Carroll Yesteryears 28 May 2017 Trove of Ancestral Information at Register of Wills Office By Mary Ann Ashcraft Many readers of this column probably delve into family history. If so, you know the challenges of tracing an ancestor, especially if you are descended from a Smith, Jones, Johnson, or other common name. Just for the heck [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 14 May 2017 Two Buildings in Union Bridge Have Historical Significance By Mary Ann Ashcraft There’s a lot of African American history to be found around Union Bridge in western Carroll County, but one important part of that history is now an “endangered species.” It is Bowen’s Chapel, a tiny church sitting on a [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 23 April 2017 Issues Involving Schools as Old as Schooling in Carroll By Mary Ann Ashcraft Issues concerning Carroll County public schools have appeared in this newspaper’s headlines quite often recently. The problems of today aren’t very different from those of the past—too many students or not enough, low teacher salaries, buildings in poor [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 9 April 2017 Carroll Countians Made History Abroad a Century Ago in World War I By Mary Ann Ashcraft The year was 1917. The month was April. On the 6th , America’s daily newspapers carried the story that had been brewing for months—the U.S. was at war with Germany. George M. Cohan began composing [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 26 March 2017 It Was Buyer Beware When it Came to Newspaper Advertising in 1887 By Mary Ann Ashcraft Old newspaper ads like this one for Charles Wantz’s “segar” store on Main Street in Westminster provide us with a few chuckles or sometimes raise an eyebrow. I glanced at 1887 newspapers to see what [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 12 March 2017 Take a Weekend Drive Through Carroll County History By Mary Ann Ashcraft Growing up, I recall my family’s Sunday afternoon tradition was a drive through the countryside of northern Delaware and nearby southeastern Pennsylvania with my father at the wheel. He loved to drive and disliked outdoor chores, so I think [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 26 February 2017 Recalling Carroll’s 19th Century Racial Harmony By Mary Ann Ashcraft Last year in February this column carried an article about John Baptist Snowden, an African American who was born a slave in 1801, came to Carroll County in 1831 as a free man, and spent the remaining 54 years of his [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 12 February 2017 Thaddeus Stevens Woman’s Relief Corps Significant to Carroll’s Black History By Mary Ann Ashcraft Although the Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, historians are still uncovering new material in many different repositories from museums to attics. I stumbled across a single page listing African American women who were members [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 22 January 2017 Stroll Past Three Buildings on Main St. Gives Glimpse of “Old” Westminster By Mary Ann Ashcraft The death of former neighbor Harry Kimmey in 1932 inspired Mary Shellman to write a letter reminiscing about the east end of Westminster as she knew it while growing up in the 1850s and 1860s. [...]
Carroll Yesteryears 8 January 2017 Winter Ice Ritual on Mays Farm Paid Dividends Into the Summer By Kenneth Mays It’s the dead of winter, a good time for the reminiscence of nonagenarian Kenneth Mays about filling the ice house on his grandfather’s central Maryland farm in the 1920s. The Mays family had a large, shallow pond [...]