Carroll Yesteryears 22 July 2012 Proprietress One of County’s Strongest Figures by Mary Ann Ashcraft The formidable-looking woman in the accompanying photograph was Emily Jane Wampler Grammer Rinehart Rippard, for over twenty years the “proprietress” of Westminster’s Republican paper, the American Sentinel. She probably was a force to be reckoned with for family and associates. Carroll [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 8 July 2012 Photo Collection is a Local Gem by Mary Ann Ashcraft Small museums sometimes hold big surprises. Such is the case of Leister’s Store: Pleasant Valley Memories Museum in Carroll County. It recently acquired a wonderful collection of photographs made by Hollie Herbert Helwig, an accomplished local photographer who worked during the [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 24 June 2012 Soldier Positively Affected by Events by Mary Ann Ashcraft In our effort to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, we sometimes overlook the war’s effects on the men themselves. Surely that, like other wars, led to post-traumatic stress for some, and medically administered opiates caused addiction in others. But [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 10 June 2012 Local Brews Arrived in Early 1800s by Tim Bowers Locally brewed beer is easy to find in Westminster these days. One need only go downtown to Johansson’s Dining House. The only dilemma is deciding which style to order. Situated in such a historic building, do its patrons ever wonder about the [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 27 May 2012 Bygone Wedding Traditions Full of Color by Mary Ann Ashcraft June, the traditional month for weddings, is just around the corner. We have been exposed to a wide variety of twentieth and twenty-first century weddings of the traditional type as well as “destination” weddings, and we’ve seen write-ups of unusual ones [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 13 May 2012 Dorothy Elderdice “One of Our Best” Native Daughters by Mary Ann Ashcraft Twentieth century Carroll County was enriched by the presence of a most amazing native daughter - Dorothy Elderdice. Born in 1892 in a conservative community during a conservative era, she was anything but conservative, and way ahead of her [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 22 April 2012 Farmer’s Accounts Give Glimpse of 19th Century Life by Mary Ann Ashcraft Spring for the farmers of nineteenth-century Carroll County meant work from dawn until dusk – hours behind a horse-drawn plow, other preparations for planting, followed by sowing of seed. John Diehl Bowman (1812-1900) was a Middleburg farmer whose account [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 8 April 2012 Methodists Trace Back to Wakefield Valley by Mary Ann Ashcraft Easter Sunday is an opportune time for a column dedicated to some of the early Methodists who gathered in our area when that denomination began attracting converts in America. Because the story of Robert Strawbridge is well-known thanks to the Strawbridge [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 25 March 2012 Medford was Once a Bustling Hub of Activity by Mary Ann Ashcraft As the Western Maryland Railroad wound its way across Carroll County from Finksburg to Union Bridge eighty years ago, it stopped at a very small community halfway between Westminster and New Windsor called Medford. That hub of activity, which [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 11 March 2012 Shoe Company Becomes Community Staple by Mary Ann Ashcraft “Carroll County Boy Makes Good.” Such might have been the headline of a local newspaper article in the early twentieth century when covering the success of Clinton N. Myers’ newly-formed Hanover Shoe Company. Anyone driving through downtown Hanover, PA, today will spot [...]