Historic Shepherdstown newsletter – June 2021
Dear Supporters of Historic Shepherdstown,
We are delighted to announce that we are reopening the Historic Shepherdstown Museum for the summer. Please join us on Saturday, June 12, between noon and 4 p.m., when the Museum will reopen for tours. Cookies, iced tea and lemonade will be available in the Reception Room or Garden to celebrate the reopening.
Museum hours will be limited to Saturdays for the month of June. A decision on whether to expand the hours beyond Saturdays will be made at the end of June. For the safety of our docents and other patrons, masks will be required inside the Museum.
Two new pieces related to Col. John Francis Hamtramck will be on display. In 2019, the Museum purchased a presentation sword that had belonged to Col. Hamtramck. It will be displayed with his West Point commission, which the Museum also owns. In November of 2020, a mahogany drop-leaf dining room table that was in the home of Col. Hamtramck was loaned to the Museum by Wanda Perry of Charles Town, WV.
Col. Hamtramck, the son of a Revolutionary War general, led Virginia’s volunteers in the Mexican-American War. He was married to Eliza Clagett Selby of Shepherdstown, and eventually lived in a home on East German Street. He was mayor of Shepherdstown from 1850-1854, and he served on the Jefferson County Court from 1853-1858. He died at his home in Shepherdstown in April 1858 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. After his death, his men and officers renamed the Shepherdstown Light Infantry the Hamtramck Guard in his honor.
Another new piece that will be on display is an enlarged copy of two pages from a diary kept by Shepherdstown resident Cato Moore Entler, who was the son of Joseph Entler, owner of Shepherdstown’s Great Western Hotel, and the nephew of Daniel Entler, who owned the Entler Hotel that now houses the Museum.
The display features a list of Shepherdstown soldiers who served in the Civil War, including notations such as “arm shot off”, “deserted” and “died at Gettysburg.” The diary was generously loaned to the Museum by Jefferson County resident William Strider. The full diary, in which Entler recorded details of events in town including election results and personal observations, is available at: https://historicshepherdstown.com/portfolio-item/c-m-entler-1852-diary.
Volunteers Needed
Do you have an interest in history? Do you want to help preserve the legacy of Shepherdstown and the surrounding community? Please help us tell the full story of Shepherdstown. This is the time of year that Historic Shepherdstown begins to recruit members for the Board of Directors, HSC committees, and docents to help in the Museum.
Board members serve three-year terms and are elected at our annual meeting in September. The Board meets on the first Wednesday of the month. Board members oversee the operation of Historic Shepherdstown Commission and the Historic Shepherdstown Museum. They also chair and serve on our various committees. You do not have to be on the Board to be a volunteer committee member or docent. We welcome community volunteers. If you have a skill, we have a use for it.
We are looking for board members and volunteer committee members who are interested in helping to maintain the Historic Entler Building complex and garden, docent at the museum, plan and publicize our events and speaker series, fundraise and write grants, help oversee our finances, recruit members, and help us market ourselves to the wider community.
Anyone who is interested in volunteering for the Board or for a committee can contact HSC administrator Teresa McLaughlin at [email protected] or by calling 304-876-0910. Please provide contact information so we can follow up with you.
Next Speaker Series event
Our next Speaker Series program will be held on Wednesday, June 23, at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Our speaker will be C&O Canal historian Karen Gray, and her topic will be “The C&O Canal: Surprising Truths and Colorful Myths.”
This overview of Chesapeake and Ohio Canal history and engineering looks at some of the canal’s most persistent myths and little understood truths. In a heavily-illustrated PowerPoint presentation, Dr. Gray distinguishes the four very distinct eras of the canal’s history and explains such little understood physical characteristics as its three canals and river navigation stretches. She’ll also address the common misunderstandings about the boatmen, the canal company’s bankruptcy, eventual sale, and rocky 33-year path that to its current state as a National Historical Park.
Born in Big Valley, Alberta, Karen Gray grew up in Spokane, Washington, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Whitworth University in Spokane; a three-year post-graduate degree from the Harvard Divinity School; and a Ph.D. under the faculty of theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Dr. Gray lived in DC for 30 years, and for 20 of those years worked for the Smithsonian Institution’s Associate Program developing educational tours in the mid-Atlantic states region on subjects ranging from art to zoology.
In 2001 she moved to Hagerstown where she volunteers for the C&O Canal NHP as an expert on the canal’s history and engineering. She also teaches non-credit classes in history, literature, religion, and philosophy for Hagerstown and Frederick Community Colleges.
This talk is especially timely, as the C&O Canal is celebrating its 50th anniversary as a National Park this year, and the World Canal Conference will be held in Hagerstown, MD, in late August. To register for Dr. Gray’s talk and request a Zoom link, please email [email protected] or call 304-876-0910 and leave your email address.
Kevin Pawlak’s talk now available on YouTube
Kevin Pawlak’s May Speaker Series talk is now available on YouTube. Pawlak, the Historic Site Manager for Prince William County’s Historic Preservation Division, spoke about “Shepherdstown in the Civil War: One Vast Confederate Hospital, September 1862.” Pawlak’s talk was based on his book of the same name, which was published in 2015. The book is available through the HSC website, at the Museum, or at Four Seasons Bookstore in Shepherdstown.
Pawlak’s talk focused on Shepherdstown in the days immediately following the Sept. 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam. The video begins with the announcements of our annual Historic Preservation Awards. The talk can be found at https://youtu.be/PJOqv05bWrU or by searching YouTube for Historic Shepherdstown Museum. Much thanks goes to our summer intern, Seth Kunkle, a Communication Arts major at Hood College in Frederick, MD, for editing the video and setting up our YouTube channel.
Hold the dates!
Our annual Fall Fundraiser will resume on Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. The event will be held outdoors, under a tent. Details will be available later this summer.
Our annual meeting and Dr. Dianne Roman’s talk “The Ladies Garland: The Story of an 1820’s Jefferson County Women’s Magazine” will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021. A decision on whether to hold an in-person, Zoom, or hybrid meeting will be made later in the summer.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the Museum reopening on June 12. Please remember to contact [email protected] for a link to Karen Gray’s talk and to volunteer to help Historic Shepherdstown Commission. If you have not joined or renewed your membership this year please do so at https://historicshepherdstown.com/support/join-renew/. Thank you!
Have a wonderful summer,
Donna M. Bertazzoni
President, HSC Board of Directors
