhaps, into the home of the numerous little pigs that went squealing about the neighborhood. However, on turning to leave the place, the stone was dis- covered lying on the ground and almost covered by weeds. A Xowcr antietam anb Burn0tt>e'0 Brlbgc 83 The inscription was made out with some difficulty, and was as follows: A. Q. 1782 Sep. 5. C. O. M. O. The beginning was without doubt meant for A.D., but the man who cut the letters made some curious mistake. The numbers of the date were carefully carved on the stone, each one decorated with a dot in the centre, but the initials which stand for Christian and Mary Orndorff were much more rudely cut, and must have been done by a different hand. At a short distance from the mill is the iron bridge. One sees with regret the chain of stone bridges broken by this ugly modern interloper. The stone bridge, built here by Silas Harry, used to be known as "The Middle Bridge," though it would be hard to say now what it was "middle" to, or midway between. The old names cling long after they have lost their real significance, and one can still hear the bridge on the Cavetown turnpike spoken of as "The New Bridge," though it was built in 183 1. Like the man in the Bab Ballads, of whom it was sung, * * They called him Peter, people said, because it was his name, " so undoubtedly the New Bridge once was new, and the Middle Bridge a landmark between two points. On either side of the water are the ruins of the stone walls, and hitched to them, as ungainly as a cow to a carriage, is the ugly iron bridge. It bears the inevitable tablet, tell- ing of the passage of the troops over the stone bridge which stood here at the time of the battle. The country about Sharpsburg is thickly sown with these historical tablets, 84 Zhc Hntietam and one cannot go in any direction without being reminded of the fight. It was interesting to hear two old residents of the county- speaking of the Orndorff bridge, and of the present iron one. They remembered the Middle Bridge well, and said that the foundations were not well laid. The piers began to sink, and gradually from having been a bridge with a good rise in the middle, it became quite level. Then came the famous forty days of rain, always spoken of in Maryland as "the Johnstown flood," as if the waters of that far-away Pennsyl- vania town came down bodily to swell the streams of the Hagerstown valley. All the creeks were swollen beyond their usual size, the Antietam rose, and the pressure on the weakened piers became so great that the bridge was con- demned and torn down, to make way for this utilitarian and unsightly structure. Discussing the relative merits of the stone and iron bridge, these gentlemen said that the idea of economy was a mistaken one, and instanced one in their neighborhood. A proposal was made to build a stone bridge for five thousand dollars, but the Commissioners though best to have a cheaper one of iron. This had to be constantly repaired, and a few years after it was built, it was partly replaced at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars beyond the original sum spent on it; while a stone bridge, more expensive in the first place, would have lasted practically forever, with very slight cost for repairs. Indeed one never hears the iron bridges well spoken of by the country people who have to drive over them. They complain of the disagreeable vibration felt in crossing, and say they are always glad to be safely over them. Going back to Sharpsburg for supper, one realized how Xower antietam ant) Burn6tt)e'0 Bri^^e 85 typical it was of the old Maryland villages, with its leafy streets and mellow houses. Some of these are of stone, thick-walled and gray ; others of warm brick showing cosily behind the fresh green of the trees. Lilacs and roses were blooming in profusion, making the air fragrant. Bits of lawn, and creepers softened the outlines of the somewhat severe dwellings. Here an arched doorway would give a house distinction ; or a square porch with colonial pillars, and settles built in on either side, invited to gossip in the summer evenings. There is a charm about these quiet places, far from noisy factories and the rush of traffic. But the feeling they awaken is something like that which Emerson expressed toward the storied beauty of cathedrals and their priests, Not for all my faith could see. Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure Which I could not on me endure? The quaint old villages fascinate us with their repose, but we must go back a hundred years in spirit to fit into their life again. Supper was taken at the hotel, an old square house with wide, arched doorway set with fanlights, and large airy hall running through the middle of it. Around the walls was an old-fashioned chair-rail, and the spacious dining- room with its high ceiling was a survival of the old style of Maryland home. It was inevitable that General Lee should have held a council of war in its parlor, and that memories of that great hero should have pervaded the last hours of this day at Sharpsburg. chapter IX Keedysville and the Hitt Bridge BETWEEN Sharpsburg and Keedysville is a hill country where the mountains advance and retreat. Seen on an autumn day of mist and weeping showers, they seem to withdraw at times to infinite distances. The trees along the creek are like phantoms half veiled in a pale blue haze. They shimmer through the mist, pure gold of buttonwood, red-gold of sassafras, scarlet-red of maple, and russet oaks. Here one all pale yellow cheats one with the illusion of a gleam of sunshine. Under them the slow water, opaque and green as jade, slides without a sound. In the dim light evergreens stand like emblems of mourning and when across their gloomy deeps of color the wild grape throws its wreaths of scarlet, and the Virginia creeper its crimson sprays, we have a picture of fire and charred embers, in all the melancholy beauty of autumn. There are many old stone houses on the farms; and log cabins with tiny yards have the unmistakable look of mountaineers' homes, with the forest coming down to the back door. In this region lived Moses Chapline, and near Keedysville is the Red Hill, of Indian memory. At a certain point along the road, across a ravine, is a 86 1kect))?0\)illc an^ tbe "foitt Bridge 87 little cabin with flat roof and windows high up in the wall, looking more like the living end of a canal boat than a dwel- ling. It is smartly painted white with red trimmings, and hanging boldly out on the side is a sign, "The Halfway Spider." The individual who tenants this shell, like the snail, moves with his house on his back. The whitewashed boards of the lower part conceal the wheels of a wagon, which is the Spider's dwelling. Curious must be the nature of this man, who lives on wheels, moving about a circumscribed route in this district. Without too apparent means of livelihood, the Spider weaves his way about from farm to farm, and is cautiously spoken of by his acquaintances. Curious too is the fact that the father of this roving character lived in much the same way, and gave himself the name of "Spider, " which his son has continued. It leads to speculations as to possible gipsy blood, which would stir for the open and irregular ways of supporting life, such as these two Spiders, father and son, have chosen. At Keedysville the limestone is more in evidence than in any other locality. It crops up everwhere through the soil, and is used for barns, houses, and walls. In the village the sidewalks are made of big flagstones, and along one of these walks a dainty sight was seen. Between the cracks and crevices of the low retaining wall, for quite a distance up the street, was a continuous growth of small ferns and Kenilworth ivy, an exquisite bit of greenery, springing spontaneously in the village street. Retaining walls hold up the yards above the street, and quaint stone steps lead up to perched gardens. Flagged paths wander in curves and angles up the sloping yards, around to back doors. Stone spring houses and bake ovens. 88 ^be antietam with low walls and hipped or conical roofs, are common, and it is delightful to see such solid bits of masonry for the little uses of daily life. In one place a heavy stone chimney built outside the house has two projections, jutting out on either side, to hold an iron bar, from which kettles can be swung for outdoor cooking. Near the edge of the village is a small stone house, strong and thick walled. Under the eaves a tablet bears the in- scription, "Built by John Weaver, June ist, 1835." Below it is a window shaped like a slice of melon, and then the door and windows of the lower story. Iron braces are in the wall near the door. In the early days of Keedys- ville this was used as a schoolhouse, and after passing through various uses, as Sunday-school, and church, it is now a dwelling. The hills fall away behind it, so that from the back there is a wide outlook. And next to living the simple life after the manner of the Halfway Spider, one might imagine it in this tiny stronghold, backed by space, looking on the village street before and over the wide reaches of valley and stream behind. The road to the Hitt bridge follows the windings of the Little Antietam through the hills. The steep hill slopes are thickly wooded with pines and cedars, elms, locusts, mul- berries and sycamores, hazel bushes and papaws. Between are great outcropping masses of limestone, of a fine gray, mossed with delicate greens, or hung with creepers. Here and there the road is protected by stone walls, where it is most narrow and winding. In a lonely place above the creek is a limekiln, on the edge of the dark wood. These 1keeb^6PiUe anb tbe Ibitt Bribge 89 limekilns stand in lonely places, and one can understand how they would appeal to the sombre imagination of Hawthorne, and inspire one of his most gloomy tales. Along this shaded road a human flower danced into view, so sweet that it lighted up the solitary way, A wagon turned aside for us, driven by a boy in blue jeans, with a shock of corn-colored hair; and perched on the seat beside him was a girl of twelve, dainty as a little queen, with white dress and snowy starched and embroidered bonnet, her starry eyes full of laughter, and her cheeks like wild roses. It was the vision of a moment, seen and passed, but so charming that it was like an event in the drive. The Hitt bridge is a fine one, standing in a lonely spot, and seems rather to waste its charm there. It has one unusual feature, the middle arch is decidedly higher than the others, and this gives it an interesting character. A steep road comes to it, straight down the hill, once more Braddock's road, very characteristic in this spot; not reach- ing the stream by a winding and easy descent, but plunging down, uncompromising and inconvenient. It is not much used now that the bridge can be approached by an easier grade. Here there was one of those natural fords, first used by deer and bear, afterwards by Indians, and later by the white settlers. A Maryland author has celebrated these earliest river crossings in his poem, "The Packhorse Ford. " The wild crane stalked the ford for pike, and stood a guide- post man to guide : The river in more shallow tones expressed the shallows it might hide. So when the hunted outlaw came, he saw the trodden ramparts slant, 90 Zhc antietam The trail go down and reappear, like ends of rainbow consonant. He told the peltry hunter where to guide the woods-lost emigrant." The bill for erecting a bridge near Mr. Samuel Hitt's farm passed both houses of the Legislature in 1829, and in 1832 this beautiful stone bridge was finished. There was in the neighborhood a mill, known as the Hitt mill. It was partly destroyed once by fire, and now only the lower story of the present mill remains of the original structure. The family which gives its name to the Hitt bridge is one whose history brings us in contact with one of the most interesting phases of life in the early days of Maryland, for the three brothers, Martin, Daniel, and Samuel Hitt, were of that brave company, the circuit riders of the Methodist Church. The Hitt family was of German origin, and settled in Virginia, but the cords which drew the brothers to this spot by the Antietam were those of love. There is still standing along the stream an old stone house where lived three sisters, Margaret, Ann, and Sarah Smith, who were loved by the three brothers. In a graveyard on the hill beside the house lies buried Daniel Hitt, who was called "the friend of Bishops," a distinguished minister, and the loved companion of Bishop Asbury. Maryland held a prominent place in the early history of the Methodist Church in America. One of the first Metho- dist preachers on the continent was Robert Strawbridge, who built a log church in Frederick County. When the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Virginia circuits had but one minister to travel over each, Maryland had Ikeebi^sviUe ant) tbe Ibltt Bridge 91 four ; and Baltimore early had its little Methodist church in Lovely Lane. The fundamental principle of the Methodist Church was personal religion, the direct accountability of man to his Maker. It found congenial soil in this new country, where men held the same attitude toward temporal power. Hav- ing broken with the old conventions in the political world, they were ready for the strong personal note in religion. Having, from the circumstances in which they lived, fallen into religious indifference, they needed a powerful influence to drag them back. The circuit riders might have been called hunters of souls. With tireless zeal they travelled through the country, doing their best to rescue men from the ignorance, and often the degradation, which was the result of their isolated lives on the frontier. They fought against the evils of drink, which had a strong hold on men who led outdoor lives, in places where whiskey was cheap and easy to get; and they fought as hard against slavery, which they believed to be not only morally wrong, but an economic evil to the country which supported it. Into the rude lives of the mountaineers, through the forests and plains of the West, rode the circuit preachers of the Methodist faith, bringing with them the Bible and hymn- book, and leaving them for the people to study. In this way, not only religion, but the noblest English, and the wonderful histories of old times, were brought to families whose lives had been barren of any such influences. From the forests of Maine to the pine hills of the Carolinas they journeyed, doing incalculable good. They won the respect of the frontiersmen by the spirit and courage with which they endured persecution. They were stoned and beaten, 92 ^be Entictam torn from their horses, kicked and abused, imprisoned and cursed ; but they dragged their sore bones into the saddle again, and sang hymns as they rode through the wilderness; and in the end they won their enemies to a hearing. In 1 77 1 Francis Asbury came to America. He was the son of an English gardener, and like St. Francis he loved out-of-door things, and little children. He crossed the ocean with his Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and a few works on religion. To him might have been said what John Wesley wrote to another preacher who was setting out for our shores: "I let you loose, George, on the great continent of Amer- ica. Preach your message in the open face of the sun, and do all the good you can." Francis Asbury, following the hard road of the Methodist preacher, rose to the highest honors, and a dear friend of his was Daniel Hitt. We have a description of Daniel Hitt at this time. He was tall, and courteous in manner. His eyes were blue, and his long fair hair lay on his shoulders. His mind was calm and clear, and he was very neat in his dress. It is a pleasant picture of the earnest and intellectual preacher, who roughed it with the most rugged of the circuit riders. His pastorate extended over Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He travelled from Baltimore to Pittsburg, Redstone, Clarksburg, and Frederick, and knowing as we do the condition of roads in those days, we can appreciate the fatigue of such journeys. In 1807 he was chosen to ac- company Bishop Asbury on his tour, and during this one trip they travelled five thousand miles, from Maine to the •Carolinas, and through the Alleghanies, following Brad- Ikceb^svUlc an^ tbe Ibitt Bridge 93 dock's trail. During this long and toilsome journey, they worked together compiling the new hymn-book, which was to be printed and distributed through America. Many a long hour in the saddle was beguiled by this work, so congenial to the two studious minds. Bishop Asbury loved Hitt, and when they were apart he wrote him many letters, which the younger man copied into a book, and in this way they have been preserved to the Methodist Church of to-day. The affections of the two were firmly knit by this journey, and when it was over Hitt was sent to New York to be the assistant editor of the Book Concern there, no doubt superintending the printing of those hymns which he and Bishop Asbury had worked over together. After spending several years in New York, he went back to his work of preaching over a large area of country. Once more he accompanied a Bishop on his annual round. This time it was Bishop McKendree, of whose visit to Hagerstown we read in old newspapers. Only a few more years of work were left to him. In all this work he had not been hampered by ties of human affection, for Sarah Smith, whom he had hoped to marry, died early. She had moved with her family to Kentucky, where he was to come for her; but the short love story had a sad ending, and he was left free to devote him- self to his exacting labor. There is a pathetic story told of his last sermon, preached in Greencastle. It is said that while he was preaching he walked up and down among the congregation, as was his custom when he was much moved, speaking to them person- ally. His text was from the thirteenth chapter of Jeremiah, where those are spoken of whose feet stumble upon the dark 94 ^be Hntletam mountains, where the light is turned to the shadow of death. "My soul shall weep in secret places," ran the words of the text, and "mine eyes shall weep sore and run down with tears." He preached so powerfully that his hearers were very much affected, and a little girl broke away from the congregation, ran to her mother who was sitting in a tent, and throwing her arms around her neck cried and told her that Brother Hitt was going to die. Already his feet stumbled on the dark mountains, for immediately after he sickened with typhoid fever, and his nephew Samuel Hitt came and took him away, back to the old stone house by the Antietam, and nursed him there till he died. There he lies buried in the walled graveyard, who was one of the consecrated souls of those rough days. Martin Hitt married Margaret Smith, and Samuel married Ann. All of the family, both Hitts and Smiths, moved to different parts of the West. The house by the Antietam came by inheritance to Samuel Hitt, the son of Martin. It was this Samuel who took his uncle back to the old place to die, and who later superintended the building of the stone bridge, several years before he, too, was fired with the western fever, and left the old place in Maryland forever. The country in the neighborhood of Keedysville and the Hitt bridge has its historical tablets, telling of the passage of the troops through this region. It is impossible to get away from these reminders of the war. There is a memory of Keedysville, belonging to those days after the battle of Antietam, which brings before us vividly the emotions of that time — the story told by Oliver Wendell Holmes of his journey in search of his wounded son. The kindly little lkeet)i20vUle an& tbe Ibitt Brt^ge 95 Doctor, whose name is a synonym for gentle humor, and a certain radiant irony, is not generally associated in one's mind with tragic things. He has told the story of the trip : how the news of the battle reached Boston, and the message that his son was among the wounded. The telegram which filled him with anxiety and dismay said, ' ' Wounded in the neck, though not seriously." He at once set out to find the sufferer. He narrates with the greatest precision and detail the incidents of the journey. His sensitive brain, made keener by suf- fering which he tried to suppress, was alive to every little incident, and every characteristic of his fellow-travellers. He describes the country through which he passed, and the plump Maryland women, whom he likened to ducks, in contrast to the thinner women of the North. In Frederick, in Middletown and Boonsboro, wherever a house or barn was turned into a hospital, he went, sometimes in the dead of night, asking always the same question of the rows of men lying on the straw. Were there any Massachu- setts men among them? He roused weary doctors, who were trying to snatch a little rest from their terrible labors. In time he reached Keedysville, which he described as a torpid little vil- lage, with his one question, which he had travelled five hundred miles to ask, still on his lips, Where was Captain Holmes ? For a long time no one could tell him, as there were some thousands of wounded men scattered about the villages and farms. Finally some one directed him to a little log cabin, plastered and whitewashed, where he had been only the day before. But the woman of the house said that the Captain 96 ^be antietam had gone into Hagerstown in a milk cart, in fairly good condition and spirits. He might have gone on to Hagerstown, but he felt sure that his son would go at once to Philadelphia to stay with friends. He therefore decided to go back to Frederick, and from there to Philadelphia, avoiding the passage through Hagerstown, which he knew was in a state of confusion. To while away the time before starting he drove to the outskirts of the battlefield, and forded a wide creek in which soldiers were washing their clothes, which he con- jectured must be the Antietam. A great disappointment met him in Philadelphia, for the Captain was not there, and had not been heard from. He went back to Harrisburg, and boarded every train which came in from Maryland, looking for his son. At last he heard of one which would come through from Hagerstown and waited for it with the greatest anxiety. It slid in long after the time it was due, and he walked through it on his apparently hopeless errand. There on a front seat was the wounded Captain, who had flitted before him as the will-o'- the-wisp before a belated traveller. They met like Anglo-saxons, without any show of emo- tion on either side. Had Doctor Holmes gone on into Hagerstown, instead of turning back to Frederick, he would have found his son, well cared for, in an old house built and lived in by Nathaniel Rochester, set in an old garden, with immortal box trees, and as happy as a man could be under the circumstances. Chapter X The Bridge at Delemere THE most romantically situated of the bridges is that which crosses the Antietam at Delemere. The creek makes one of its great loops here, between high hills which cut off the view in every direction. At this secluded bend of hill and stream it is as lonely as in the earliest days of the settlement of the valley, and one might imagine that the red man had just passed over the hilltops, to make way for the white races. The steep slopes rising from the water are densely wooded, and in their groves the birds sing like mad, as joyous as if nothing had ever come to frighten them away, and they were the real, legitimate owners of this beautiful spot. Before it reaches Delemere the road passes over a strange rocky ridge called the Devil's Backbone. This high and narrow spur lies between the Antietam and Beaver Creek, separating them, and forcing them to flow for quite a dis- tance within hail of each other before they can join their waters. It rises between the two creeks, abrupt and brist- ling with boulders. The top of the ridge is so narrow that there is no more than room on it for the road, and in places is so contracted that two teams cannot pass. If the sides were not thickly covered with a growth of bushes, 7 97 98 Zbc Hntletam which add to its apparent width, one would have some uncomfortable moments in driving over it. From the top is seen a curious sight — the creeks on either side flowing in opposite directions. On the one hand the waters of Beaver Creek glide with you, on the other those of the Antietam slip behind. The view from the height is delightful, the hillsides are clothed with the delicate foliage of deciduous trees and dark cedars, and lighted everywhere by the exquisite, fiery flush of the redbud. These redbud thickets along the Antietam no pen nor brush can paint in the actual glory of their vision; and if any one should think this praise exaggerated, let him drive through the country when they trail their clouds of glory over the hills, and seem to typify all the joy and rapture of awakening spring, as it bursts the bands of winter. At the foot of the Devil's Backbone the streams come together, and just at their junction is the bridge over Beaver Creek. It is a humpbacked bridge of one arch, with a high hoop like the bridges of tea boxes and fans, simple and solid and so quaint that it is the most delightful thing imaginable. The hoop rounds itself in the water, which reflects like a mirror the velvet grass and airy branches about it, making a picture which it is impossible to look at without pleasure Young hazel bushes spring up against its gray walls, and even a few small ones from the earth on the bridge itself. The Antietam now makes a great turn, and the road twists under the hill. The hillsides are too steep for culti- vation, so there is nothing to break the wildness of the scene. Another sudden turn brings one to the Delemere bridge, with its three beautiful arches repeating themselves in the water. Beside the stream are the ruins of the old mill. Zbc Bridge at Belcmere 99 draped in vines, its broken stones decked with wild flowers. High up in the upper story of the wall is a fireplace opening and hearth, and the arches below, through which the water ran, are still perfect. It seems to exist for no other purpose than to tempt the artist and amateur photographer to spend long hours by the waterside, sketching and making pictures. On the hill above the water, on the same side as the mill but so high up as to make it seem out of the picture, is a cluster of dwellings where was once held the famous school of "Delamere," taught by the Reverend Bartholomew Booth. He was an English clergyman, who lived before the Revolu- tion at "Needwood, " on the other side of the South Moun- tain, near the village of Burkettsville. When the colonies were at war with England, there was a great prejudice felt against the English clergymen. It was too often justified. Many of them were younger sons, sent to the colonies by their families at home, interested in getting them out of the way. Their behavior in America brought contempt on their profession, in Virginia and Maryland. In the case of men of real worth, like Mr. Booth, there was trouble of another sort. Many of them were seriously troubled at be- ing required to go against their oath of allegiance to Great Britain, which they took at ordination. They felt that, until they could transfer their fealty to another government, they were bound by this oath and they were in consequence distrusted by their American neighbors, and often driven from their parishes. The Reverend Bartholomew Booth was deprived of his parish. Forced to support himself and his family, he bought land along the Antietam and opened a school for boys. He must have been more liberally treated here than loo Z\)c antietam across the mountain, for it is a matter of record that he held services for several years for St. John's parish, then called All Saints', when there was no other rector. Hagers- town then had no church building, and the one nearest his home was at Chapel Woods, near what is now St. James School. There he held services in a little log church. All Saints' parish was then so large that it extended over three counties, and its rector must preach wherever he found a congregation. As we see it now, Delemere (for the name is so spelled to-day) would seem to have been a strange place to choose for establishing a school, the situation is so remote and secluded. But the road which passes by it was then the main road through Frederick County to the West. The travel which later went over the Boonsboro turnpike to Hagerstown, and on to the Conococheague, at that time passed by Delemere to Williamsport. It was the old Braddock's road, for when Braddock's army came through the valley, it crossed the South Mountain at Turner's Gap, came down by Keedysville and "Delamere" to Williams- port, and there crossed the river into Virginia. Twenty years before Mr. Booth settled down to teach his boys' school, that army had marched down the Devil's Back- bone (which must have been the Devil's own road at that time), and the woods of Delemere had echoed to the jingle of accoutrements, and soldiers' oaths, and scarlet coats flashed through the green. Guests came to visit Mr. Booth's family. Once again we find that irrepressible lover and man of the world, General Gates, courting by the Antietam. This time it was a young lady called Mary Valence, the daughter of a Liverpool Zhc Bridge at Belemere loi merchant, who was visiting the Booths. She listened to the General's suit with more favor than did her lovely but childish rival down the stream, and in time married him and went to keep his house at "Traveller's Rest, " across the river, in Virginia. Some letters have been preserved in the Booth family from parents who sent their sons to his school. One of them was written in 1777 by Mr. Robert Morris, who had sent on his little son, not quite eight years old, from York, Pennsylvania. He wrote that he was at a loss for school- books, which he could not get in York, and promised to send to England for them. He was so well pleased with the school that he recommended it to his friends, and a year and a half later General Arnold and Colonel Plater sent their sons to "Delamere." Considering the scarcity of good schools through the country, it was not strange that such prominent men should send their sons to Mr. Booth. Education was a problem for parents to consider seriously. In the Southern States, where plantation life prevailed, the household was a self- sufficing community, very much as in the old days of Eng- land. All the industries necessary for maintaining a family were carried on at the home centre ; and the school- master taught the sons and daughters of the family under their own roof tree. Throughout the South, the private tutor was the rule, and schools, even private schools, the exception. The tutor was usually some English clergyman, or clever Scotchman, who had drifted out to the colonies; and often the need for them was so great, and there was such difficulty in procuring them, that indentured men were taken on their arrival to work out their time in this I02 Zl)e antietam capacity. The young nation, with its eagerness for know- ledge, must find a way, and the absurd and pathetic cry, which often arose, has been recorded, "A ship is coming in. Let 's go and buy a schoolmaster." In New England the Puritans soon secured some sort of schooling for the children of a community; but there small farms drew people close together, and the township system of local government brought about a unity that was wanting in the plantations of the South. In Pennsylvania, neither strictly of the North nor of the South, the situation was complicated by the two op- posing races, the English and the Germans, who would not work together in the matter of public education. The Germans wanted their own language taught in the schools, and it took a leader like Muhlenberg to try to argue them out of such an unreasonable position. There were sectarian schools, taught by Quakers and Moravians; but public instruction was poorly provided for. It was natural there- fore that a good private school in the next State, taught by a clergyman and a scholar, should attract attention. The difficulty of getting proper school-books, which hampered Mr. Morris, was not confined to his experience. It was common to the whole country, and was complicated by the political conditions. At the time of the Revolution people began to realize that American boys ought to be taught from American books. Up to that time almost all school-books were imported from England. Only Cheever's Accidence, which was the standard work for teaching Latin throughout the colonies, was written in this country be- fore the Revolution. Other school-books had been printed in both Boston and Philadelphia, but they were reprints ^be Bribge at Delemere 103 like "The New England Primer," which was first printed in London and called "The Protestant Tutor." After the war Noah Webster got out his famous Spelling Book, and after it followed a number of arithmetics, grammars, and other text-books. The sentiment of patriotism in education was strongly felt by Washington. He deplored the custom of sending American youths abroad to finish their education, as was the almost universal custom in the South. His earnest wish was to see a University established in Washington, which would draw together young men from all over the Union. The friendships formed there would help to do away with sectional prejudice, for at that time every State was inclined to be intolerant, Pennsylvania looking down on Georgia and Maryland on Maine, Massachusetts and Vir- ginia eyeing each other askance. Much the same feeling which animated Cecil Rhodes in establishing his scholar- ships at Oxford, induced Washington to advocate the University, It is interesting to read the letters in which Benedict Arnold set forth his ideas for the education of his sons. He dwelt on the practical value of what they were to learn. "I wish their education," he wrote, "to be useful rather than learned. Life is too uncertain to throw away in studies that perhaps one man in Ten thousand has the genius to make a figure in. You will Pardon my dictating to you. Sir, but as the fortune of every man in this country is uncertain, I wish my sons to be educated in such a manner that with prudence and Industry they may acquire a Fortune, as well as become useful Members of society." He wrote that they were to have an allowance, and keep I04 ITbe Hntietam a regular account of their expenses, which account was to be forwarded to him. "This will teach them economy and Method," he wrote, with that curious scattering of capitals which characterizes the letters of the period. And he adds, "I will expect them to write to me frequently — of this they will doubtless want reminding." He must have written this with memories of his own schoolboy days, recalling the weekly letters home that are the bane of every schoolboy; the blind groping after thoughts that will not come, as soon as he gets his pen in hand. No doubt, too, he remembered his own childish accounts, filled out with the convenient "sundries," that take the place of "things it is more interesting not to know." These little sons of General Arnold are pathetic figures in the picture of Mr. Booth's school, and one follows their brief school life at "Delamere" with a melancholy know- ledge of what came after. The special reason for sending Richard and Benedict to school at this time, was General Arnold's marriage to his sec- ond wife, the brilliant and beautiful Margaret Shippen of Philadelphia. Henry, the youngest son, was left in charge of his aunt, Hannah Arnold. Their father was then in command of Philadelphia, living in a most extravagant style, with lavish display, and giving handsome entertain- ments. He was distinguished by his bravery, and by his wounds won in battle, and the boys looked up to him with admiration and pride. Of the eldest, Benedict, his aunt wrote, "Ben is eager to hear everything in relation to his father. " There was plenty to hear during their school -days. Ar- Z\)c Bridge at Delemere 105 nold's marriage, court-martial, and trial took place during their first two years at school. In spite of the kindness with which General Washington tried to soften the blow of his public censure and reprimand, it was severe. The boys suffered, and it is to be hoped that their fellow schoolboys were merciful. At this time their Aunt Hannah wrote, "We hear nothing from the little boys in Maryland. " In the year of Arnold's downfall the boys were left through the holidays at "Delamere." Through the almost exotic summer of Maryland, they bathed and fished and paddled in the Antietam, laying up memories for after life, for their later experiences led them far afield, to the cold of Nova Scotia and Canada, to the tropical West Indies, and to bleak London winters. Here all the hurrying life of a Southern summer unfolded itself, where the teeming vegetation, with its rush of foliage and luxuriance of growth squanders itself on field and hill, where the heat broods over the earth day and night, and owls hoot through the warm darkness, and katydids make their monotonous clicking among the leaves; where the mournful cry is heard from the black woods, plaintive and remonstrant, " Whip-poor- Will ! Whip-poor- Will ! " and the bullfrog sounds his deep note, twanging like the spent string of a 'cello; and with all these notes and sounds of the dark hours, the fairy pulsing lights of the fireflies flit up and down, over the meadow grass and through the bushes, like the lanterns of elves, like falling sparks, or shooting stars; where through the golden days, when the shadows of tree and hill are blue on the grain fields, comes the sweet, clear call, flute-like and confident, "Bob- White! Bob-White!" io6 Zbc antietam So the ardent summer moves on, from the time the flushed and eager redbud rushes into bloom, till the frost comes, and nuts and leaves drop again. To Arnold's little sons the fall of the year brought their most terrible trial. Their love and admiration received its most crushing blow in the news of Andre's capture and their father's treason. Their Aunt Hannah, who through everything was their best and strongest friend, sent for them to join her, and in the autumn, when woods and stream were most delightful, they said good-bye to the Antietam. From this time on until her death, they were often with their aunt. For a short time Arnold took arms against his country, though it was an ordeal from which he shrank. He raised a regiment called the American Legion, to fight on the side of the English, and the boys were given com- missions as lieutenants. When the war ended they were put upon half-pay, as retired officers, though they were mere children of twelve and thirteen. When peace was restored, they went to live in London, but the coldness and neglect with which he was treated were too hard for Arnold to bear patiently, and he went into a trading venture with the West Indies, and for a time made his home at St. John, New Brunswick. Richard and Henry joined him, but the experiment was a failure, Arnold went back to London, and the boys to their Aunt Hannah, in Canada, where her brother had received a grant of lands. Poor Benedict, the oldest, and the one who had adored his father most, died young, of a wound gotten when fighting as an officer of artillery in the West Indies. He was only twenty-seven. Soon after, Arnold died in dark and dreary Zbc Bridge at 2)elemerc 107 London, and the mournful tradition is that he asked to have his American uniform put on him, that he might die in it. Hannah Arnold survived her brother but a few years, and after her death Richard married, and had a large family, and in the language of the old tales, lived happy ever after. The two women who stood by General Arnold through good and evil were so much more than ordinary in char- acter that they make it possible to believe that there was unsuspected good in him to call out such devotion. His sister Hannah was a woman of strong and lovable character, and loyal to her brother to the end. She never reproached, him, and always wrote of him as "my unfortunate brother. " His wife, the lovely and gentle "Peggy" Shippen, was one of the sweetest women ever known. Very young when she married, sensitive and winning, with a character one would have thought too soft and tender to bear misfortune, she developed the greatest strength and heroism, devoting herself to her husband in the sad and trying years of life in London, and living in exile afterwards for the sake of her sons, who, she understood well, would always suffer in America for their father's disgrace. If these reflections deserve the reproach of saying an "undisputed thing in such a solemn way," it is because the drama of life takes on an added pathos when seen through a child's eyes. A child's heart can keep faith long after a man's world condemns him, and one can hope that these little lads, going out from their Maryland school, held to their childish affection, and that in the wider knowledge of maturity they ranged themselves with the two women in loyalty to their father. These are long thoughts for the banks of the Antietam, io8 ZCbe antietam more fit for thinking of by winter fires, when the coals glow and ashes fall: but one would like to have looked into the schoolroom at "Delamere" in the days when the boys were hearing rumors of their father's stormy career, and Ben was eager to learn everything in relation to him. We may be sure that in after years, in the long, snowy days of Canadian winters, Richard's children heard many tales of school life by the Antietam, of chestnut hunting in the woods, and possum hunts by torchlight with little negro boys, when he and his brother Ben went to school to Mr, Booth. Chapter XI The Bridges at Roxbury, Claggett's, and Rose's Mills /^VER the Antietam between Delemere and Funkstown ^^ are sprung three bridges, which are among the finest that cross the stream. They all stand at the crossings of country roads, in quiet places. No special history attaches to them; they are not connected with any historical event, nor identified with any well-known character. One thing they have in common, each bridge stands beside a mill. In each case the mill antedated the bridge, and the true sequence in which to name the triad which is repeated again and again along the Antietam would be, the ford, the mill, the bridge. For the ford brought the road, and the road drew the settler to build his house and mill where his most elemental wants would be satisfied. With water to quench his thirst, and meal to bake his cake, he was fortified for his struggle with the wilderness. When the first mill wheels turned, and the first meal was ground between the stones on the Antietam, this region was called the Back- Woods, a suggestive name making one think of the deeper shades and wilder country behind each settler who penetrated it. As from this little point a radius of settlement was made, the increased trade at the mill brought the need of the bridge. 109 no Zbc antietam There are but two exceptions to this general law : Bumside's bridge and the Hitt bridge had no mill within sight. When transportation was done by wagons and boats, the mills in the valley were important. Things made on the spot had their value. These flouring mills belonged to the day of small things, and glancing back to the old mill life one sees what the trade did for the country. As far back as the records go there were mills, for the settler's first work was to plant grain and com to feed his family. Fine crops of wheat were raised all through the Cumberland Valley. Tropical looking Indian corn, with rippling leaves and hanging tassels, and crimson silk tipping the full ears, grew to perfection in the limestone country. Where the road went down to the water the miller built his mill, and to the farmers it fulfilled the office of the country store, and the city club ; it was a gossip-place where they met and exchanged the news of the neighborhood and discussed the affairs of the nation. Weighty subjects were settled there, and every man's business was passed from mouth to mouth. The countryman, bringing his grain in saddlebags to exchange for flour and meal, enjoyed the idle sociability of the mill door. Strange figures according to our notions gathered there, for, standing on the public roads, they took toll of the news from travellers going east and west. Fur traders and trap- pers bringing their valuable furs and peltries to Baltimore rested by the stream and told tales of the western country, inflaming many a young man's fancy, till he was tempted to leave the safe life of the settlement for the hunting grounds. Wagoners from Baltimore, travellers on their way to Cumberland, strolling players who follow on the IRoibur^, Claggett'e, anb IRoee's flDille III heels of the youngest and rudest civiHzation, rested at the mill. The patent medicine men, such as now advertise their wares to the accompaniment of horns and flaring lights in the Square at Hagerstown, lingered at the mill to display their Damask Lip Salve, their Ague Cure, and Indian Specific. These were the days before the bridges, when the traveller had to wait for the stream to subside, when swollen by storms, before he could go on with his journey. There were other uses to which the mills were put. They were appointed places for militia musters, in the wars of the Revolution and of 1812. They were advertised as the places for the collection of taxes, and many notices, over the name of Nathaniel Rochester, called for the payment of taxes on a certain date at this or that mill. They were often used for the sale of household goods and furniture, when any farm in the neighborhood changed hands, and were favorite places for a horse trade. They had a place in the social life of the community apart from their legiti- mate purpose, and a man of character in charge of a mill had a wide influence. The notice which was printed on the death of one of the old millers near Hagerstown, " He was a peaceable citizen, an obliging neighbor, and Honest Man," might have been repeated on the passing of many of the millers of Antietam. When the chief shipping trade in flour passed from Wil- mington to Baltimore, Washington County farmers found a ready sale for all they ground. It was delivered to middle- men, who took it down the river to Alexandria, Georgetown, and Washington, from which points it was distributed. There were warehouses on the Potomac at Williamsport where the flour was received, and advertisements for hand- 112 Z\)c antietam ling it were numerous. To quote an instance, Thomas Kennedy advertised that he would receive the flour to be delivered at his warehouse before the ist of April, and con- vey it down the river to those points for one dollar a barrel. The commission men kept a supply of groceries suited to the back-country, which the farmer could take if he wished in exchange for his flour, and which could be carried up the river in the emptied boats. The equipment of the mill consisted of the mill building with overshot or undershot wheel, the mill dam and race, and the cooper's shop where the barrels were made to hold the flour. Near them was the miller's house, often of stone like the mill ; and very often a distillery completed the group. Some of the descriptions ran thus: "A new Merchant Mill and Saw Mill, working under a 19 feet fall, with two over- shot water wheels. The Grist mill has one pair of French burrs, and one pair of Alleghany stones 4^ feet diameter"; and again, "Two water wheels 20 feet diameter, about 8 feet head overshot, with elevators for both wheat and flour," and "A Mill house of stone, on a large scale, one pair of French burrs and one pair of Country Stones. " Superfine and common flour, middlings, ship stuffs, shorts, bran, buckwheat, and corn meal were ground at the mills. The same William Faux who has been quoted be- fore, wrote about a friend whom he visited, who owned a complete grist and saw mill, and had all the wheat he could grind for himself and his neighbors. From the latter he took the tenth for toll, in payment for his work. The services of a careful, faithful miller cost him five hundred dollars a year. There were numerous advertisements for good, sober IRoibur^, Claggetra, anb IRose'e fIDille 113 millers, who understood their trade, and such a man was offered a house to live in, enough ground for a garden, and a stable. Often the miller stayed for years at one mill. The mill owner might own several mills on different streams. Millers married millers' daughters. Again and again youth and maid, brought up in the dusty atmosphere of the mill, within smell of the sweet flour and clean grain, joined together and established themselves among the brotherhood of millers. Often the trade was handed down from father to son. The miller set his little boy to work when hardly able to carry his half-bushel of rye. When he went to Hagers- town, the little son was left to tend the mill, to see that the mill-race did not get clogged up with leaves, nor the stones gummed with garlic. The lad grew up with the ambition to be a miller. He had his book to read, The Young Miller and Millwright's Guide. He watched the great wagons with their strong teams coming to the mill door with their loads, and listened to the dickering of the farmers over the grain, and in time he too became a "dusty miller. " Go into one of these old mills, and see the cobwebs heavy with flour flapping under the beams, the rude wooden pins which held the machinery together, the old millstones leaning against the wall, the picks for dressing them laid on the deep window-seat, the half-door open above to let in the air and closed below to keep out inquisitive animals. There is something most attractive in the surroundings, in the sound of the rushing water falling over the dam, the quiet stretch that backs up the stream and reflects the trees, the noisy, busy waters of the mill-race hurrying into the dark- ness under the mill. One can understand how the miller's sons and daughters held to the old trade, and were well 114 ITbc Hntietam content to spend their own lives amid its sights and sounds. The cooper's shop is not the least attractive among the quaint, substantial buildings of old days, still to be seen all through the countr\^ under the lee of the mill. Sober coopers were as much in demand as sober millers, and good wages were offered to a journeyman cooper well acquainted with tight- work, that is, who could make barrels that would hold liquids as well as dry materials. The cooper, too, had his house and garden, beside his shop. Though the cooper put together the barrels at the mill, the principal parts were made in the mountains by the mountaineers who cut down the trees. The pieces were shaped by hand on the spot, different w^oods being used for different parts. All the staves were of white oak, all the barrel heads of chestnut. A third tree furnished the withes which bound the barrels, in those days of hand w^ork, before the iron hoop was used. This was hickory, and men to-day still remember when the wagons would come through the town loaded with long hickory poles, being taken to the mills to be split and used for binding the barrels. For the splitting of the hickory was the cooper's work, and done at the shop. The barrels were made to hold one hundred and ninety-six pounds of flour, and the cooper was paid for his work by the piece. One Washington County cooper, who learned his trade at Locust Grove, supplied all the barrels for the milling business at Harpers Ferry. One member of the little milling circle must not be for- gotten, the apprentice, w^ho gave his twenty-four hours to his master the miller in order that he might learn the trade. An inconsequent member he often was, the "stout, healthy lad of sixteen or seventeen, " so often advertised for. His IRoibur^, (TlaoGCtrs, ant) TRose's fBMll0 115 distinguishing characteristic seems to have been his irre- pressible tendency to run away. Was it the rough usage he received from the miller, or the incorrigible, adventurous disposition of youth, which constantly inspired his feet to rove, and carried him in the dead of night away from his master's mill? "Ran away from the Widow Rentches mill," runs the oft-told tale, "an apprentice to the milling trade, Andrew Chestnut, between sixteen and seventeen years of age." His drab roundabout, his swansdown waist- coat and linen trousers, and his mealey hat (whatever that might be, suggestive of his unwilling trade) too plainly marked him out for recapture; and for the imgracious task of returning him, the performer received no more than six cents and a basket of bran. What boy would now think his employer had a right to all his time, both night and day? He slept at the mill, in a bunk against the wall, and through the healthy sleep of youth and in his dreams he must listen to the noise of the mill-wheel, that it should not be too slow from the clogging up of the mill-race, and for the sound of the stones, that it should not become dull with the gummy exudations of the garlic. And if either betrayed some obstruction, he must waken instantly and remedy it. One of the industries subsidiary to the mills was the cutting of millstones of coimtry manufacture, called Alle- ghany stones. They were cut on the North Mountain, and used for the coarser work of the mill, the grinding of meal and middlings, and chopping of rye into inch pieces to feed to horses in hot weather. The stones used for grinding flour were brought from France at great expense, and were called French buhr ii6 JLhc antietam stones. They were made of a rough quartz from the Paris basin, called silica, which supplied the best millstones all over the world. They were very hard, honeycombed with irregu- lar cells, which gave them an unequalled surface for break- ing the grain and grinding it into fine flour. They were cut in sections, and put together for use with strong iron bands. One sees them still throughout the mill country, lying beside the mill, or used as door-stones; just as in fishing villages sections of whales' backbones are used for steps and footstools. Curious names were given to the parts of the millstone. The lower stationary stone was the bedstone, and the revolving upper one, the runner. The hole through which the spindle passed was the eye, and around the eye circled smoothly the bosom. From this ran grooves tooled through the stone according to a certain pattern, toward the margin, which was called the skirt. One part of the mechanism, which fed the grain to the stones, was the Damsel, so prone are men to give to their articles of trade feminine terms; the gunner's gun, the sailor's ship, the machinist's engine, are all, "She." On these fine French stones, flour was ground which old people tell us was far superior to the present flour made by the roller process. It rose quickly and had a quality which the present flour lacks. It was "lively-like," whereas roller-made flour is flat and lifeless. The other millstones, known as chopping stones, were used for grinding meal, and are still so used in the mills, where as in Bible days one sees the com ground between the upper and the nether millstone. It is amusing to note that in very old days in England, the lower millstone was called "the ass," because it was too lazy to move. IRoibur^, Claggetrs, ant) IRose's flDills 117 One thinks of millers as mild men, but they were some- times as tempestuous as the waters of the mill-race. There is a story told of a miller who was called upon to testify in a case in which he did not wish to appear. He declined to attend court, on the plea that his health was bad. The lawyers for the other side came down to take his deposition, with the intention of declaring that, by reason of his age and infirmities, he was not competent to give testimony. One of the lawyers was a young man just admitted to the bar; the other afterward became a Chief Justice. They drove down to the country, and saw the old miller sitting on the porch of his house beside the mill. Confidently they began to put him through his paces ; but soon, to the dismay of the younger man, he found himself being taken through such an examination in the law as he had never undergone, even when admitted to the bar. The perspira- tion streamed from his face under the merciless attack of the miller, and as soon as he could he got away from the mill, leaving the old man triumphant. Of this same miller it is told that he was called to the Conococheague, by the news that at a mill he owned on that stream the mill-dam was washed away. He came back in the worst possible humor. ' ' Damn a mill without a dam!" he cried, telling of his experience to a neighbor. "And damn it with a Damn!" he added hastily. Driving through the country from Delemere to Roxbury, the road goes over uplands from whose high reaches there is an outlook over hills, beyond more hills, to the distant mountains. Then, as what goes up must come down, the road drops suddenly to the level of the stream where the Antietam gleams, spanned by the graceful arches of the ii8 JLhc antictam Roxbury bridge, with its wide roadway. It is an old settle- ment, and would be beautiful but that the picture is marred by the great bam-like buildings of a modem distillery, padlocked and sheathed in metal, and the air is tainted with the fumes of whiskey. The man who built the stone mill, which is now used as one of the bonding houses for liquor, came to this spot when he was forty-three years old, and doubled his years and added eleven to the sum before he left it for another world. On through the country the drive takes one, past St. Mark's church, and by "Jones's X-Roads," where old Billy Jones had his smithy; by wheat fields, and hedgerows of bittersweet, where the butter fly- weed, most gorgeous of Maryland wild flowers, flashes its masses of orange, and daisies star the grass. One of the features of these summer drives is the clouds of small yellow butterflies that float along the way. They make journeys of incredible length for such frail atoms, and knowing this how delightful is their whimsical flight, their hovering over every object that attracts them. Now wavering in the breeze, now softly alighting, they make the roadside animated with a cloud of a hundred lives. Now settling about the margin of a pool, reflecting the clear sky, they girdle it with pale sulphur. And there is a spiritual beauty in these dancing companies, so effortless and full of joy on their long journey. By hill and dale the road goes until it comes to the old Claggett mill. The group of buildings here has already been spoken of. There is no finer collection the whole length of the Antietam. Within a stone's throw of each other are a IRoibur^, dlagactt's, an^ IRoec'e flDilla 119 great three-storied mill with hip roof and beautiful water- arch; a small stone bridge spanning the mill-race, so good that it proclaims the hand that built it ; and the stone house and large bridge. It is an example still perfect of the old mill settlement. Driving up to the house one summer evening by "early candle-light," to ask for tiger lilies which fill one end of the yard, the house behind its overhanging trees showed dark, except where from a wide basement opening the warm light streamed upward. It was so impressive, with its three stories and galleries running across its face, backed up against the hill and facing the mill, that it carried the imagi- nation back to the time when these mill houses were like oases in the desert of travel through a sparsely settled country, and symbols of hospitality to the traveller. Only a few steps away is the bridge, but so placed that owing to the roughness of the banks and the growth of underbrush it is hard to get a view of it. It has one un- usual feature: the abutments up-stream are rounded, but down-stream flattened and angular. The owners of this mill were large slaveholders, and their property extended from here down to Chapel Woods, near the college of St. James. They had a hundred men in the harvest field at once, and their mill set the price of grain, which the lesser ones were bound to follow. They were the first farmers in the valley to introduce machinery, and do away with the old fashion of threshing the grain with a flail. On the hill behind the house were other stone houses, in which lived other members of the family. Not much farther up the stream is another large bridge, known as the bridge at Rose's mill, though only the broken I20 ZTbe antietam walls of the mill remain. On the opposite bank are the ruins of the cooper's shop, and between them the mill-dam pours its waters down to the piers of the bridge. Once this bridge was seen on a winter evening, when the sky was like fire, and the air filled with golden light. The bare trees were sharply etched against the sky. In contrast with their thin tracery, the noble old bridge showed its massive bulk ; and the strong spring of its arches was thrown out against the shining water. Here again John Weaver made the abutments differ on the two sides of the bridge, on one round and projecting, on the other shallow and square. It is on this bridge that the peculiar feature noted earlier is found — the floor of the bridge widened at an angle, making a place where the wagons could drive under the door and have their loads lifted into the mill. These two bridges are the most individual of the series ; for though the Lloyds' bridges on the turnpikes are sub- stantial and handsome, they have not the special character of the two just named, which (with the exception of the little bridge beyond Leitersburg) were the last that John Weaver built, and his strongest work. Chapter XII The Bridge at Funkstown THE turnpike bridge at Funkstown is the only one of all the series which seems to belong to a town. The bridge at Hagerstown, though not far from the busiest part of the city, always seems to be quite outside of it, and is a lonely bridge, seldom visited. At Funkstown the main street turns a corner, merging into the pike, and comes out upon the bridge. The little village is so old, so quaint and quiet, with its long street lined with silver poplars which make a bower of it on summer evenings, with its flagstone pavements, its taverns and stone houses, that it might belong to the old country. It seems outside the rush and hurry of modern life. It is very neat ; and its little gardens, tended with the greatest care, were famous more than a century ago. The trolley which runs through the street, over the hill, and straight away to the mountains, does not in the least disturb its calm. Motor cars rush through without causing any excitement. Changes in the fashion of travel are nothing to Funkstown, for it has seen such a rush and roar of travel as this country will never see again. It lies upon the old turnpike road from Baltimore to Wheeling. Stage coaches and wagon teams, droves of cattle, swearing team- 121 122 ^bc Bntlct«nm sters, noted men travelling cast and west, all came through Funkstowii, and gave it the animation of a perpetual Fair. Nothing will ever waken it to such life again. It has fallen on days of calm old age, and is suflicient to itself on the strength of its memories, content to keep within its ancient borders, a clean, old, charming village. Its real name is Jerusalem, but no one troubles about it. The man who founded it passed away into the great Western country, and was never traced out in his new home. Only the village which he founded peipetuates his name, and that without the right to do so. Funkstown has content- edly given up its rightful title. Legal deeds are made out to property in Jf^rusalem, and one might believe he was tak- ing possession in a dream country, for its name is never spoken. It is like the tail of the dodo, of which the school- boy wrote in his composition, after hearing that it had no tail to speak of. "The dodo has a tail, but we never mention it." The bridge at Funkstown, the oldest over the Antietam, might be the youngest judging by the life and gayety about it. The trolley from Hagerstown brings crowds of holiday- makers who row on the creek, and make picnics along its banks. In summer the water is alive with craft. Young girls paddle in canoes, and brown and bareheaded young men take their boats up the stream. Children play on the grassy banks, and there is a continual hum of laughter and gay voices. The tide of youth and pleasure passes up and down under the gray arches of the bridge. In winter, when the country is white with snow, and a hard frost stills the waters, skating parties come to the bridge. The trolley running back and forth discharges Zbc Bridge at jfunl^6to\x)u 123 its load of merrymakers. Groups along the banks keep up bright fires, and again the scene is as gay as in summer. There is no place in the village where the young people can go for ices on hot days, or for tea in winter. The quiet town guards the bridge, but lies a century behind the life which eddies round it. This life of the Antietam increases year by year, as Hagerstown grows larger. One cannot row for a long dis- tance up the stream, but there is an unfailing charm in the quiet reaches of water. The wheat and com fields come down to the shore, and the farm wagons make a fine color, with their bay horses, and richly colored loads of com and grain. Or if one leaves the water to stroll through the village, there are fresh green lawns to see, with pampas grass and roses, and geraniums and begonias set out on the stoops. This is the Funkstown of to-day, but a century ago, its atmosphere was very different. One of the earliest memories of the place is when George Washington in 1790 rode through it on his way to Hagers- town. We are told that Captain Rezin Davis, with his company of militia, which numbered soldiers of the Revolu- tion in its ranks, went down the road a mile beyond Jeru- salem, to meet the General and escort him to Hagerstown. The whole country turned out to see him. He came to make an inspection of the Potomac at Williamsport, where it was proposed to establish the na- tional capital. But there was another reason for his interest in the river. It had long been his ambition to develop some scheme by which it could be made navigable, and become a way of communication with the Western country. With his far-sighted vision he saw, beyond the dreams of home of the 124 Zlbe Hntletam settler, beyond the hunting grounds of the fur trader, what would to-day be called Empire. He realized the greatness of the Western country, as no one else did at that time, with its rich corn lands and cattle lands, its rivers and prairies; and his determination to bind it to the United States amounted to a passion. He knew that self-interest alone is what holds one country to another, and that the inter- course of trade makes them interdependent; and in order to tie the West to the East, there must be an easy and convenient trading route. He deplored the necessity of a long journey by land. He knew that trade follows water, and that to draw it away from a water to a land route, the way must be made easy and all obstacles removed. He feared the Mississippi, which was the natural and easy path for trade to follow, to the port of New Orleans. It drew the commerce of the West, and would influence the settlers to enter into alliance with foreign governments. He saw in this a continual menace to the power of the United States, which must be overcome by substituting an easy way of bringing the produce of the West to Eastern seaports. His scheme was to make the Potomac and James rivers navigable to their headwaters, and establish short and easy portages between them and the Monongahela, the Cheat, and Little Kanawha. "Rivers are roads that move," said Pas- chal, and it was by means of rivers, those natural roads, that he wished to draw the trade of the West to the East. His object was never attained in the way he dreamed of. But in another way the end was accomplished. His de- termination to tie the Western country to the East by a trade route was so impressed upon his contemporaries, that it resulted in the great road across the mountains, and the ^be Bri^G^ at yunl^stown 125 tremendous amount of trade which went over it justified his passionate belief. Thirty years passed before the vision was realized as far as getting the road through the valley lay. All the working on men, the preparation of human minds which has to be gone through before great things are accomplished, was to ferment like leaven in the decades after this visit. The way through the mountains which was the path ultimately followed as a trading route was known to Wash- ington better than to most men. He had gone over the Indian trail with Braddock, though ill with fever, following the march of the troops in a wagon ; and both to the north and south of the Potomac he was acquainted with the woods. These almost invisible forest trails, faint and hard to follow, were unerringly traced by the men who had the instinct for the woods. They were as mysterious as those currents which flow like rivers through the yielding waters of the ocean. The path of the deer and the bear was beaten for man to follow in. The paleface who first made his way through those thickets, under the dim green light of the forest, listened fearful of the Indian, more dangerous to him than the wild animals. From time to time, far apart yet close enough to hold the thread of the trail, the palefaces would appear and disappear, till the wildcat and the chip- munk became accustomed to the sight. Then came a new thing after the moccasined traveller, the pack horse bearing his load of salt, carrying savor to the meats of the West. This precious freight must be taken at the cost of any danger and toil to the white men and women beyond the range. So the first drivers of the pack horse followed the path which the hunter and hunted had made. Rough and hard to 126 ITbe Hntietam follow, it was fascinating with the witchery of the woods, aromatic with the odors of cedar and fern, that incense of the forest more exhilarating to those who have breathed it than the sweetest peifume. This trail which Washington had followed through the mountains was the basis of the great road over the Alle- ghanies. From the mountains to the seaboard, the way was less toilsome, as that part of the country was settled and under cultivation. A traveller who came to Hagerstown a few years after Washington's memorable visit, praised the celebrated valley, lying between the mountains, and extending from the Susquehanna on the north to Winchester on the south. He spoke of it as being richly watered by navigable streams, and capable of producing every article which was raised in the neighboring sections. It was, he said, inhabited chiefly by Germans and Dutch, an industrious race of men, and excellent farmers. It was by their exertions that this valley had been made to assume the appearance of a highly cultivated country, abounding in the conveniences, and some of the luxuries of life. Among these Germans was Dr. Christian Boerstler, who settled in Funkstown. He was one of those enlightened men who thought it better to take an active part in the life of a new country, even though rude and rough, than pas- sively to submit to the tyranny and taxation of the German princes. Beside his own family, a wife and six children, he brought seventy other families with him, and they settled for the most part about Jerusalem. He was a man of more than ordinary ability, and very much respected in his own country. He told his Prince, on leaving Germany, that Zhe BrlO^e at jfunfistown 127 if he continued to treat his subjects like slaves, he would soon have none left to rule over. He was a valuable man for the new community, for he brought with him a great knowledge of agriculture. At his home in Jerusalem he cultivated flowers and fruits, kept bees, and made wine from his own vines. For many years he furnished the reading matter for the famous Gruber's Almanack, which was then published only in German ; and on all such sound agricultural topics as manures, clover, and plaster for the soil, he was considered the highest authority. One public work which he inaugurated, and in which he interested Nathanial Rochester, and other prominent men, has unfortunately perished. Together they had the road between Jerusalem and Hagerstown planted on each side with Lombardy poplars, making of it a regular alameda. It was so attractive that it was afterward continued from Hagerstown out on the western road as far as the Buck Tavern. By all these interests and industries that he encouraged, he was particularly useful, in counteracting the roving, unstable tendencies of the times. It was through this country, prosperous and well culti- vated, producing both foodstuffs and manufactured articles, that the gieat road from East to West passed, and it was the privilege of Funkstown to lie on this busy highway, and be stirred by the pulsing life which flowed over it. Until the railroads were built, the village resounded with the noise of its mighty movement. Armies of cattle and sheep, hogs and beeves trudged over the road, passenger coaches and mail stages flew over its level floor, and an endless train of freighters toiled over it, taking provisions and articles of trade from the seaboard to the West. 128 JLhc antietam The drivers of these freight wagons were a class to them- selves. They loved the road with the enthusiasm which a free life awakens. Life spent in the open, fighting the forces of nature, breeds a great race not judged by intellec- tual standards but by the qualities of manhood. Only the early life of a country can produce these intrepid, resourceful men. It looks back to the heroes of its dawn and says, "There were giants in those days"; but they were only men of a larger mould, and greater stature, bred by their larger opportunities. They pass away as life becomes less strenu- ous. Such were the early settlers with their steadiness of nerve and physical strength: the hunters whose pursuits developed keen observation, dexterity, and activity; and such the cowboys of yesterday, living in great spaces, spending nights and days in the saddle, and afraid of neither man nor devil. Only the youth of a nation breeds them, and when the need for them is past, the race dies out. The early wagoners who took their teams into the rough- est places, dependent on their own resources to cope with every difficulty, were of this brotherhood. They were hardy, adventurous men who often camped under the stars, jour- neying hundreds of miles through winter snows and summer heat and floods. Their love for the road was so great that when the railroads came and the freight wagons were abandoned, they pined for the days that were gone. There was one old man who had for years driven his Conestoga wagon over the route. It was all of life to him, to travel the long road, pass and repass his old companions, and stop at his favorite wagon stands. When the railroads came and he was forced to put his wagon under a shed, and turn his horses to other work, he pined so for the familiar scenes ^be Bri^ge at ifunhstown 129 that he could not leave the road. So he broke stone for it, and in that way kept up his outdoor life on the scene of his old work, cooled by the breeze and warmed by the sun, as in the old days of wagoning. The wagons which these pioneers of trade took over the turnpike were of the famous Conestoga make. They were heavy, with broad wheels, hooded to keep out the weather. The bed of the wagon was boat-shaped, rising slightly at each end, and painted blue, with the exception of the upper side boards which were red. The white tops, rounded and gathered to a circle at the ends, suggested shaker bonnets. With a tar bucket for the wheels, a feed trough for the horses, and a bulldog for company, the outfit was complete. The six horses stepped out proudly, and from their necks sprang thin iron arches from which dangled the bells. The gear which the horses wore was very heavy. The hip straps were ten inches wide, and the back bands fifteen. The traces were heavy chains made up of short, thick links. It was a feat of strength to harness the teams, and many a tavern boy groaned at the task on a freezing winter morning. The wagon saddles, of thick wood, covered with black leather, were ready for the drivers ; and the wagoner sitting surveying the broad backs of his horses, as they stepped out on a clear, frosty morning, with the bright sun warming the hedges, and the birds singing gayly, was like the carter's lad of the old song, "As happy as a king." At night they put up at houses for wagoners, where the yards often held hundreds of animals. They fared roughly indoors as well as out, sleeping on the floors wrapped in their blankets, with their feet to great fires. But the old time wagon houses kept good tables, and plenty of I30 ^be antietam pure whiskey, so that their food and drink were of the best. There were eccentric characters among them, whose peculiarities were accentuated by their independent lives. One man always wore a full suit of buckskin. Another had a fancy for black horses, and would never drive any others. This wagoner had a deeply rooted distrust of banks and would never keep his money in one. As owing to his roving life he could not hide his stocking under the hearth- stone, he invented a savings bank of his own, by boring holes of the right size to hold his coins in blocks of wood. These he carefully plugged up, and carried about with him,. stuffed full of money. One would think these portable banks would have given him as much anxiety as the town institutions. One giant took a pride in having all his gears made a full inch wider than the regulation size, and as they were heavy enough of the usual pattern, the tavern boys groaned over handling them. They smoked big cigars, made in Pittsburg and called "Stogies," after their wagons; they swore like troopers, and exchanged wits like costers. Said one Breakiron to another called Puffenberger, with a good assortment of oaths, when they met in a narrow way and neither would turn out for the other: "My name is Breakiron, and I 'm as hard as my name. But yours is a windy name. " "Yes," said Puffenberger, with his own choice of exple- tives, "my name is a windy name, and there 's thunder in it!" Strange things happened to them on their trips. Once the snow on the mountains near Cumberland was dyed red ^be Bribge at jfunF^stown 131 as blood for miles, when a barrel of Venetian red rolled off its wagon, and scattered its contents in its downward flight. Once a wagon load of oysters was wrecked by some accident, and every one along the pike gathered to the feast. When something went wrong with a man's wagon, all the fra- ternity who came by stopped and helped him. Sometimes as many as twenty or thirty wagons were held up in this way. Sometimes a wagon yard would hold thirty six-horse teams on a single night, with a hundred mules from Ken- tucky, and a thousand hogs from Indiana. The amount of noise made by such a company of hogs was not soon forgotten by one who heard it. A Senator was quoted as saying, when the road was under discussion, that "hay stacks and corn stalks" would walk over it. His colleague, annoyed at such levity, said he could not imagine how corn stalks and hay stacks could walk over his bowling-green of a road. It was explained to his literal mind that they would walk over it in the shape of fat cattle and hogs, horses and mules, and the prophecy was fulfilled. People living to-day can remember when the wide turnpike between Boonsboro and Funkstown was level from fence to fence, and filled with a moving procession of teams and saddle horses, coaches and driven animals. As they pass now over the thread of road which goes down the middle of the old space, passing an occasional motor car or country team, they sigh for the days of its glory, when the great throng that travelled it went through the valley, and crossed the Antietam by its stone bridge. It is little wonder that men who spent their lives on the road left it with regret, and how they clung to its mem- 132 Zbc antietam ories is shown in the story of the old wagoner who, after he turned farmer, kept his beloved Conestoga freighter under a shed, swept and clean, and carefully covered from the weather. The boys of the neighborhood were allowed to come and look at it, and hear his stories of wagoning; and old wagoners who visited him would renew their recollections of turnpike travel at the sight. The men who kept the taverns and wagon stands along the pike were often intelligent and well-informed, and had a good deal of influence in the community. Many of them were musicians, and a house where one could be sure of hearing the fiddle played, and a good song sung, was always a favorite with the wagoners. Like most men who lead out- of-door lives, they liked music, and nothing pleased them better than to pass an evening listening to familiar songs, and joining in a good chorus. In the same way the cow- boys of the West love their music around the camp-fire, and any one who plays to them is welcome, even if his in- strument is nothing better than the strident accordion. Woodsmen in lumber camps have almost always among their number one who can play the violin, and entertain the camp with gay or melancholy airs: and sailors, with their ditties and chanteys, have a musical folk-lore of their own. So it was characteristic of the journeying wagoners to love the heavenly maid, and a tavern where the host could play the old tunes on his violin was always a favorite. Among the most popular tavern keepers was an English- man called William Ashton, who kept a tavern in the west end of Funkstown. He was a great athlete, and was noted all over the country, from Virginia to Pennsylvania, for his feat of once having leapt clean over a Conestoga wagon ^be Bribge at funkstown 133 with the aid of a leaping pole. While he kept his tavern there he always had two teams on the road, hauling from Hagerstown to Terre Haute, in Indiana, a four months' journey. There were several taverns in Hagerstown, such as "The Swan," "The Bell," the "Lafayette Inn," which is still standing at the corner of South Potomac Street and the "Baltimore and Wheeling turnpike," or Baltimore Street, and the "Columbian Inn." This latter was attractively advertised as having a first-rate garden, well enclosed. But the wagoners preferred places outside of Hagerstown, which was a little too stylish for them. They preferred the more homely wagon stands and taverns of Funkstown and the inns on the turnpike to the west of Hagerstown. We might divide into the First, the Second, and the Third Estate, the different classes doing regular business on the National Road. To the last would belong the drovers, and all those taking herds of cattle, sheep, and hogs for long distances over it. Of the Second, would be the wagoners, whose freighters carried the trade of the country, East and West. The First would be easily represented by the stage drivers, carrying mails for the government, and the travelling public. There were various lines of stages, owned by companies and individuals. One of the most important was the Stock- ton line, and others were the People's line, the Good In- tent, and the June Bug. The latter was so called because it was prophesied of it that it would not last as long as the season of June bugs. The Good Intent was a temperance line, and the drivers had a song expressive of their good intentions, of which the chorus ran: 134 ^be antictam For our agents and drivers. Are all fully bent To go for cold water, On line Good Intent. Sing, Go it, my Hearties, Cold water for me ! It is to be hoped that this somewhat chilly chorus heartened them up on a cold morning, though one would think they would have willingly exchanged for a cup of hot coffee. One of the drivers on the Good Intent, named Peter Burdine, had a turn for rhyming, and one of his jingles has survived him. It ran. If you take a seat on Stockton's Line, You are sure to be passed by Peter Burdine. Peter was in fact a famous driver, but he was passed on one occasion by a rival, who promptly retorted with this verse : Said Billy Willis to Pete Burdine, You had better wait for the Oyster Line. The point of this witticism is lost to-day, but no doubt Peter felt the sting of it. Many notable men were on the road. One of these was James Reeside, always wearing a scarlet waistcoat and tie. He was first a driver and afterwards a proprietor on the Stockton line. The story went that he was walking with a friend in Baltimore one day, and they paused before the window of a tailor's shop where a piece of scarlet cloth was displayed. His companion (Colonel Johnson, of Kentucky) remarked that it was the coaching color, and Reeside ought to be wearing it. ZEbc BribGC at jfunUstown 135 "I '11 have a vest made of that piece if you will," said he. Reeside agreed, and they went in to order one apiece. But Reeside not only ordered a waistcoat, but a tie of the same color, and vowed that as long as he lived he would wear no others. He kept his word, and James Reeside, six feet five inches high, with his scarlet waistcoat and tie, and long drab overcoat, was one of the best known and most respected men on the road, and often seen both in Hagerstown and Funkstown. Another coaching character was Redding Bunting. He was a driver on the Stockton line, and taller by an inch than Reeside. He was considered one of the most trustworthy and resourceful men on the road, and made two famous trips after the railroad was begun. On a certain year the Presidential message was considered of such importance that it was thought it should reach the farthest limit of western travel as quickly as possible. To Red Bunting was entrusted the duty of seeing it carried to the end of the stage line, at the highest rate of speed. He went to Frederick, at which point the railroad ended, and where the message was delivered to him. Taking his seat beside the driver of the stage-coach, he directed the journey till they reached Wheeling, where the stage road ended. He urged the speed to its utmost, and the drive of two hundred and twenty-two miles was accomplished in twenty-three hours and a half. For this feat he was personally thanked by the President. On his second famous trip he took up his task at Cum- berland, to which point the railroad had come. This time he was charged with delivering the proclamation of war with Mexico. It was important to have the news known 136 ^be Hntietam all over the country as early as possible. On this occasion Redding Bunting himself handled the reins, and made the trip of one hundred and thirty-one miles in twelve hours. These were, of course, record trips. It was customary all along the line to change horses every twelve miles, but to help the pace, where there were steep hills a pair of horses was kept at the foot in charge of a man called a postilion, who hitched them in front of the leaders and helped take the coach up the hill. Then they were unhitched, and waited for the next stage to come along. When travel was at its height, as many as thirty coaches would pass a given point in a day, fifteen in one direction and fifteen in the other. The houses for the entertainment of travellers along the National Road were excellent as a rule. Henry Clay, who was a constant traveller over it, had a great fondness for their country fare. He maintained that they set as good tables as could be found anywhere in the country, and especially delighted in the buckwheat cakes, with their beautiful gray just turned to a golden hue. A tavern anecdote has been preserved of another great man. General Jackson, who confounded the road with his simple tastes. He was obliged to stop at some country place along the line, and the people planned to entertain him with a banquet at the tavern. The tavern keeper himself waited upon him, to find out his preference for the bill of fare, and to his "What, sir, would you prefer for dinner?" received the astonishing answer, "Ham and eggs." This was too much for the host, who stammered a desire to do him more honor; but the General stoutly held to ham and eggs, and gave it as his opinion that there was no better dish, where the material was good. Zhc Brtbae at jfunketown 137 This recalls a story of a breakfast to which, in the old days of San Francisco, a millionaire invited a party of friends, at the ancient and far famed Lick House. The gentlemen from the country prepared for a feast, dreaming of turbot and quails, broiled kidneys and chicken livers, when the man of millions calmly ordered sausage, saying there was nothing equal to good sausage for breakfast. Different houses had their specialties. One man was famous for his spring chickens and flannel cakes. Another for hot biscuits and coffee, and this man's popularity was well deserved, for nothing is more grateful to the tired travel- ler, after a night in the stage, than good, hot coffee with country cream, and nothing harder to find. Still another house supplied fried chicken and waffles, with real country- cured ham, one of the best dishes in Maryland. A number of the taverns along the National Road were kept by women, who by reason of their lonely state, or the trifling habits of the other sex, were forced to support them- selves. We may be sure they stood in awe of no man, no matter how high his station. There is a story told of a Chief Justice who was obliged to stop at a tavern in a small place along the road, and on whose table every day was set a savory roast pig. The dish was peifect of its kind, but after a while he was inclined to say, as other men have done, "Something too much of this, methinks!" So one day in magisterial tones he ordered the waitress to remove from his sight the too familiar pig. He reckoned without his hostess, for that determined woman appeared from the back premises, where she was superintending the judicial dinner, and sternly addressed him. "You are the Chief Justice," said she, "and run the 138 Zbc Hntletam Court, but I am the chief cook and run this dining-room. That pig must stay" ; and it stayed. The taverns of Funkstown were not behind the rest in giving the traveller the best of Maryland fare, the country ham fit for an epicure, sweet and dry, and exquisitely flavored. The farmers' wives and daughters brought in their fat ducks and geese, chickens and turkeys, and there was plenty of good whiskey and cider from still and press. It was natural that the taverns should now become what the mills had been, meeting places where the news of the day was heard and exchanged, and where meetings were ap- pointed for the transaction of business, and where taxes were collected. We see in old newspapers many notices, appoint- ing taverns through the country for the latter purpose. The railroad came, and the feelings of all the turnpike men were bitter over the change. Stage drivers and wagon- ers, tavern keepers and pike-boys, saw their occupation gone. The stage driver could no more be an autocrat in his small kingdom but must move on a level with other men. The wagoner must turn farmer, or keep a house of entertain- ment in some quiet place. The tavern keeper must see the decline of his trade, and dull days follow stirring ones. The refrain of an old song has come down to us expressing their feeling at the new order of things: Now, all you jolly wagoners who own good wives. Go home to your farms, and there spend your lives. When the corn is all cribbed and the small grain is good, You '11 have nothing to do but curse the railroad. Chapter XIII The Bridge at Hagerstown nPHE bridge next along the Antietam above Funkstown * was Hager's bridge, just outside of Hager's-Town, to give it its old spelling. It was neither one of the oldest, being built twenty-five years after the turnpike bridge at Funks- town, nor one of the best; but it was near the town which was the centre of activity for the valley — Hagerstown, a place known all over the civilized and much of the uncivilized world. It would be hard to go anywhere, to travel to the remotest parts of the earth, and not find some one who was born there, or had lived there, or been there at some time and known its people. At a Mexican bullfight, in the Trans- vaal, on the Panama Canal, in China or Japan, Chili or Peru, mention the name of Hagerstown, and it strikes familiarly upon some ear. It was founded by a German, Jonathan Hager, spoken of in the old newspapers of his time as a "German adven- turer. " The term "adventurer " had not the meaning then which attaches to it now. Then it was complimentary. One who adventured was a man who braved danger and took risks. It is an instance of the constant changes taking place in a language that it has come to such a different meaning. The time of the adventurer of the frontier has ^39 I40 Zbc an tie tarn passed, and it is now a sorry term, and implies that adventurous ways are ways of darkness. Jonathan Hager was a man of good sense and judg- ment. He had the qualities which make men trusted and leaving his native country he went out into the wilderness to find, not only freedom to worship God, as did the northern pilgrims, but also to keep the money he made instead of hav- ing to give it back to the state in taxes. He attracted other men to him, and a strong colony of Germans settled in the valley of the Antietam. The titles of his land grants show him for a matter-of-fact man. He called them by such plain names as "Stony Batter," "New York," "Hager's Choice," and "Brightwell." On one of these tracts he founded the town, and named it, in honor of his wife, "Eliza- beth-Hager's-Town. " There were so many German settlers in the country surrounding the town, that the German tongue was spoken on the streets, preached in the pulpits, and printed in early newspapers and the Almanack; and Hagerstown is to-day a land of sauerkraut and sausages, of Schweitzer cheese and good rye bread, of beer and pretzels. There is a little shop in the heart of town which is a little Germany. Its window is full of the German colored pottery which Burne- Jones loved. There are bits of toys so cheap and plentiful that enough can be bought for five cents to make the heart of a child dance for joy, and his brain addled with arithmetic. The writer once took such a little boy there one morning, with that magnificent sum to spend. He wandered about and looked at the pistols (two for a penny), at the engines and cars (a penny apiece) , and at the more expensive toys costing as much as two and three cents each. The benign Zbc Bribge at IbaGcrstown hi old German woman who waited on him, with her white apron girt about her ample waist, produced these wonders, but even her calm temper at last gave way over his confusion, and when the little boy was last seen she was somewhat sharply insisting on his laying out the seemingly unlimited five cents according to her advice. It is these touches of little life which show the heart of a town. At the High School exercises there was always on the programme the funny boy, whose inimitable drollery took the form of German dialect; and it was so perfect be- cause "the old people," his grandparents, really talked English in just that way when they used the language. The houses with their stoops, flush with the sidewalks, their little gardens in the rear; the fashion of living up- stairs over the shop ; the prevalence of Lutheran and German Reformed congregations, all tell of a strong underlying German stock. The famous Gruber's Almanack, still printed yearly in the two languages, was originally a German publication. The rabbit is the patron saint of Easter, and at Eastertide the windows are full of bunnies, eating carrots, sitting on nests, and in all sorts of droll and quaint attitudes. In Jonathan Hager's day the town was a busy one. Spinning and weaving, dyeing and coverlet-making, kept many of its women busy. There were chair-makers and clock-makers, saddlers and cabinet-makers, hand-workers in every trade. Because of the bad roads and difficulties of transportation, almost everything necessary for living was made on the spot. But that luxuries were brought in is shown from the quantities of old mahogany furniture of English make still to be unearthed at sales, the Sheffield plate and silver table pieces, the Wedgwood platters and 142 ^be antictam lustre pitchers, and the brass candlesticks, which still make Hagerstown a happy hunting ground for the collector. Life in the country houses was on a luxurious scale. The stables were full of horses, and the tables covered with good things to eat, for the Marylander has always been noted as a judge of good living. Whiskey flowed freely, to such an extent indeed that many a jolly squire found himself mort- gaged to his last acre. The two elements which subsisted side by side, the Ger- man and the English, were entirely different in spirit. There was a certain burgher thrift and comfort in one, while elegance and extravagance marked the other. To this may be attributed the fact which is very noticeable in looking over old newspapers of a century or more ago. The names of the English families have very largely disappeared from the community and their descendants are scattered far and wide. They are met with on the California coast, the Colorado mountains, and the Oregon cattle ranches. Like the English of to-day, they follow the frontier. The Germans, on the other hand, remained and prospered. In reading these old records, name after name is seen which is familiar in Hagerstown to-day. Families will often be found living where their great-grandparents did. The old trades are carried on, and could those early German settlers have looked forward down the years, they would have seen their great-great-grandchildren living where they established their households, reaping as they sowed, and gathering as they planted. They would see them better clad, better educated, enjoying more advantages than in those rude early days, but still with the same good German thrift and industry. The blue-eyed young man, fair as a native-born Teuton, B JLhc Bribge at Ibaserstown 143 carries on the old business; the handsome young woman brings up a large and healthy family in the old house, with its arched, fan-lighted door, to play in the same halls and garden where her father and his sisters and brothers played. Walking one day in the churchyard of Stratford-on- Avon with a Hagerstown man, he noted the inscriptions on the old flagstones and commented on the number of Wash- ington County people who had borne those names. So many of them used to be near Hagerstown, the Dalls and Darbys, the Lawrences and Buchanans, and many others now scattered wide over the United States. Hardly any of these names survive in the town, except as they are seen on the flagstones (like those of the English churchyard) of the Episcopal cemetery, neglected and half obliterated. For many years the life of Hagerstown pursued the even tenor of its way. Its citizens were always ready to flare into intense patriotism, and become impassioned advocates in a Presidential election ; but in the main they were absorbed in the local interests of the valley. It was still the outcome of its environment, limited by its geographical situation. Its connection with the outside world gradually increased, as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal came into operation. Both of these institu- tions were well sponsored, for the first stone for the bed of the railroad was put in place by the venerable Charles Carroll of CarroUton, and the first spade of earth for the canal turned by John Quincy Adams. These outlets helped it to wider interests. But Hagerstown was destined to a great awaken- ing, which was to make a vital change in the character of the town. One hesitates to touch even lightly on the subject of the Civil War, for a volume would not be large enough to 144 ^be antietam hold the record of its happenings in Hagerstown alone ; but a reference to it must be made in order to understand the development of the town. At first the war pressed lightly on Maryland, which was mainly a highway for the passage of bodies of troops. Numbers of soldiers went through it, and dwellers by country roads became used to the sight of marching men, streaming down the pikes and over the bridges. The people of Hagers- town felt the intense excitement of the time, and quiet Williamsport on the Potomac was the scene of one of the earliest engagements of the war. As time passed the appearance of the troops changed. Soldiers of the regular army gave way to volunteers, men equally in earnest, but without the discipline and smartness of the regulars. News of the battles reached Hagerstown, but there was always great uncertainty as to their real issue, the truth being often withheld for the sake of its influence on the public. After a brilliant Confederate victory those prudent people whose sympathies were always with the winning side hoisted their colors, and ran about wear- ing red-and-white ties. As the fighting pressed nearer home, gray uniforms as well as blue were seen on the streets. There were encounters, and skirmishes, heads out of windows, hastily drawn back as the firing came too close. At times Northern officers were stationed in the town, and a very charming society sprang up. The Southern belles tried their witchery on the Northerners, and wounded many victims. They were great partisans and ardent rebels. Soldiers patrolling the streets would see lovely visions in hoop-skirts and dainty bonnets coming toward Z\)c IBribge at Ibagerstown ms them, with heads turned scornfully away, and skirts drawn aside as if from contamination. Even honeymoons were affected. One couple spent theirs in Baltimore under unusual conditions. The groom, a notorious book-worm, who was on parole and could not show himself on the street, spent his days in studious enjoyment, while the bride went about with her friends in search of amusement. Sometimes Confederate troops held the town, always showing the wear and tear of war in their worn clothing. A shabby youth comes up the hill from the Marsh Run. He is of one of the best families of the South, courtly as he is brave, and engaging as he is shabby. He is on his way to call on some Southern ladies, and determined to have some sign of the gentleman about his attire, he has spent an hour on his knees by the Run, washing out his handkerchief and drying it in the sun, so as to have it daintily clean. Distinguished men and memorable figures passed and repassed before the people of Hagerstown. One of the most striking was General Custer riding down the street, brave as a lion, with his flowing sun-gold locks, wearing a velvet jacket on whose lapel was embroidered the guidon of his troops. His was a type not often seen, the dandy and gal- lant, always playing to the galleries and craving applause, yet in the final moment of accomplishment a leader of men, with all the wild dash and courage of the fighting Anglo- Saxon. Like the visions seen in a kaleidoscope, the pictures were constantly changing. The magnificent armies of the North, the tattered armies of the South, came and went. After the thunders of Antietam the town was filled with 146 ^be antietam wounded; people drove to the battlefield and saw the ter- rors of war, the accumulated suffering of thousands. They became oppressed with the greatness of the struggle, and its near approach. Then came the armies of the South march- ing by thousands toward Gettysburg to the wild strains of "Dixie," one of the most thrilling airs that ever led men into battle. After that terrible fight Hagerstown lay in perilous case, between two armies, the Confederates to the west, the Federals to the east. The long line of Lee's watch fires reached along the ridge from Hagerstown to the river. A battle seemed inevitable, but once more Hagerstown escaped. The impoverished Southern army was now fain to supply itself by force. Up to this time the rights of property had been respected. Now the case was desperate. The valley of Virginia was exhausted, its crops consumed, its soil trodden into sterility. Maryland realized that it must now pay tribute and farmers ran their horses off to the mountains for safety, and merchants hid their goods. One day a weary and dusty body of men rode into the town, and dropped from their horses to the sidewalk in front of the tavern where the stages came in with the mails. The owner of the stages, whose old stone house stood on the opposite corner, saw them and guessed them to be Mosby and his men. He strolled across and fell into conversation with them, and invited them over to his house for a mint julep. The very name of a mint julep rises like perfume to the nostrils of the Southerner, and the tired and thirsty men followed him without parley. The son, a young lad to whom war was a great game and full of excitement, was sent down into the garden for the mint. The raiders rested in the cool Zhc Bnt)Ge at Ibagcrstown 147 house, and refreshed themselves with the fragrant julep; but the boy, who had sent in the mint by a young negress, was running down the Funkstown pike as fast as his legs would take him, and turned back the stages just outside of Funkstown at the bridge, and saved his father's horses for that time at least. The crucial moment for Hagerstown now came. On a June morning General McCausland with fifteen hundred men, dirty and worn beyond any yet seen, siillen and danger- ous, rode up the Sharpsburg pike, down Potomac Street to the Square, and took possession of the town. At the rumor of their coming numbers of people fled, for it was known that they were in grim earnest, and ready to carry out any threat without mercy. The men were drawn up on the streets and kept under arms, for it was known that a body of Northern troops was not far away. McCausland sent for the officials of the town, with the demand that it furnish him at once with twenty thousand dollars in money, and fifteen hundred suits of clothing for his men. All of the town officials had taken flight, with the one exception of the Treasurer. He appeared before the General with a friend, and to the demand for money promised to do what he could to raise it, but the clothing he said it was impossible to furnish, as the shops had been practically stripped of their goods. He was told that money and clothes must be forthcoming within one hour, or Hagerstown would be burned to the ground. The unhappy gentleman went off to consult with all the most influential men he could find, and they determined to satisfy the demand as far as it was possible. Again the Treasurer appeared before the General, and told him the 148 Z\)c antietam money would all be paid, but the clothing for fifteen hundred men could not be procured, it was an impossibility. "Then, by the Living God," cried McCausland, "I'll burn the town. " Again the Treasurer set off to try to save Hagerstown. The man whose influence in the community at that time was paramount, was ill and crippled. He was the President of the Hagerstown Bank, wealthy as wealth was counted in those days, a strong man and used to dealing with men. He was the only one who, it was felt, could cope with the situa- tion, but he was unable to go so far as the Market House. McCausland, after some trouble, was induced to come down to see him at the Court House, and listen to what he had to say. Ill and disabled as he was, the invalid, helped by his negro body servant who never left him, made his painful way to the Court House on crutches, and met the stern and irritable General. All the tact and subtlety of the sick man were employed to mollify McCausland. He represented that if the town were burned for its failure to do the impossible, it would injure many warm friends of the South, and accom- plish nothing good. The money would be raised among the Hagerstown banks at once, and as much clothing as could be collected would be turned over. At last the General softened, and agreed to the terms if they were carried out within three hours, foi he was anxious to get away as quickly as possible. Then there was a running to and fro, and the names of many citizens were signed to the notes on the banks; and such a motley collection of garments as never was seen before was brought into the Court House and piled upon the floor. From shops and private houses. ^be BribQC at Ibagerstowu 149 suits new and old, ragged and handsome, bales of cloth, shoes and hats, everything that could be brought together was poured out as a libation to the God of War, and must have caused almost as much amusement and dismay as pleasure in the minds of those who fell heirs to it. The money was handed over, a receipt taken for it, and for the clothing, and the soldiers rode out of Hagerstown as rapidly as possible. The town was unharmed, only saddled with a debt which it took years to wipe out, but saved from the fate of Chambersburg, which later was burned by McCausland for its failure to supply his demands. The war came to an end, and Hagerstown had passed safely through its perils and dangers, but the spirit of the community was entirely changed by it. Maryland men had never been extensive slaveholders; they were kindly and even indulgent masters, and many of them had always been opposed to that form of property. But the loss of such slaves as they had made the cultivation of their fertile farms and manors so much less profitable, that many land- holders were drawn to the town, to try for new channels of activity. Many mills along the streams which had been closed at the time of the Southern raids into Maryland were never reopened. Manufactures on a larger scale were established, the town grew, and from being in its character something of an overgrown village, came forward with this wider development to take its place among cities. To-day it has passed far beyond the time of adventure and romance. Many mills still turn along the Antietam, but they are small industries now. Steam and electricity have outstripped water power, and the murmur of the mill- wheel is drowned in the noise of machinery. There are ISO ^be Hntietam many factories on the outskirts of the town, and the noon hour lets loose every sort of whistle. The deep, musical, organ tones of one set an example of what such things can be. Other ambitious ones shriek through a whole scale of piercing notes, and the more commonplace blare and scream. But the surroundings of the town are still as lovely as when William Faux drove down the mountain from the Gap near Boonsboro, and saw it surrounded with small moun- tains, and admired its Dutch gothic spires. The Blue Ridges give it a beautiful setting, and fine mountain air. Looking down from some high hill, in the evening light when the sun has set in a clear sky, suffusing it with gold, one sees the town like a long crescent, one tip lying beside the old Crawford Works, the other resting by the egg-shaped dome of the Fair buildings. Softened by the light smoke from household fires, with electric lights glimmering out in bright, star-like points, it is a fair sight and the men who founded it would have rejoiced if they could have seen the end of their adventure. Among the traces which the English colonists left behind them, are some old-country words still used by their de- scendants. The word ' ' poke " is heard throughout the valley in its meaning of a small bag, and the market people will offer to put one's peaches "in a poke. " But a more unusual survival in the vernacular of the day is the expression, "the dik, " used by Hagerstown men of all ages. Speaking of their small-boy days of bathing in the Marsh Run, it is always alluded to as "bathing in the dik," though no one could tell why. It was just "the dik," of course, and everybody called it so. But happening upon a description of the earliest days of England, in an allusion to Romney Zhc Bridge at Ibaaeretown 15 ^ Marsh, the very same word was found, used in describing the channels of water cutting through the Marsh, which were called "the diks," thus explaining the Hagerstown boys' word, and proving its long descent. Every year for a week in October is held the Great Hagerstown Fair, which makes the name of Hagerstown famous throughout the country. The town is given up to it, swamped, every interest submerged in the rush of it. An immense tide of humanity pours in from the neighboring States. The stock farms of the West send their exhibits of sullen bulls, powerful and resentful, and their cows and calves. Goats, sheep, and pigs assemble in pens, and poultry of all classes fills a great hall. A hill is given up to farm machinery, and all the latest inventions for economic farm labor are shown there. The racing stables are full, and trotting sulkies and running horses continuously circle around the track. These are the serious matters of the Fair. But that wonderful fringe hangs tawdry and tinselled on its edges that follows the skirts of every fair the world around. The mountebanks and tumblers, the gypsy girls and swart Italians, the thousand cheats and shams by which people are tricked out of their money, are all here, making the picturesque, the speciously gay and enticing features of the Fair, for simple people. It is not a great selling fair, like the horse fairs of Normandy, the autumn fair at Munich, the Paris fair where the provinces send their sausages and hams, their olives and all the produce which tickles the palates of Parisians; nor like the great Nijni-Novgorod, where the hand-workers of great areas display their needlework, their embroideries, 152 ZTbe Hntictam their rugs and metal work, for the world's market. It is rather an exhibitor's fair where the produce of the county is displayed, and where the farmer sees the latest inventions in farm implements, and the highest results of stock breeding. It opens on Tuesday morning, a cool October day with the air like wine. The trees along the drive are like flaming torches, scarlet and ruddy gold. The crowd is happy and orderly, the animals in their stalls are sleek and impudent, their keepers cheerful and jolly, sitting about on the straw or going around with buckets in hand. There is always the parade of buckets in this quarter. Little boys cut about with yard sticks and whips in hand, full of joy and impishness. Wednesday comes, and the crowd grows. The trains come in with heavy loads, and the sights in the streets begin to be amusing. A company of soldiers is come to make one of the sights of the Fair. The soldier boys take the town, exciting the boys and girls. Such scenes as this take place: A train comes in with its load of pleasure seekers. The soldiers, mostly very young and cheeky, line up on each side of the narrow pavement, and the passengers have to pass between, to a running accompaniment. When it is the fair sex, such cries as "Oh, what a peach!" "Did you ever!" "Oh, my!" "Get on to her, boys!" are called up and down the line. The women take it according to temperament. The very young ones blush, and look perfectly delighted. Some giggle, some set up their heads and look scornful, some suffer torments of embarrassment. The boys repeat their cries of delight. Even elderly women are greeted with respectful enthusiasm. Young men are slapped on the back. Then on a sudden the fun breaks up, the soldiers lock arms, and march off down the street. CEbe Bridge at Ibagerstown 153 Here comes a group of Virj^inians, sporting men in riding togs, well pleased with thf^mselves and with everything about them. One is young, blue-eyed, merry, and impudent, making up to the girls, and amusing his companions. The others laugh at him and with him. A tandem comes by, Virginia again, entered for the Horse Show. All the smartest horses and riders of the sporting class come from over the border. The crowd increases, the town begins to look trampled and untidy. The stream of life pours and pours down the street to the Square, and the Fair Ground. Fakirs cry their wares, cab drivers shout for fares as they drive standing. And on the grounds the rush goes on, the dancers smile, the people of the booths all struggle for notice, and make frantic bids for audiences. The ring-and-knife booths tempt the little boys, who want a knife for a nickel badly. Here are "hot sausages," with a roll, cooked while you wait; and the candy makers' booths, where the men are dressed like French cooks, with white caps. The country boys and girls are a sight worth seeing; fresh -colored and awkward, and neat as pins. It is the great time of the year for them. Two or three bands play, the racers fly round and round the track, tight-rope walkers do their spider- tricks, and the baby elephant pulls his sheet about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. But this is only Wednesday, Thursday comes, the great day of the Fair, and incredible crowds pour into the town, hour after hour. It is a great river of humanity, never ending. Old and young, gentle and simple, white and colored, crowd and thrust and elbow. They pour into the grand stand early in the day, so as to be 154 ^be antictam sure of seats. Yet outside on the roadway, the artery of the Fair Ground, the dense, packed, determ-'ned horde struggles on, wedged tight, so that if one man moves, he moves twenty with him. Impossible to call to friends across the mass of hats, the shoving shoulders. Whips crack, yardsticks flourish, teasing toys whiz about one's face. Inflated pigs, inflated sausages squeal and collapse. The crowd in the main hall moves like a river. The poultry exhibit is thronged. The refined and weary take refuge in the art exhibit, in the hope of getting more space and air. The grand stand is packed, for Thursday is the day of the big purses and the star day of the Horse Show. And like a three-ringed circus, one knows not where to look, for beside these two events the performers opposite the stand do their stunts. The balloon ascends, the high diver shoots down- ward through the air. The Virginia girls drive in the show ring, slim and well groomed and straight as young pine trees. They wear high hats, and are very sporting in ap- pearance. Later they ride their jumpers in, and take the hurdles, first riding their thoroughbreds slowly up and down in the sunlight. Round and round the track go the jockeys in silks, and the numbers show out the time of the race. Always during the course of the Fair some sulky is disabled or some jockey thrown. The crowd is sorry, but the Fair goes on. Pick him up and carry him off. The little boys suck candy and slap you on the back just as merrily, though in the hospital near-by some one lies with broken bones. It is one of the features of the Fair. By night, such a jaded and weary town! — strewn with papers and peanut shells, with tags of ribbons and Fair badges, all the dregs and leavings of the great day. The gate-keepers count their Ebe Brit)0C at IbaGcretown 155 money far into the night. It was the biggest day ever known at the Fair. • Friday comes, a good, rational day. The great per- spiring, pushing mass is not there, only a healthy crowd on pleasure bent. The fakirs begin to take down their tents. Animals move out of their stalls for the homeward march down country roads, or the trip by train to distant States. Pigs get obstinate, and make up their little minds which way they want to go, to the delight of the bystanders, and the rage of their drivers. The cattle march out with dignity, and horses frisk as they move into the sunlight. Only the odds and ends of the Fair go on, but it is the day when school children go in free, so there is still a gay crowd. There are congratulations, jubilations, merrymaking, as the Fair dies out; something to look back upon for a year, something to look forward to for a lifetime. For the Fair- seekers begin when infants in arms, and come gray-headed and bent, as full of the wonder of it as ever. Even now, men remember when it was little more than a country picnic where the farmers gathered with their wives and children, and the races were run by men riding their own horses. It is a far cry back to the days of Jonathan Hager, when he planted Hagerstown by the banks of the Antietam. He saw it take root and grow, and he died on the banks of the stream, where he was superintending the moving of logs to be used in building the German Reformed church in Hagerstown. One fell on him, and crushed him instantly. So he was buried, and Jonathan Hager, his son, took his place in the community. He too was a brave man, and fought 156 Zbc Hntictam in the Revolutionary War, was imprisoned in the dungeons of HaHfax for two years, came home at last, and married the beautiful Mary Orndorff. He lived a life of mingled use- fulness and adventure, as did his father, and died young. Their descendants are living in Hagerstown to-day. It is a pity that of all the bridges over the Antietam the least attractive is the one at Hager's mill. The water roars over the mill-dam above it, and boys sit and fish from the coping, as they have done for generations; but it is not so pleasing as the others. The mill beside it is still in opera- tion. Some unfortunate memories attach to the spot. Not only because of the death of Colonel Hager at the saw- mill which the present one replaces, but in the mill which now stands, a mysterious murder was committed, the truth about which has never been known. The body of a man was found lying on the floor, done to death, and no one knew how he came there. The master miller at the time the death occurred was believed to have been guilty, but after standing trial in Frederick was acquitted. Chapter XIV The New Bridge and the Bridge at Old Forge THE next bridge up the stream from Hagerstown is a small but pretty one of two arches, on the road which goes from Hagerstown to the mountain by way of Cavetown and Smithsburg. It is always spoken of as the bridge on the Cavetown turnpike, or at Bridgeport. It is a sociable little bridge with a log house close to it where the tolls are collected, and where neighbors always seem to be passing the time of day. Children run up and down the road and chickens play about. Near the toll-gate a few houses seem to be trying to make the beginning of a village, such as so often springs up along a Maryland turnpike, strung for a distance along the wayside. Where the creek curves away from the bridge is an old house, two-storied, long and flat, with quaint green-bordered windows set in its white walls, which seems to have come right out of a Kate Greenaway picture book. And just across the bridge an old log house and a small stone building, very solid and substantial, complete a charming group, which relieves the tedium of a rather monotonous turnpike. This is the bridge they called New in its youth, and whose title clung to it after it was quite respectably old. Curiously enough, the predecessor of this stone bridge was also called 157 158 Zbc antietam New, being spoken of in the old records as far back as 1823 as the "New Bridge on the Charlton Gap road." The present bridge, which was built in 1830, by Silas Harry, as its tablet sets forth, has a certain trim neatness, and is much more youthful in appearance than the next one up the stream, which is in part sixty years its junior. There was an advertisement in the Hagerstown paper, the year this bridge was completed, for a schoolmaster to teach the school near the New Bridge, and asking for one who could teach in both German and English, showing that the German element was strong in this neighborhood. About three quarters of a mile up the creek as the ciow flies, but apparently much farther on account of the many windings and loops made by the stream, is a bit of old Antietam worth a special trip to see. It used to be known as John Wolfersberger's ford, and beside it was the "Paper Mill of John Rohrer, lying near the Marsh. " It is now called Trovinger's mill. To reach it one leaves the dusty turn- pike to follow a country road. The creek runs between hills which shut it in, and the rest of the world out, and the ford seems miles away from Hagerstown, instead of being within a short drive of it. Just at the ford is the old mill, a building so ancient and hoary that the stones are loosening in its walls. A tablet gives the date of its erection, 177 1. It is a two-story build- ing, long and low. The trees droop their branches down over its peaked roof, and on one side a crazy-looking gallery runs the whole length of the second story. The water arch is directly under the middle of the building. Beside the broad stream with its lapping waters, shut snugly in by the hills, this old quiet place, with its venerable mill, ^be mew Bribge 159 has the air of being one hundred miles away from modern towns, and one hundred years behind these busy days. The water shdes gently by, a team comes splashing through the ford, and the murmuring of the mill embodies in its sound the soothing influences of the spot. At a little distance from the water is a group of farm- houses, and a level spot of green meadow. Somewhere here, about two hundred yards from the mill, and between the mill and the farmhouses, history says, was once a log church. More than a hundred years have passed since it was de- stroyed, so that only a dim tradition exists of the place where it stood. It was called "Antietam Church," and was the earliest place of worship of the German Lutherans in this region, and so far as is known it was the first church of any kind to be built in the valley. It was made with loopholes in the walls, so that it could be used as a place of defence against the Indians, and on the banks of the Antietam prayers were offered and hymns sung for the first time in the history of the county, in a building dedicated for public worship. Here it existed and struggled for forty years. Pastors came to it, with quaint German names, serving many par- ishes and preaching in them by turns. Pastor Haushihl came from Frederick, and following him Pastor Schwerdt- feger, and the older and younger Kurtz. There was Pastor Wildbahn, of whom it is recorded that he sang most beauti- fully, and in Germany had been the leader of a choir. He was also a gifted writer. And for two years as a supply, there preached here the distinguished Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, of the eminent Muhlenberg family, who were noted for their work in the Lutheran Church in its early days in America. It was after his service here that he became i6o ^be antietam a member of the Continental Congress, and afterward a Speaker of the House of Representatives. After him came one Pastor Young, who came to this country as a Hes- sian soldier, and was ordained after the war was over, as were quite a number of his fellows. All these pious men preached and taught in this secluded spot beside the Antietam. We find from its history that the congregation had its troubles and differences. There was dissension over the younger Kurtz. For some reason he was not agreeable to the people, who petitioned to be served by the elder. It was during this period of discontent that Dr. Muhlenberg came to minister to them. From the time of the first settle- ment of the country until it was disturbed and unsettled by the War of Independence, the congregation met and wor- shipped here, but there was a significant sentence written of it by a pastor at that trying time. He said: "They now consist of from fifty-five to sixty families, many of whom with respect to their spiritual welfare were thoroughly ruined by the late war, so that little improvement is to be expected of them. " The tract on which the church stood was named, in the fashion of the times, "God Save the Church." After the war, and when the congregation had worshipped here for forty years, it was determined to build a new church in another place. The land on which Antietam church stood, was sold, with the exception of one half-acre on which stood the church and the giaveyard; for there were already graves made beside it, with names and dates carved on the stones, which should have been sacredly preserved. In the deed of sale a reservation was made, that there should be ^be IRew 3vibQC i6i a right of passage through the land, to be kept open, free and clear forever, to the site of the church. The new church was built on another farm. There was a touch of human nature about the naming of it which makes one smile. Two sites were offered, and in order to settle be- tween them, two young men, one of each family contending for the honor, drew lots. One was named Peter Beard and the other Michael Stephey. The lot fell to Peter, and so the new church was named St. Peter's Church. Had the lot fallen to Michael, St, Michael would have been its Patron Saint ; but the time of the sword was passed, and as the need of founding it upon a rock was evident, it was well that the lot fell to Peter. The new church was a fine one. It was built of logs and had a gallery running around three of its inner walls, with a goblet-shaped pulpit and a sounding board overhead. Best of all, it had a pipe organ, to add strength and sweetness to the singing of the choir. But the case of the old church by the Antietam was sad. A bare half-acre was left of "God Save the Church, " and its name might now seem to have been prophetic. The build- ing was pulled down and the logs put to various uses. Worse than this, reverence for the graves wore away, and the tombstones were gradually abstracted to use in making walls and culverts. In time not a single trace remained of this oldest landmark of the Lutheran Church in the Hagers- town valley, and there is nothing to tell us just where it stood. What should have been preserved as a revered relic of those earliest days is entirely lost. The congregation sur- vived its Laodicean lapse, and became once more strong and spiritual, but the poor records of the dead were lost forever. i62 ZTbe antietam There is much to interest one in the study of these early- German congregations, the Reformed and Lutherans, the Baptists, Bunkers, and Mennonites. They were one of the strongest influences in estabhshing the character of the hfe of the valley, and to-day their customs are indelibly im- pressed upon it. It would take a theologian to tell of their differences of faith, but fundamentally they were inspired by the same desire, to get back to the plain word of God, as taught in the Bible, and to worship in sincerity and with simplicity. As the ceremony and pomp of religion has been in every country the inspiration of art and architecture, so the want of it left these worshippers with undeveloped aesthetic tastes. As their beliefs and practices were severely simple, so their places of worship were unadorned. At first, seeing one of their old stone churches, without tower or spire, with neither Gothic windows, nor symbolical ornament, they have a look of incompleteness. They stand in country places, massive and oblong, with plain windows of clear glass. They might almost be schoolhouses. But after seeing them oftener one feels that there is something in their severity which answers to a need for restraint in human nature, and one can under- stand that many a man and woman may look back with grateful feelings to the church in the woods, and be thankful for the influence, so sincere and direct, which moulded their character. There is a chapel called "Salem," belonging to one of these German congregations, which seems to embody to perfection this peculiar ideal of a disciplined, unemotional faith. It is very old, and the tradition survives that the man who established it lived in constant fear of Indians; and when they were out on the war-path he would, for weeks ZTbc IRevo ISribge 163 together, hide his wife away at night in a hollow sycamore, like the maid of the Dismal Swamp. This Salem chapel is of gray limestone, standing on a cross-country road. It seems remote and isolated in its woods. The singing birds and droning bees make a daily choir about it, forest odors sweeten the air, and busy chip- munks and small wild life give a gentle animation to the neighborhood. The still gray church waits for the days of worship, when the country boys and girls, the mothers and working farmers, gather in it to listen to the pastor who makes his visitation. There is an indescribable charm in this chapel in the woods, standing as so many such stood in early days, when the faith in its purity was the mainspring of life to the men who cleared the forests. The Dunker dress gives one of the present-day charac- teristics to the valley. It is cut on the simplest lines, and is generally black. The bonnet covered with black cloth flares slightly, framing but not hiding the face. The smoothly drawn hair under its prim halo gives a serious look even to young faces ; and when beauty that will not be denied is so framed, there is nothing more fascinating than this quaint head dress. Once, looking up in a street car in Hagerstown, a picture was seen fit for an artist, A tall and slender young woman sat opposite, whose sensitive face seemed to shine with an inner light. Her serious eyes were deeply blue, an exquisite color tinged her delicate skin, and the golden hair which should have been smoothly banded under the severe black bonnet, broke away in tendrils like a vine. It was a picture of youth restrained, of beauty independent of setting, and spiritually refined by the discipline of a somewhat rigid faith. i64 Zbe antietam There is another type often seen through the country or in town on market days; the woman of middle age, whose dark eyes are calm, and whose face expresses a great deal of practical sense and the look of a full experience of life, un- dergone without worry. These are the wives of farmers, often very well to do, whose lives are full of business, who work early and late, yet who seem to meet the changes and chances of life with a quiet spirit. Who can tell what a factor in this placid look is the mere fact that the wearer never has to consider the fashion in bonnets. To every part of America which the Germans settled, they took this sincere religious sentiment, and Whitefield writing of his experiences with them in the South says: "They are remarkable for their sweetness and sim- plicity of behavior. They talk little; they think much. Most of them, I believe, are Lutherans." The next bridge which crosses the Antietam after that at Bridgeport is the bridge at the Old Forge. To find it one can leave Hagerstown by the Leitersburg pike, and turning off into a crossroad, go through the delightful little settle- ment of Fiddlersburgh. One could hardly weight down such a drift of houses with the name of village. It is a scattered collection, with as little coherence as if one flung a handful of grain in the air, and let it light as it would. Fiddlers- burgh turns around the foot of a hill, follows up a rocky slope, and wandei s into a wood, with as little plan as a boy rambling at large on a holiday. Its log houses and stone walls, its irregular enclosures and bits of garden, its curious porches and chimneys, are as unique and impossible to imitate as a wandering air, or a bird's flight. There was a time, when at any hour, from morning till night, the air Zbc Bribge at ®Ib Jforge 165 trembled to the quivering of fiddle-strings, and light jigs and melodies floated to the woods, to mingle their quavering notes with the chirping of birds. It was then it earned its name of Fiddlersburgh. Following the country road, by field and farms, beauti- ful when the fruit trees blossom or when the grain is ripe, one comes again to the Antietam and the Old Forge. Here the stream is wide, and broken into several channels by islands large enough to carry a growth of trees and bushes. The water rushes between them with a great hurry and noise, down to the mill dam. The bridge is a large one of three arches, spreading wide over the water. Under one end of it, after it reaches dry land, is a cattle run. Within a stone's- throw is a large stone mill, as different as possible from the quaint rambling m^ill at Trovinger's. This is three stories high, a square, massive building, now unhappily deserted, and beginning to fall to pieces, with great cracks in the walls. Across the road, up on a hill, is a stone house with the un- mistakable air of having been a home of the "quality. " An arched doorway in the side wall gives it a look of distinction. It has a curious appearance of having no particular front, every approach being equally important, all equally exposed. The land slopes away from it in every direction. This hilly character makes the place attractive, and the water being unusually noisy here, and a cluster of postal delivery boxes perched on the end of the bridge, on poles, like pigeons' nests, makes it seem a friendly enough place. The road which crosses the bridge is a well travelled one, being the way from Hagerstown to Smithsburgh. The name of Old Forge belongs to the place because the Hughes brothers had their furnace and nail forge at this spot. 1 66 ^be antietam They were a family of Irish descent, whose progenitor came over in 1750, and they became very prominent in the history of Washington County. They acquired vast tracts of land, so that it was said that the whole face of the South Mountain from where Black Rock looks out like an eagle over the valley, to the Pennsylvania Line, and from the top of the ridge to the banks of the Antietam, was owned by them. They operated several furnaces. Mount -^tna, Mont Alto, and the Forge, fought in the Revolutionary War, and identi- fied themselves thoroughly with the fortunes of their adopted country, with all the adaptability of Irishmen who throw themselves heart and soul into the interests of a new land. The tablets on the bridge, commemorating its first erec- tion in 1763 and its rebuilding in 1793, carry on them two other names, intimately connected with the early history of the valley, those of Jacob Friend and Lancelot Jaques. Charles Friend came to the valley in 1739 and settled at the mouth of the sister stream, the Conococheague. He was one of the very first to whom grants of land were made. His tracts were on the Williamsport bank of the stream, and he called them "Sweed's Delight, " the second "Dear Bargain, " and the third "None Left," giving a concise history of his acquisitions. Lancelot Jaques came later to the valley, having first settled in Frederick. He was a French Huguenot, a man of very charming address, who came over as agent for English- men owning plantations, absentee landlords who expected an unending stream of money to flow from the new country to the old. He also took up land in the western part of the valley, near Indian Spring. ^be Bribge at ©It) Jorge 167 It seems curious that, being on such a long travelled road, connected with some of the oldest interests in the county, the bridge at the Old Forge should be in reality the youngest of the bridges. CHAPTER XV The Two Bridges at Leitersburg TN going from Hagerstown to Leitersburg, one travels * through a beautiful reach of valley land, fertile and almost level, which stretches unbroken up into Pennsylvania, and is known as the "Long Meadows." It is so rich and desirable, and so well watered, that it was the first part of the valley to be taken up by settlers, and the earliest grants of land in what is now Washington County were made almost entirely to settlers in the Long Meadows. The earliest divisions of the county were entirely dif- ferent from what they are now. The Hagerstown valley was a part of Frederick County. Between the mountains and the Antietam, from the Potomac River on the South to the Pennsylvania Line on the North, lay the Antietam Hundred. The tract was so large as to be unwieldy, and was later divided into the Upper Middle and Lower Antietam Hun- dreds. On the western bank of the stream, the Salisbury Hundred stretched from the Line down to an old bounding road near Hagerstown. Below this road down to the Poto- mac lay the Marsh Hundred. This division by Hundreds was borrowed from England, where the name of this terri- torial unit was supposed to be derived from the grouping of i68 ^be ^wo Bribaes at Xcltcrsburg 169 one hundred families for purposes of defence. It was larger than a parish, and smaller than a county. Some of the most noted names of early days are associated with the Long Meadows. Two well known men owned land in it, but never lived on their holdings ; these were the cele- brated Colonel Henry Bouquet, and Daniel Dulaney. But others not less prominent lived there, and in some instances the old houses which they built are still standing. The earliest grant to land in the valley is believed to be that given to the stout Yorkshireman, Colonel Thomas Cresap, who acquired his tract in 1739. At about the same time Charles Friend, and Jeremiah Jack, Nicholas Christ, Jona- than Hager, and others, became owners of land in the neigh- borhood. On the Long Meadows once lived Colonel Hart, whose daughter Lucretia married Henry Clay, and the house where he lived still stands. General Sprigg lived in great state at "Paradise," and kept up a magnificent establish- ment. Among them all there was no stronger personality than that of Colonel Cresap who was a typical frontiersman. His house was a fort, built over a spring of water, so that if he was besieged by Indians his supply was secure. He was a cunning strategist, and a great Indian fighter. No one made war on them more constantly, nor more ferociously than he, nor with greater success. When the red man went on the war-path, all the neighbors took refuge at Cresap's fort. He seems to have been one who scented the battle with as keen a joy as the war-horse of old, and he did not fight the aborigines only. When the German settlers were believed to be dealing unfairly with the State of Maryland, when the Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland was in dispute, I70 Zl)C Hntletam Cresap took arms against the Germans. In this border warfare he was taken prisoner, and kept in confinement in Philadelphia for more than a year. He is said to have amused and provoked the citizens by calling the Quaker City the "finest in the Province of Maryland. " Another time, when he wished to force the Assembly at Annapolis to protect the rights of Maryland, he formed a company of young men, who painted themselves and dressed like Indians; and marched with them as far as Federick on his way to the capital. He must have been dissuaded from following out this ad- venture, for we hear no more of them beyond that point. He came to America as a lad of fifteen, and first lived near Havre-de-Grace, a town whose beautiful name is so grotesquely anglicized into " Havader-Grass. " He married young, in the first instance, but his second venture was made when he was over eighty years old. England commissioned him to map out the Potomac River and its sources, and he was chosen to lay out a road between Cumberland and Pittsburg. After he left the Long Meadows he founded a town near Cumberland, which he named Cresaptown, but which was afterward named Oldtown. But when the In- dians came back to the Hagerstown valley, burning and murdering, he returned and fought them as fiercely as ever. He showed the stalwart stuff of which he was made by his activity in old age, for when over seventy he made a trip to England; and when more than one hundred he sailed up into Nova Scotian waters, no easy journey in those times. His hospitality, his tales of the frontier, his joviality, made him a splendid companion. Such was the product of the old world grafted on the new, and of such fibre the men who settled on the Long Meadows. Zhe ZIwo BribGcs at Xdtersbura 171 After following up the Meadows for a distance, the road turns at an angle towards Leitersburg. It passes through a beautiful stretch of gently swelling country, not in the suc- cession of steep, wave-like ridges which characterizes so much of the valley floor. Here it merely rounds into gentle slopes, often crested by woodland, falling now and then to low, emerald meadows, watered by full streams. Through- out this tract, the close neighborhood of Pennsylvania begins to be felt. There is a little less of the sweet untidiness of southern farms, a little more of the neatness of the Pennsyl- vanian. With this change comes, of course, a slight loss of the picturesque, for it is undeniable that a loosening of the reins of order helps to make sketchable material. A white- washed fence with every paling in place, and well swept path, and lawn cut to a nicety, are never the same thing in the picture as a stone wall a little ragged about the coping with a tangle of hollyhocks and tiger lilies. Along this part of the valley the thrifty Germans settled. They built themselves saw-mills, grist-mills, and hemp-mills along the Antietam, and had tanneries and distilleries. The hemp they raised was used in the rope walks at Hagerstown, owned by Colonel Hart and Nathaniel Rochester. Some of the mills are still standing, or have been lebuilt once or twice. The old stone houses survive at least in part, having been built on and added to. The house of the first Leiter, who gave his name to the village, still exists as part of a larger dwelling. There are, too, many old log houses, with heavy, square-built chimneys on the outside, giving them a very quaint look. The Germans became prosperous, and even wealthy in this favored country, and from having arrived, as an early writei says, with all their worldly 172 ^be antietam possessions in very small compass, and chief and most valu- able among them, a copy of the Heidelberg Catechism, they handed down money and lands to their children. A curious story is told in connection with one of the distilleries in this district, which was owned by Mr. Joseph Gabby. A man went to it, and stole a copper measure with a quantity of whiskey in it. He was followed, and caught with it in his possession, and sent to the penitentiary. As soon as he was released, he went back by stealth, and succeeded in taking away once more the very same copper vessel with the same amount of liquor. He seemed an incorrigible evil-doer, and was taken again, and sent once more to prison. He served his two years, and would, one would think, have been cured of his desire to steal from Mr. Joseph Gabby. But the poor creature, as quickly as might be after his second release, possessed by one idea, stole back to the object which fascinated him, and for the third time ran away with the coveted copper measure. He was taken again, but this time the judge refused to sentence him, not considering him responsible for such a curious mania. In the olden times he would have been thought bewitched ; to-day his freak might be ascribed to a sort of hypnotism exercised over his rather feeble mind by the bright copper vessel. Before the Civil War, a constant stream of escaping slaves passed through this country, stealing away from their masters in Virginia. They followed the old trail along the mountain top, that the Indian warriors and hunters had used, always preferring the high ground for travelling. They would then creep down into the valley in the neighbor- hood of Leitersburg, to cross the line into the free State ^be ^wo Bridges at Xeltersburg 173 beyond. Many a Tom, Dick, and Harry crossed the Antie- tam here under cover of night, and crept along the road toward Pennsylvania. We can see them in imagination, half-wild creatures, black men and bright mulattoes, stealing through the fords, or sculling over when the water was high. It is a memorable thing in connection with the stream, that slavery terminated at either end of the Antietam. Here it passed into free country while the great battle fought at its mouth decided the fate of slavery in America forever. One of the best known names in connection with this part of the valley, is that of the Leiters. In early days it was variously spelled, as Lyder, Leidre, and Lider. The original settler of that name was Jacob Leiter, who in 1762, was granted the tract on which Leitersburg now stands. He purchased it from the celebrated Indian fighter Poe. The name of the tract was "Well Taught, "and some of the most valuable farms in the district are situated on the land he then acquired. He had a large family ot sons and daughters. Some became farmers and millers. A grandson was an architect and builder, and built the old Jacob's church near the Line, and the first brick schoolhouse in the neighbor- hood. There are some delightful names among the grants in this district, such as "Huckleberry Hall," and "The Hollow House," and the pretty "Welcome to Antietam." The naming of these old tracts of land presents an interesting study, and is plainly a survival of the days of chivalry. To the settlers in the States, who had left the countries of titles and armorial bearings, they answered to the "devices" which were so popular in the Middle Ages. These devices were, properly speaking, composed of two parts, the "body" 174 ^be antietam and the "soul," the former being the painted emblem, and the latter the motto or legend which expressed its meaning. They were never the property of the family, as was the crest ; but only of the individual by or for whom they were composed. Women of wit were fond of inventing devices and embroidering them for their friends. In English and in Scottish halls may still be seen their needle-craft, * And curious tapestry. Which moulders on the walls, brave scrolls Of dim antiquity. Embodying many a quaint device Of love and chivalry. ' As a perfect example of the old device we have the heart-shaped knot of Sir Thomas Heneage, with the legend, "Fast though Untied" ; and the device of Anne of Brittany, "Un seul desir." The veiled meaning, of which these give an example, was an essential part of the device, which was meant only to be understood by the few. They were for mystification, with a covert meaning, obscure. They hinted at a condition, a state of mind. A reference was made in such a way as to be clear to the persons in the secret only. These conditions were often carried out in the naming of land grants. Some were purely allusive, and of such a character are the obscure "Need Not," and the musical "Keep Tryste." "Summit of Policy," the name of one of the first Hughes grants, fulfils the condition of not making its meaning clear to the uninitiated, yet indicates some finessing in acquiring the property. Some are long, such ^be Zvoo Bdbgee at XeitereburQ 175 as "Search well and you will find it," "The third time of asking, " and "I am glad it is no worse. " Some tickled the ear with alliteration, as in "Nancy's Fancy," "Darling's Delight," and "Penny Pack Pond." There is a pleasant hint of bachelor freedom in the pretty "Toddy Lane" ; and The "Leather Button, " would seem to be our friend the Leather Bottell, badly spelled, as were many things in the old clerks' records. Some were of a sour turn, as "Very Cold, " and " Trouble Enough," "Hurry," "Strife," and the curt and fierce "Slay!" Over many is the trail of woman. So were celebrated "Nanny," "The Dutch Lass," and "Virgin Fair." One was "Nancy's Content," and another "Magdalen's Fancy." And though these latter names are obvious, and do not carry out the condition of obscurity, one must like them, as well as the hearty "Lads and Lasses," "Paradise Regained," and the pretty "Flaggy Meadow," and "Agree in Peace " i To Cresap's grants were given names of localities in the old country: "Skipton-on-Craven," "Leeds," and "Lin- ton"; and the attractive "Skie Thorn." They give a picturesqueness to the study of old deeds and records, a flavor of romantic conceits, a pleasant exercise of wits. The man who named his places "Sly Fox," and "The Old Fox Deceived," must always have chuckled to himself when he had occasion to write the titles. And it is a pleasant com- mentary on our great-grandfathers that they amused them- selves in this way, even over such dry and dusty matters as land grants and legal documents. The visit to the last two bridges over the Antietam was made at that lovely season when the grain fields are ripe. 176 ^be antietam The whole drive through the valley was of great beauty. The gentle slopes and swelling lands were in full harvest-tide, and the grain so deeply golden as to be almost a copper red. In many fields the wheat was still untouched, in others the harvesting was going on. And these red-gold fields had always their background of groups of dark trees, bits of old forest left standing, and behind all, the exquisite blue of the hills. It was a clear evening, a few compact cloud masses, floating in air as clear as crystal, made the surrounding sky seem the more limpid. The breeze had the exhilaration of the mountain, and the fragrance of pine and fern. In many fields the com rows cut through the tawny grain with lines of pale green. And everywhere were men working with reapers, horses straining at their loads, hay wagons coming down the road with their immense burdens, and cattle on their evening home-coming. It was a scene of prosperity and thrifty beauty. And many of the old stone farm houses which stood by the way knit the present to the past. Before the village is reached, the road crosses the An- tietam by the first of the Leitersburg bridges. It is a large and handsome one, built by the Lloyds, who made the turnpike bridge at Funkstown. The stream has changed its course since the bridge was erected, for one arch is en- tirely over dry land. At the time of the heavy rains of 1884 the course of many streams in this part of the valley was altered. At either end of the bridge, the curtain walls make a beautiful curve, and then straighten out to meet the full width of the road, and this feature gives a distinctive touch which is very pleasing. The bridge stands high out of the water, and has well rounded abutments to divide the ice- ^be Zvoo Brl^ge0 at Xeitcreburg 177 packs. A veil of faint green colors the stones, an effect produced by a charming growth of small ferns, which root between them. The water willows and sycamores which follow along the bank hide an old mill at a distance around the bend of the stream. Both bridge and surroundings are very interesting, and differ totally in character from the next one, which is found on the other side of the village on a dirt road, which leads up into Pennsylvania. This last of the Antietam bridges, as was the first, is the work of John Weaver ; but in spite of his having built so many, he was still inventive, and made of it something quite unique in the series, and entirely in harmony with its sur- roundings. It is just the bridge for a cross-country road, where the stream is shallow, and shows more of the rivulet than the river. The Antietam takes on at this spot quite a different character. It throws away its veil of romance, casts aside the mantle of water willows behind which it is wont to hide, leaves off the twists and bends round which its waters curve and slide, and comes frankly to light, a rippling stream between sunny meadows. Along its edge on one bank stand pollard willows, in a perfectly straight row, evenly spaced on emerald sward. In their stiff and avenue- like effect they make one think of the borders of canals in Holland. The rich green meadow which shows between the trunks, helps out this illusion of artificial planting. Opposite, the growth is more natural and artless, but the whole character of the spot is very different from the usual romantic appearance of the Antietam banks. John Weaver made for this crossing a rustic looking bridge, with a narrow roadway; a bridge for country lanes and calling to mind pictures of English rural bridges, small and rather rude, but attractive in their rusticity. 178 Zhc Hntietam It was a piece of rare good fortune that preserved all these bridges through the dangers of war. Large bodies of troops passed over them on their way to the battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg, leaving them unharmed. The turnpike bridge at Leitersburg was most in danger, for the order was given to destroy it. Some of the people of the neighborhood, very much disturbed over this piece of news, got up a petition representing that there were very good fords through the creek, and that the destruction of the bridge would not keep back the enemy and would only work great distress to the country people. General Lee then recalled the order for the destruction of the bridge. Had they been destroyed by the troops that thundered over and by them, there is no doubt that iron bridges would have replaced them, and the Antietam would have been robbed of all the poetry and beauty of her road-crossings. Fortunate was the State which could have invading armies pass through, and leave so little mark. Ji Selection from the Catalogue of G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Complete Catalogues sent on application " One of the most attractive garden books of the season" — The Interior. A Little Maryland Garden By Helen Ashe Hays With 8 FuWpage Illustrations in Color and 24 Other Illustrao tions by Zulma DeL. Steele. 6vo. $1.75 net. By mail, $2.00 In a style admirably in keeping with the tranquil, rural theme, Miss Hays tells of the planning and development of her garden, and of the varied delights of watching over it and caring for it. She has a happy faculty of enlisting the reader's close attention to the tranquil story of her quiet adven- tures with forsythias and mock-oranges, tulips and irises, roses, primroses and sweet williams, and many another lovely and perfumed shrub and flower. From this book the amateur gardener will gather many a precious practical hint. G. P. Putnam's Sons New York London XV. 17 * y.^-^- oN- A^^ .. ^ J' \^ ^-^ A-^ 0^' A c,"^-^. V^^ N^'' "^^ ■"^i 1 T, ■'b 5'' .■^ .•^ •\ {^ "^ '^^ ^^. %./ * JT' * V^'' xO<^^. \0 o. > * /I '^.Z^' * » i >''\\ -% ^;^:;-r:;*> -^s^' ^^.. ^ ■^^% .^^ .A ^, N^" ,-^- 0' % ^ » >. -^^ v^ .-J.^ >, a^ -^i- %, ^^" '^ V^^ C^ "^ci^ A^^ '^^^.-. '^c^ ■^^' .^^ ^-^ A^ .* C>' .5 -:>, 5- "^. s^' V^ ^A V \\^ x^- ^^ .^'^ '^^^ .AN^ <. % A^' >./ '^A V^ a' ^^^^, '*bo'' .^^ C^ -\^ •'^. ^.-^' \<-' ''>,. -'y \ .^~' •^, ^'" -■c-- .■Q-' LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 'II 014 313 946 3