3.3 Interesting Frederick County Historical Events

Interesting Historical Events – Frederick County, Maryland
  • Jul 17, 1755: Maryland Governor Horatio Sharpe summoned the Frederick County Militia to a meeting in Frederick after learning of British General Edward Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne.
  • Nov 23, 1765: The 12 judges of the Frederick County Court resolved to reject The British Stamp Act, reaffirming their decision of the day before. This act is celebrated today as Repudiation Day.
  • Nov 30, 1765: A large demonstration was held in Frederick in the form of a parade and mock funeral for The Stamp Act, repudiated a week earlier by the 12 judges of The Frederick County Court.
  • Nov 15, 1774. This is the traditional date given for the founding of Jefferson.
  • Jul 18, 1775: 300 Frederick Countians left Frederick to re-enforce troops after the Battle of Bunker Hill. They were the first militia from a southern state to join the Continental Army.
  • Sep 12, 1775: The Committee of Observation for the Middle District (including Frederick County) was elected, consisting of 17 men, of which John Hanson was chairman. A Committee of Observation was a local body formed during the American Revolution to monitor citizens, enforce boycotts against British goods, and organize community defense efforts. These committees acted as de facto governments to support the movement for independence by informing the community of threats, investigating loyalists, and coordinating militia actions in the absence of regular legal authority. 
  • Aug 1, 1776: Lawrence Everhart enlisted in “The Flying Camp” under the command of Capt. Jacob Goode. He saved the life of Col. William Washington at The Battle of Cowpens (S.C.) and carried a wounded Lafayette from the battlefield at Brandywine.
    • The Battle of Brandywine Creek was fought between the American Continental Army of General George Washington and the British Army of General Sir William Howe on September 11, 1777. The forces met near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. More troops fought at Brandywine than at any other battle of the American Revolution. It was also the second longest single-day battle of the war, after the Battle of Monmouth, with continuous fighting for 11 hours.
    • The Battle of Cowpens was a military engagement during the American Revolutionary War fought on January 17, 1781, near the town of Cowpens, South Carolina. Patriot forces, estimated at 2,000 regulars and militia under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, defeated 1,000 British and American Loyalist troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. It was the worst loss suffered by British units since General John Burgoyne surrendered to General Horatio Gates at Saratoga in 1777.
    • After the British evacuation of Boston in March 1776, General George Washington met with members of the Continental Congress to determine future military strategy. Faced with defending a huge amount of territory from potential British operations, Washington recommended forming a “flying camp”, which in the military terminology of the day referred to a mobile, strategic reserve of troops. Congress agreed and on June 3, 1776, passed a resolution “that a flying camp be immediately established in the middle colonies and that it consist of 10,000  men ….”. The men recruited for the flying camp were to be militiamen from three colonies: 6000 from Pennsylvania, 3400 from Maryland, and 600 from Delaware.[1] They were to serve until December 1, 1776, unless discharged sooner by Congress, and to be paid and fed in the same manner as regular soldiers of the Continental Army.
  • Sep 6, 1776: Montgomery and Washington counties were separated from Frederick County. Garrett and Alleghany counties, which were part of Frederick County since 1748, thus became part of Washington County.
  • Jul 25, 1781: the trial of seven men for treason against the United States was held in Frederick. Three men, including Casper Fritchie, father of John Fritchie who would become the husband of Barbara Hauer, were convicted.
  • Aug 17, 1781: Casper Fritchie, Peter Sueman, and Yost Plecker were hanged for treason at the rear of the Tory Jail on East Second Street in Frederick. Four others who were convicted and sentenced with this trio were pardoned by Maryland Governor Thomas Sim Lee.
  • Jul 25, 1821, Frederick citizens gave William Perry $300 when his two horses were swept away and drowned in a Carroll Creek flood the day before. The driver had escaped the rising waters by climbing a tree.
  • Jul 1, 1827: Dr. William H. Johnson, who served in the Confederate Army, was born. Before the Civil War he practiced medicine in Missouri, but following the conflict he practiced in Adamstown, MD. He died December 13, 1901.
  • Sep 21, 1832: A cholera epidemic raged in Frederick County.
  • Jul 1, 1843: John Nelson, a native of Frederick and son of Revolutionary War hero Roger Nelson, became Attorney General of The United States in the administration of President John Tyler.
  • Jul 1, 1846: Philip Rohr, of Frederick, who as a boy of 16 served with Gen. George Washington at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, died at 87 years of age. It was said that he attended every funeral “within his reach.”
  • Jul 27, 1848: Wires for the magnetic telegraph from Baltimore to Wheeling, VA, were installed in Frederick.
  • Jul 21, 1861: Calvin Lamar, of Adamstown, was shot and killed by Samuel Webster, a Union soldier, during a quarrel over the use of a railroad handcar.
  • Jul 30, 1861: The Maryland General Assembly reassembled in Frederick following its April adjournment. The question of secession was the foremost issue on the agenda, yet no vote was ever taken.
  • Sep 17, 1861, The Maryland General Assembly reconvened in Frederick at Kemp Hall at the southeast corner of Market and Church Streets to take a vote on secession. No vote was ever taken because several legislators with Southern sympathies were arrested.
  • Sep 24, 1861: The Frederick Town Herald announced in what it called a “slip” that it was ceasing publication. The Herald began publication on June 19, 1802, and, at the beginning of The Civil War, lost favor with the public due to its support of the Southern cause.
  • Sep 13, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s famous “Lost Orders” were found by two Union soldiers at Best’s Orchard, south of Frederick along the Georgetown Road, now MD 355. Also, on this day the Frederick County Jail on West South Street was set on fire by inmates. None escaped, but the building was destroyed.
  • Sep 17, 1862: The bloodiest, single-day battle of The Civil War occurred at Antietam in Washington County, sending thousands of wounded men to hospitals in Frederick and Frederick County.
  • Sep 19, 1862: The Battles of South Mountain on September 14 and Antietam on September 17, brought thousands of wounded to Frederick and surrounding communities.
  • Oct 4, 1862: President Abraham Lincoln visited Frederick after touring the South Mountain and Antietam Battlefields. He addressed crowds twice and was in town for a total of 35 minutes. He visited a wounded General George L. Hartsuff at Mary Tyler Ramsey’s house on Record Street.
  • Jul 6, 1863: William Richardson was hanged from a tree limb in Hagan’s Field west of Frederick as a Confederate spy. He was captured near Woodsboro.
  • Jul 21, 1863: General George G. Meade’s Union troops crossed the Potomac River at Berlin (Brunswick) on a pontoon bridge.
  • Jul 6, 1864: Middletown paid a $1,500 ransom to Confederate General Jubal Early.
  • Sep 8, 1866: A windstorm destroyed the Methodist Protestant Church, part of the Lutheran Church and several houses in Jefferson.
  • Sep 2, 1868: The Maryland Asylum for The Deaf and Dumb opened at the Hessian Barracks with 36 students. William D. Cook was the superintendent. It is now called the Maryland School for The Deaf.
  • Jul 6, 1869: Mrs. Abner Harn was fatally injured when her dress caught in the gears of a piece of machinery at her husband’s woolen factory in Unionville. At the time she was overseeing the washing of the new fabric.
  • Jul 11, 1907: A monument was erected on Monocacy Battlefield just south of Frederick by the 14th Regiment, New Jersey Volunteers.
  • Aug 5, 1967: PFC Charles F. Brandenburg, of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, the 20-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles T. Brandenburg of Flint Hill and the husband of Connie Brandenburg of Washington Street, Frederick, was killed in action in Vietnam, the result of injuries he received from hand grenade fragments while on a combat patrol mission. He was a 1964 graduate of Frederick High School.