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
Speaker Series, 2021 -“Love Begins at Home” – Carmen & Austin Slater
Austin and Carmen Slater, owners of the Christian Clise House on West New Street in Shepherdstown, will give the final Historic Shepherdstown Speaker Series talk of 2021 on October 13 at 7 p.m. via Zoom.
The Slaters’ talk, “Love Begins at Home”, will recount their experience renovating the 18th Century home. Additionally, the Slaters will step us through the process of making application for the West Virginia State Historic Restoration tax credit, which they successfully navigated.
Earlier this year, the Slaters received Historic Shepherdstown’s Preservation of Historic Structures Award for their restoration work.
The Christian Clise House, circa 1789, was built as a log house. Clise purchased the lot from Abraham Shepherd in 1785. Succeeding owners enlarged the house, adding a center hall, siding and other unique architectural details. The house is an excellent example of refined log and chink construction covered with painted weatherboard siding.
The Slaters undertook the project both to restore and preserve this unique and historical residence. Improvements included removing paint from the exterior rubble foundation, renovating the southeast and northwest chimneys, replacing the roof over the basement door, and uncovering a window under the front porch.
Both Austin and Carmen Slater have a deep interest in history. Austin holds an MBA from George Washington University and an B.S. from Shepherd University. He is the retired president and CEO of the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative and remains involved in finance and investment activities. Since he moved to Shepherdstown, he has joined the Board of Historic Shepherdstown Commission and become a volunteer at Antietam National Battlefield. Carmen is a licensed personal trainer and a former dental hygienist. Having renovated and operated several homes and investment rentals, Carmen was the hands-on force behind restoring the Christian Clise House. A passionate animal rights supporter and environmentalist, she devotes much of her time to her ever-expanding organic garden.
Speaker Series, 2021 – The Ladies Garland: The Story of an 1820’s Jefferson County Women’s Magazine.”
Wednesday, September 8, 2021. The first Fall Speaker Series event will feature Dr. Dianne Roman. The topic of Dr. Roman’s talk, which will begin at about 7 p.m., is “The Ladies Garland: The Story of an 1820’s Jefferson County Women’s Magazine.”
Shepherdstown Then and Now
Historic Shepherdstown Museum Reopens with Regular Hours
The Museum reopened on June 12. Read all about it in the Shepherdstown Chronicle’s June 18, 2021 article.
Photo by Tabitha Johnson and used with permission.
Remembering Shepherdstown’s Civil War Veterans on Memorial Day
There’s a new small display in the 3rd floor hallway of the Museum, opposite the Civil War Room. It’s an enlarged copy of two pages from a diary kept by Shepherdstown resident, Cato Moore Entler. Born in Shepherdstown in 1821, he was the son of Joseph Entler, owner of Shepherdstown’s Great Western Hotel, and nephew of Daniel Entler, owner of the Entler Hotel that now houses the Historic Shepherdstown Museum.
In 1852, Cato Moore Entler began keeping a diary in which he recorded details of events in Shepherdstown, including election results and personal observations. An important entry in the diary is a list of Shepherdstown men who served in the Confederate Army, with later notations on their fate as a result of the war. Some of the poignant entries include “arm shot off,” “died at Gettysburg,” and “deserted.”
The full diary is available at: https://historicshepherdstown.com/portfolio-item/c-m-entler-1852-diary/ It is an historical document, reflecting the biases of the times, including pro-Confederate leanings. Some later diary entries include recipes, newspaper clippings and instructions for making home remedies for a variety of illnesses.
The diary is on loan to the museum by William Strider of Jefferson County.
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
Speaker Series, 2021 – Karen Gray, The C&O Canal: Surprising Truths and Colorful Myths
Dr. Karen Gray, volunteer historian at C&O Canal National Historical Park, will give the next Speaker Series talk for Historic Shepherdstown Commission on Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Her talk will focus on “The C&O Canal: Surprising Truths and Colorful Myths.” This overview of Chesapeake and Ohio Canal history and engineering will look at some of the canal’s most persistent myths and little understood truths. Dr. Gray will distinguish the four very distinct eras of the canal’s history and explain such little understood physical characteristics as its three canals and river navigation stretches.
In the Wake of Battle: A Woman’s Recollections of Shepherdstown during Antietam Week
From 1884 to 1887 a popular magazine called The Century ran a series called “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” and later reprinted it in a variety of formats. The Historic Shepherdstown Museum recently acquired a copy of Volume 32, which contains Mary Bedinger Mitchell’s memories of Shepherdstown during and after the Battle of Antietam. Even though the book is available online, its etched illustration show up more clearly in the printed version.
The historian and journalist, Alan Nevins, in his 1967 Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography, wrote that the series contained “Opinionated and rationalizing memoirs by high-ranking officers on both sides,” and made this work “one of the most quoted in Civil War literature.” While this is true, it was also by design. The editors of The Century wanted to get personal accounts by leading figures of the War before they died. But they also sought out people they knew had an axe to grind, because controversy always has a good audience.
Perhaps it’s remarkable that the editors at The Century even got accounts from private soldiers and women (if they had asked some African-American participants in the War for their accounts, they would have done us a great service…but sadly they did not). Volume 32 contains the account of Mary Bedinger Mitchell of Shepherdstown during and after the Battle of Antietam, as the town was turned into a hospital for Confederate wounded, and the townspeople into nurses, orderlies, and , predictably, grave-diggers. It is rightfully one of the best sources for what the experience of the Battle of Antietam was like for the town, and that has accordingly drawn the most attention from people writing about it.
Mary’s father Henry had been ambassador to Denmark, but died soon after his return in 1858, when Mary was 8 years old. Her mother Caroline moved the family for a time to Flushing, NY to her parents, but soon moved back to Shepherdstown to purchase Poplar Grove. Mary would return to Flushing sometime around 1869, meet and marry a former Union officer, John F.B. Mitchell, and live there until her death in 1896. When her article was published, she was raising three children.
Mary had two axes to grind. “A Federal soldier once said to me, “’I was always sorry for your wounded: they never seemed to get any care”. We can suspect the soldier was her own husband, but in Flushing there would be others who could tell her how the Union cared for its wounded, to compare with her memories of the Confederate doctors who eventually arrived in town, “ most of whom might well have stayed away. The remembrance of that worthless body of officials stirs me to wrath”. But caring for his troops was not a great priority for Lee when he took them to Maryland. He remarked to his officers at the planning of the campaign that it was going to be unnecessary to provision them, as they’d be marching through cornfields and could eat green corn. His soldiers begged for food at any door they passed, and it is not surprising that they were mostly left to beg for care of their wounds, as well.
Mary was also indignant that they had to beg care of Shepherdstown, because in 1862 it was not the prosperous, bustling market town for the northern Shenandoah Valley that it had been in 1820. After the Erie Canal could feed the East more cheaply than would be possible with wagon traffic, the Valley farmers stopped going through town with their produce and livestock. Industrialization had put Shepherdstown craftsmen out of business, and the town was stuck on a spur of the railroad. It was not a place that could afford to be filled with the wounded and dying.
Shepherdstown’s only access to the river was through a narrow gorge, the bed of a small tributary of the Potomac, that was made to do much duty as it slipped cheerily over its rocks, and furnished power for several mills and factories, most of them at that time silent. Here were also three or four stone warehouses, huge, empty structures, testifying mutely that the town had once had a business. The road to the bridge led through this cleft, down an indescribably steep street skirting the stream’s ravine, to whose sides the mills and factories clung in most extraordinary fashion; but it was always a marvel how anything heavier than a wheelbarrow could be pulled up its tedious length, or how any vehicle could be driven down without plunging into the water at the bottom…..
As the wounded began to be brought across from Maryland, the empty structures turn out to be useful: Men ran for keys and opened the long empty shops and unused workrooms; other people got brooms and stirred up the dust of ages.
The unfinished Town Hall had stood in naked ugliness for many a long day. Some-body threw a few rough boards across the beams, placed piles of straw over them, laid down single planks to walk upon, and lo, it was a hospital at once. The stone warehouses down in the ravine and by the river had been passed by, because low and damp and undesirable as sanitariums, but now their doors and windows were thrown wide, and, with barely time allowed to sweep them, they were all occupied; and even the “old blue factory.” This was an antiquated, crazy, dismal building of blue stucco that peeled off in great blotches. It had been shut up for years and was in the last stages of dilapidation. The doorways were boarded up; its windows looked eyeless sockets; boards were missing from the floor, leaving only rafters to bridging gaps; while, in one place at least, it was possible to look down through successive openings, from the upper story to the basement, whence came back the sound of rushing water, for the stream, that had once turned the machinery (long since departed), still ran under archways in the foundations of the building.
This was the background to her story. Not the heroics of patriotic Southerners, no Scarlet O’Haras managing to look beautiful while carrying water to the gallant soldiers, but only a poor little town that just happened to be near a slaughterhouse. After having lived through that, at the age of 12, it’s no wonder she preferred New York.
An illustration from The Century magazine’s “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” vol. 32
Speaker Series, 2021 – Shepherdstown In September 1862 – A Confederate Hospital
The Historic Shepherdstown Commission Speaker Series will feature Kevin Pawlak, Historic Site Manager for Prince William County’s Historic Preservation Division, on May 12 at 7pm.
Pawlak’s presentation will be based on his 2015 book titled Shepherdstown in the Civil War: One Vast Confederate Hospital, September 1862.
In September 1862, Western Maryland became the focus as Robert E. Lee’s thus-far victorious Confederate army advanced north across the Potomac River to deal the final blow to a United States that seemed to be on its last leg. Lee began his campaign with the goal of defeating a Union army on northern soil and gaining independence for the eleven states of the Confederacy, while U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, struggled to keep the United States as one nation instead of two. This decisive campaign culminated along the banks of Antietam Creek, stopping the Confederacy’s quest for independence and helping to grant freedom for enslaved people. The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle of the war, changed the course of the Civil War and of the United States itself. It also turned Shepherdstown into “One Vast Confederate Hospital.”
Pawlak is a 2014 graduate of Shepherd University, where he majored in History with a concentration in Civil War and 19th Century America and minored in Historic Preservation. He is a Certified Battlefield Guide at Antietam National Battlefield and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, He is on the Board of Directors for the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association, the Save Historic Antietam Foundation, and the Friends of Ball’s Bluff Battlefield.
In addition to his book about Shepherdstown, he has written “To Hazard All: A Guide to the Maryland Campaign, 1862”, with Robert Orrison, published in 2018, and “Antietam National Battlefield”, published in 2019. He is a regular contributor to the “Emerging Civil War” online blog, and is currently working on a study of George B. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac in the Maryland Campaign.
May is also Historic Preservation Month, and HSC’s annual Historic Preservation Award winners will be acknowledged before Pawlak’s talk. Austin and Carmen Slater will receive the Preservation of Historic Structures Award for their restoration of the Christian Clise House. Bruce Massey and Jerry Bock, the inspiration behind the Shepherdstown Tour of Historic Churches, will receive the Preservation of Historic Legacies Award, also known as the Dr. James C. Price Award. Finally, longtime HSC board member Vicki Smith will receive the Service to Historic Shepherdstown award.
Back to the Future? The Zittle’s Hundred Years Almanack
Have you ever worried about lice in your cabbage? Does your milk taste like turnips? Does your canary have asthma? Or maybe you want to stop your cows, or perhaps your horses from kicking. How about a proven recipe for grape pie, persimmon beer, or Indian corn vinegar? Do you want a sure cure for the croup, an ear ache, a sore throat, freckles, dropsy, bedbugs, or maybe you just want to cure meat.
Look no further than Zittle’s Hundred Years Almanack, 1868 and Ending with 1967, a copy of which was recently acquired by the Historic Shepherdstown Museum. It offers an insight into the customs, foods, health, and daily life of 19th century rural America.
Printed on what appears to be newspaper stock, the now tattered 64-page booklet was published in 1868 in Shepherdstown by John H. Zittle, who also published the The Shepherdstown Register.
Besides weather predictions for the following 99 years [Did it really snow in Jefferson County on February 18, 1960 as predicted?], it contains “antidotes for poisons, useful hints, practical information and valuable recipes.”
Selling for a mere 50 cents, the Almanack, according to Zittle’s advertisement in The Shepherdstown Register, was “worth $500 to any farmer or family” and the recipes alone were “worth double the price of the book,”
Zittle was born in Maryland in 1832 and moved to Shepherdstown in 1853 when he purchased The Shepherdstown Register newspaper. He was a member of the local Shepherdstown militia—the Hamtramck Guards – which was one of the first units to arrive in Harper’s Ferry to respond to John Brown’s rebellion in 1859. Zittle later wrote a book about the event, A Correct History of the John Brown Invasion at Harper’s Ferry, West Va., which was published by his wife in 1905.
After serving as a second lieutenant in Company B, the 2nd Virginia Infantry, known as the Stonewall Brigade, he was back in Shepherdstown by 1863, when he began his first of seven terms on the town council. He also served three terms as mayor of Shepherdstown.
Except for a break during the Civil War years, Zittle edited and published the paper from 1853 until 1882, when sold the paper and printing press to William Snyder. Zittle died in 1900 and is buried in Middletown, MD.
The Museum’s 1868 edition is listed as the “First American Edition,” and advertisements for the Almanack appear in The Shepherdstown Register only in 1870. There may not have been subsequent publications after that date.
There is a single advertisement in the Almanack, one for fellow townsman W.M. Entler’s “Sure Cure,” which according to the ad on the back cover, “never fails to cure cholera, cholera morbus, cramp, colic, flux, dysentery, summer complaints, diarrhea, etc., etc.” It cost 35 cents a bottle, with a guarantee: “No cure, No pay.”
[For more about John Zittle, see The Editor and the Spy: Espionage and Poetry in Shepherdstown on the Eve of the Civil War.