Month: June 2019

Our Darlings Rest Amongst the Flowers that Bloometh Over There

Mourning images from my collection.

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In this early 1/4th-plate daguerreotype, taken about 1845, a sad, proud widow peers at us through what seems to be a hole in time.
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The sitter wears a white widow’s cap, a hair mourning brooch, and jet bracelets. The back of the plate is inscribed with the numbers “48-36-42,” the meaning of which is unknown. This 1/6th-plate daguerreotype dates to circa 1855.
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This hand-tinted 1/9th-plate Ambrotype was created in about 1858. The beautiful woman so stunningly colored by the photographer is almost certainly not a widow like the two ladies above. Widows, even in deepest mourning, wore white crape caps, bonnet ruches, or other touches of white, to indicate their status.

Continue reading “Our Darlings Rest Amongst the Flowers that Bloometh Over There”

When an Apple Falls Far from the Tree: Part Three

“Koogle said that leaving Myersville that night, he passed a young man about his height, dressed in dark clothes and wearing a slouch hat, like his own.”

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The former George W. Bittle store in 1992. The shooting took place directly under the awning.

Continued from Part II.

During the months before the jury trial of George H. Koogle, merchant George Waters Biddle fully recovered. According to the Baltimore Sun, the gunshot wound to his thigh had nearly proven fatal but the newspaper did not elaborate whether it was from the onset of sepsis or another cause.

Perhaps tellingly, further robberies in Myersville were not reported by the press in the last quarter of that year. This did not mean the little town saw no excitement. On Election Day, 8 November, as President Teddy Roosevelt was reelected, “Some dynamite was exploded [in Myersville] and the shock shattered glass in the Flook, Gaver, Leatherman Bank and in the residence of Mr. George W. Wachtel,” the Hagerstown Daily Mail stated.

A little more than a week later, work was freshly completed on the electric railway between Myersville and Hagerstown. “The railroad runs the full length of the main street of Myersville, the track being laid in the center of the street. The poles and wires are all up and work cars have been running into Myersville from Hagerstown since Tuesday,” reported the Frederick News on 18 November.

This march of progress nearly trampled Myersville resident Martin Wachtel, who made “a narrow escape from being killed by electricity while the wires for the new road were being stretched,” the News noted. A wire fell across the street and Wachtel tried to lead a wagon across it, believing it not live. “When the horses stepped upon the wire, they were violently thrown to the ground. Mr. Wachtel … was also severely shocked. The horses were unhitched from the wagon and assisted to their feet when the one horse accidentally touched the wire a second and third time and was thrown each time. The horses were uninjured, excepting a few burns.”

Continue reading “When an Apple Falls Far from the Tree: Part Three”