whose brig, the _Peggy Stewart_, came into harbor one October day in
1764, laden with the repudiated tea. So incensed were the stout-hearted
Annapolitans that, to escape their ire, poor Anthony, with his own
hands, set fire to the ill-starred brig, his wife, the Peggy for whom
the boat was named, watching from her chamber window the sacrificial
flames mounting from the water’s edge. We keep a Peggy Stewart Day,
now, in Maryland, and some of us like to remember that Peggy, too, was
once the mistress of a breakfast-room which was ideal.
[Illustration: THE PEGGY STEWART HOUSE.]
At the foot of Duke-of-Gloucester Street, in 1760, John Ridout built
for himself and his children three houses that are like a castle;
and just across, hidden by the beautiful St. Mary’s Church, lies
Carrollton, the home of Charles Carroll.[4] It is occupied now by the
Redemptorist priests, and the profane shoe of a woman can gain for its
owner no nearer view than that to be had from the bridge that spans
the waterway below. It looks a very charming place, built in the Dutch
rather than the Georgian taste: gray, small windows, high-roofed, and
set in a garden which is what all Annapolis gardens are, and what all
gardens everywhere ought to be, an ordered wilderness of hollies, box,
magnolias, roses, lilacs, more roses and yet more lilacs, jessamine,
wallflowers, iris, lilies, violets, daffodils,--all the old-fashioned
flowers which ever were and ever will be the dearest and sweetest
flowers in the world.
[Illustration: THE BURNING OF THE “PEGGY STEWART.”
FROM THE PAINTING BY FRANK B. MAYER.]
It is hard to come back even to the first days of the century just
closing. The defence made by the guns of Fort Severn, which kept
Admiral Cockburn at bay, seem but recent history in the light of other
years, nor can the stirring scenes of the Civil and Spanish wars claim
even a glance. Filled with the spirit of the golden days of the Athens
of America, we sit in the deep window-seat of a panelled room, looking
out across intervening lush and flowery growths, at the dome of the
State House and at the aërial procession of the old denizens. What a
procession it is! Indians, explorers, Lords Proprietary, Governors
Royal, Republicans, Puritans, Cavaliers, priests, shipowners, sailors,
slaves! Ships sail out with rich freights of tobacco and other Colonial
produce, and ships sail in, bearing yet richer stores of silks and
spices, wines and perfumes, silver and porcelain and sumptuous
household furnishings. We see the growth in aristocracy, in wealth, in
hospitality, in luxury, the plenty of those lavish boards, the splendor
and courtliness of dress and manners of the gentry. Sedan chairs,
carried by the liveried servants, attended by link boys and by bowing,
perruqued gentlemen in gold-lace waistcoats and buckled shoes, bear the
patched and powdered ladies to balls and routs. We hear the gossip of
the playhouse--the first in America--or of the races. The _bon mots_ of
the Tuesday Club are told again; the wit flashes at the dinner given in
honor of the King’s birthday; the defeat of the Pretender, the birth
of the Dauphin, the repeal of the Stamp Act, the coming of Washington.
Anything would
“Serve as excuse for the glass”
in those
“Very merry,
Dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking times.”
We hear, above the grave tones of the men who are talking of the
affairs of state, the clear voices of the women--fair, slender,
sweet, in pearls and brocade, singing to the accompaniment of spinet
or harpsichord music, as unlike ours as were their faces or their
thoughts, and we all but forget that the Past is dead and can come no
more, and that these are but echoes and shadows and the ashes of roses.
Behind a long brick wall, gated and sentried, lies the United States
Naval Academy, and another world.
“But that,” as Hans Andersen says, “is another story”; a story
familiar at a thousand American firesides where the life of a son
dedicated to the navy is lived over by fond hearts; a story told on
every wave of every sea where our American ships ride on their mission.
[Illustration: THE NAVAL INSTITUTE.
(WHERE THE BATTLE-FLAGS ARE KEPT.)]
On the 13th of June, 1845, James K. Polk, being President of the
United States, and George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy--a letter
was written by Mr. Bancroft to a Board of Examiners of Midshipmen,
sitting in Philadelphia, proposing the foundation of a naval school,
and suggesting Fort Severn as a suitable site. Urged by Commodore
Thomas Ap-Catesby Jones and Captain Isaac Mayo, the Committee approved
the suggestion, and, although the usual congressional and sectional
opposition had to be overcome, the School was opened on October 10th of
the same year. During the war there was a temporary flight to Newport,
and there have been, from time to time, various schemes for removing
it permanently from Annapolis. It has long since become a permanent
fixture, and additions have been made to the Fort Severn property
(purchased in 1808), making an ample and beautiful home for the cadets
and their corps of instructors.
Time ceases to be subject to clocks when one enters the green, shady
Academy grounds, beside which the waters flash and gleam, and bells
divide the hours of the busy lives of the lithe young sailors who are
forever marching under the trees to this duty or to that; and whose
four years of residence are crowded with ten thousand things which a
landsman need not know, but which go to make a finished seaman. Among
the officers, gravely saluting them as they go to classes, one sees
many a famous face, for many of the simple, quiet gentlemen have done
great deeds in their day.
There are some memorials of older days--the monument which recalls our
victory at Tripoli, some cannon captured in some
“Sea-fight far away,”
and some figure-heads of ancient ships. Most precious of all is the
worn flag, guarded jealously in the Naval Institute, which bore the
wonderful message
“Don’t give up the Ship.”
By the docks lie various craft needed for the instruction of the
midshipmen; and with them the old _Santee_, dismantled, a ghost of
herself, lies at her last moorings. She has seen strange sights in her
day, the old _Santee_, none perhaps stranger than the trim young steel
giants of our modern navy which steam up the Bay at times.
[Illustration: THE OLD GOVERNOR’S MANSION, NOW THE NAVAL ACADEMY
LIBRARY.]
Historically, the gem of the Academy is the Library building, which was
built by Edmund Jennings, and served as a home for our governors from
1760 until 1868. It has had Washington for its guest, and many another
great man of his time. And so, no doubt, had the fine old home of the
Dulanys, near by, which was built as early as 1751. An iconoclastic
superintendent ordered its destruction in 1883,--a loss irreparable to
the lovers of the old town.
And all are its lovers, who have once felt its abiding charm.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Of all the deeds whereby Charles Carroll served his country, none,
perhaps, was more noteworthy than the writing of the four letters to
the _Maryland Gazette_, in 1773, signed “First Citizen.” In them he
pitted his young strength against the marvellous learning of Daniel
Dulany, the greatest lawyer of all the colonies, whose letters to the
same paper were signed “Antilon.” His brave defence of the rights
of the people brought Mr. Carroll the unprecedented honor of an
adjournment of the Legislature that that body might visit his house _en
masse_, to express its thanks and appreciation.
[Illustration]
FREDERICK TOWN
“THE GARDEN SPOT OF MARYLAND”
BY SARA ANDREW SHAFER
Long after the lower counties and the eastern shore of Maryland had
been turned from a wilderness into a rich and prosperous country, and
after Annapolis had grown to be one of the most brilliant and important
cities of the New World, there lay in the western part of the domain
granted to the Calverts and their heirs forever a vast and beautiful
region, which was not only _Terra Mariæ_, but _terra incognita_ as
well. Noble mountains, the remains of far older and nobler Alps,
guarded the valleys worn by innumerable streams, and rich with the
detritus of uncounted ages of erosion. Vegetation flourished under
the kindly skies, and green things of every kind, from loftiest oaks
to humblest mosses, grew in rank luxuriance over the heritage of the
wild creatures of earth and air, and the scarcely less wild Indians.
The Susquehannoghs, who chiefly lorded it here, were of the fearless
and noble Iroquois stock, and, whatever they lacked, had certainly “a
genius for nomenclature.” Their
“Love of lovely woods”
has left in one fair valley such names as Catoctin for its long western
mountain range; Linganore for its eastward hills, and Potomac, Monocacy
and Tuscarora for its rivers and streams. Vanished, like the red leaves
of an autumn forest, in these soft syllables we hear, even yet, the
voices of the “First Families” of Frederick.
One of the far-reaching consequences of the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, in 1685, was the unrest and fear which spread all over
Europe, and scattered to the four winds tens of thousands of the
best men, not only of France and the Low Countries, but of Germany,
Switzerland and Bohemia. It is to one of these waves of emigration
that we must look for the hardy pioneers who came southward from
the settlements in Lower Pennsylvania. With the land-hunger and the
land-judgment characteristic of the Teuton, they “took up,” as the
phrase goes, the lands lying along the river they--and the Carrolls,
long after them--called Monnokasi, or Monockessy. Certain traits they
brought with them as a matter of course, these Palatines,--as they were
indiscriminatingly called,--industry, economy, honesty, and an absolute
devotion to the principles of civil and religious liberty. Some were
Labadists, some Mennonites, some Lutherans, but for the greater part
they were of the Calvinistic churches, and held the Helvetic Confession
and the Heidelberg Catechism next in honor to the open Bible. Hardly
less picturesque than the Indians were these pioneers: the women in
homespun kirtle and linen bodice; the men in the deerskin costume of
the frontiersman, tomahawk, rifle and fringed leggings included. It
was not long before they had built roads, cleared fields, sowed crops,
built houses and barns, and had planted those countless lovely orchards
that make the valley one drift of rose and snow when May-time comes.
In 1745 another settlement was begun along one of the newest roadways,
the first house being built by Thomas Schley. There is a glimmer of
doubt as to whence came the name of the village and the county formed
a year or so later. There was, it is true, a very dissolute Frederick
Calvert who died--the last Lord Baltimore--in 1771; but there was also
a Frederick, Prince of Wales, father to King George III.; and it was
no doubt in his honor that the name was given by Charles Calvert, then
bowing and smiling at the English court.
In 1766, the frontier troubles known as the French and Indian War had
assumed such proportions that General Braddock came over to see what
could be done about it. A young surveyor from Virginia, tall and brave,
with splendid physique and a judgment which impressed all who came in
contact with him, was invited to act as _aide-de-camp_ for the British
commander. The meeting between Braddock and George Washington took
place in Frederick, in April of the ill-fated year 1755, as all men
may read, not only in the pages of more serious historians, but also
in a chronicle steeped with the very spirit of the eighteenth century,
wherein William Makepeace Thackeray has recounted the adventures
of _The Virginians_. Another visitor at the same time was Benjamin
Franklin, Postmaster-General of the Colonies, who came to arrange
for the delivery of despatches to and from the expedition, and who
then first saw the younger soldier. A court-house was building, by
the way, but, by fair means or foul, Braddock, whose angry bluster
and loud oaths we can yet almost hear, aided by the wily Franklin,
impressed so many hundreds of horses, wagons, teamsters and servants
that the work was delayed for some years after the testy General, in
his coach-and-six, drove off over the mountain on May-day morning. He
left a memorial on Catoctin,--a walled-in spring of icy water, covered
by a great flat rock, under whose shelter tiny ferns and silvery-green
mosses love to grow.
There was a road to Baltimore and to Annapolis as early as 1760, and
a curiously large commerce with the Saltzburgers who had settled
in Georgia. The town flourished apace, and, besides the Palatines,
some Scotch-Irish and many English began to arrive. The gentry had
not been slow in obtaining patents to the fertile lands. In 1723 the
Carrolls received the splendid manor of Carrollton, ten thousand acres
in extent. Daniel Dulany had eight thousand acres, and the last Lord
Baltimore nearly twice as much, while other gentlemen had estates
of immense value. With fortunes such as these figures represent a
splendid style of living was possible, the effect of which was seen on
every hand. In 1760, the Market House was built, and the Presbyterians
had their pastor, while as early as 1764 the Reformed Church boasted of
a belfry, which, remodelled in 1807, is yet one of the
“Clustered spires of Frederick”
that rise from what the enamored Washington called the “garden-spot of
Maryland.”
In 1765, Father Hunter began the arduous duties of a priest whose flock
was scattered over uncounted miles of wilderness; and even before that,
perhaps, the whole county, which embraced all that is now known as
Western Maryland, was one parish of the Established Church, with All
Saints’ for its centre. Her clergymen had an annual revenue of five
thousand pounds, and this rich plum was given to one or another of
the beneficed clergy who too often disgraced the reign of the early
Georges. The most notorious of all the New World incumbents was,
perhaps, the Rev. Bennett Allen, who came to All Saints’ in 1768,
greatly against the will of the people. On the first Sunday after his
arrival the vestrymen left the church in a body. A peace-making
worshipper ventured up to the pulpit with a remonstrance, only to be
met with a drawn pistol in the clerical hand, and an oathful threat
of immediate happy despatch if he interfered with the service. That
his wild career included the murder of one Dulany in a duel, and the
plotted assassination of another, and that he died an unknown, drunken
outcast of London streets, is the shameful and pitiful ending of this
o’ertrue tale. That he has been succeeded by a long line of devout and
godly men has long ago effaced the stain he left upon the parish annals.
[Illustration: PROSPECT HALL. THE DULANY MANSION.]
Some miles to the northeast of the town a young man, Robert Strawbridge
by name, who had imbibed the doctrines of the Wesleys, formed a class
after their ideas in 1764, which Bishop Asbury said was “the first in
Maryland and America.” The small log chapel which they built antedated
any other Methodist meeting-house in America by three years, which
gives the county the right to the title of the Mother of American
Methodism.
History was fast making in those days. In 1764 the Stamp Act was
passed, and a commissioner was appointed to distribute the detested
paper in the province of Maryland. Court was sitting in Frederick Town,
but there was no paper of the prescribed variety on hand. On the 23d
of November, 1765, twelve free men of Frederick decreed and declared
that Frederick Court could attend to its own affairs without any aid
from his Majesty the King, and that, paper or no paper, its work should
proceed. John Darnell, the clerk, demurred, refused to issue unstamped
paper, was committed for contempt, submitted, and thus the first
repudiation of the Stamp Act was accomplished. The names of the twelve
justices who, without hesitation or fear, took this great step, were
these: Joseph Smith, David Lyon, Charles Jones, Samuel Beall, Joseph
Beall, Peter Bainbridge, Thomas Price, Andrew Hugh, William Blair,
William Luckett, Thomas Dickson and Thomas Beatty.
People took their pleasures gladly in those days, and in an old
New York _Postboy_ (January 2, 1766), and a yet older Philadelphia
_Gazette_ (December 26, 1765), we read of a right jolly mock funeral,
in which the Stamp Act was buried with much ceremony, the chief mourner
being the unlucky distributor, Zachariah Hood, in effigy, which, during
the frolic, was hanged in the Court-House Square, near the stocks and
whipping-post. The usual supper and ball of the period ended the day.
The skies grew ever darker, and, in the next old paper to which we
turn, we read of pledges made to support the blockaded Bostonians, on
whose shoulders the burden of a common injustice was laid. Next came
the call to arms, and the start, on their long march to Boston, of
two companies, in command of Captain Michael Cresap, whose father had
blazed his way to the Ohio. One of his lieutenants was John Ross Key,
whose son Francis, yet unborn, was to make his name forever famous.
On the roll of honor the county gives high place to Sergeant Laurence
Everhart, who, in the battle of Cowpens, prisoner though he was,
bore himself right haughtily in the presence of Colonel Tarleton.
Escaping by good fortune, a better fortune enabled him to deal a blow
at a British officer whose sword was lifted against Colonel William
Augustine Washington, so saving that brave life. Long years afterward
we hear of a meeting between the veterans, when “with tears and kisses”
the old bond was strengthened.
At home work scarcely less patriotic was doing. Flax, hemp and wool
were grown, spun and woven; a gun-lock factory was established,
saltpetre was made and in the iron furnaces owned by D’Hughes and by
Thomas Johnson and his brothers, cannon and bombs were cast. The Market
House became an arsenal. Hessian prisoners, hundreds of them, were
confined in a log jail built for them, and in some stone barracks,
still partly standing. To reinforce Washington, and to share the perils
of Valley Forge, seventeen hundred men left home, and until peace was
declared, the people of Frederick bore their share of the danger and
the loss with all bravery and cheerfulness. It is like a page from the
history of the darkest ages, however, to read this sentence passed upon
seven Tories, convicted of treasonable conspiracies:
“_You shall be carried to the gaol in Frederick town, and be hanged
therein: you shall be cut down to the earth alive, and your entrails
shall be taken out and burned while you are yet alive. Your heads
shall be cut off; and your body shall be divided into four parts;
and your head and quarters shall be placed where His Excellency the
Governor shall appoint. So Lord have mercy on your poor souls._”
This terrible sentence was in four instances executed!
[Illustration: ROSE HILL, THE HOME OF GOVERNOR THOMAS JOHNSON.]
A mile or so north of the town, where the lands are richest, and the
view up and down the valley and the blue mountains is finest, lies
Rose Hill, where Thomas Johnson lived and died. Born in 1732, of sires
who had commanded ships against the Invincible Armada, this man had
few peers in the era which his wisdom, his industry, his sterling
honesty and his pure patriotism adorned. He had made a name at the
brilliant provincial Bar, when in 1765, in answer to an appeal made
by the Massachusetts Assembly, a Maryland Assembly was formed, and
he took his place among the men who had set for themselves the task
of righting the wrongs of the colonies. He became a member of the
Committee of Safety and the Committee of Remonstrance, and, in 1774,
he aided John Adams, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry in framing
the Address to the Crown. On the 15th of June, 1775, Thomas Johnson
nominated George Washington to be Commander-in-Chief of the Continental
armies. This act, which would seem to be glory enough for one life, was
but an incident in his busy days, for his name is heard of wherever
probity and wise-heartedness were needed. That it does not appear on
the Declaration of Independence is owing to the fact that the serious
illness of a member of his family made his absence from Philadelphia
necessary on that fateful 2d of July.
When the partition from England was completed, and the Colony became a
State, he was chosen to be its first Governor, an office he filled for
three terms. He was an ardent supporter of the Federal Constitution,
and was one of those instrumental in making Washington our first
President. The portfolio of Secretary of State and the District
Judgeship were earnestly and affectionately urged upon him by his old
friend, who finally persuaded him to accept a seat upon the Supreme
Bench. This he soon resigned, by reason of delicate health. Together
with Daniel Carroll and Dr. Stewart he selected the sites for the
Capitol, the President’s mansion and various other public buildings
of the new seat of government, after which he retired to private
life; his one subsequent public appearance being on the occasion of a
commemorative funeral service after the death of Washington, when he
pronounced a beautiful eulogy. His own life drew to its earthly close
in 1819, and his dust rests in All Saints’ burying-ground, surrounded
by the ancient tombstones of his friends and neighbors, overgrown with
wild grasses and myrtle, swept by the pure mountain winds and brooded
by the deep peace of the valley he loved so well. His best eulogy was
the few words spoken by John Adams in which he said that “but for such
men as Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Chase and Thomas
Johnson there would have been no Revolution.”
[Illustration: GOVERNOR THOMAS JOHNSON AND FAMILY.
FROM THE PAINTING BY CHARLES WILSON PEALE.]
After the peace the town grew steadily in wealth, comfort and luxury.
The road which is called the National Pike, the great artery between
East and West, was also the main street of Frederick, and was the
scene of much life. Inns of great excellence divided the journeys
into pleasant stages, wagons and coaches dashed out and in to a great
snapping of whips, jangling of bells and blowing of horns, and while
the horses were changed many a glimpse was had of the men who were
talked about early in the nineteenth century.
In 1797, Frederick College was founded. The church on the hill was
outgrown. The older gentry had worshipped there; Bishop Claggett had
held there in 1793 the first Confirmation in the State, and the grassy
churchyard was sacred with much holy dust,--but it was too small and
remote for the growing congregation. Partly by gift, and partly by the
curious aid of a lottery, a second church was built in 1814, still used
and loved as All Saints’ Chapel. It had a ceiling of singular beauty,
high-backed pews, a gallery for servants, and in 1826 the “new organ,”
yet in daily use, was placed therein.
[Illustration: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.]
One of the faithful worshippers in the church was Francis Scott Key,
who was born in the upper part of the county in 1780, but who spent
some years of his early manhood practising at the Frederick Bar. Of his
quiet, lovely life, but little is known, comparatively, although a few
persons yet linger who remember him. A good citizen, a good master, a
good lawyer, a poet of very sweet and true, if limited, powers, the
deep spirituality of whose few hymns can never sound elsewhere as in
the old church, he would probably have passed through and out of life
as many other good men do, but for the strain of one September night in
1814, when his eager eyes watched for the first ray of dawn, if haply
they might yet see the Star Spangled Banner afloat over Fort McHenry,
and a nation’s love and loyalty found everlasting voice through his.
To Frederick, in 1801, came Mr. Key’s close friend, soon to be his
sister’s husband, Roger Brooke Taney, for many years Chief Justice of
the United States. For twenty-one years he lived there, and returned,
his long life, full of work and of honors, over, to sleep beside his
mother in the little burial-place of the Jesuits at the Novitiate.
[Illustration: CHIEF JUSTICE ROGER B. TANEY.]