BGuthrie Photos: MD -- White's Ferry

MD -- White's Ferry:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 18.221.174.248 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

[1] WHITES_150828_001_STITCH.JPG

[2] WHITES_150828_002_STITCH.JPG

[3] WHITES_150828_003.JPG	[4] WHITES_150828_006.JPG	[5] WHITES_150828_013.JPG
[6] WHITES_150828_016.JPG	[7] WHITES_150828_019.JPG	[8] WHITES_150828_025.JPG
[9] WHITES_150828_030.JPG	[10] WHITES_150828_039.JPG	[11] WHITES_150828_045.JPG
[12] WHITES_150828_067.JPG	[13] WHITES_150828_072.JPG	[14] WHITES_150828_079.JPG
[15] WHITES_150828_081.JPG	[16] WHITES_150828_084.JPG	[17] WHITES_150828_091.JPG
[18] WHITES_150828_093.JPG	[19] WHITES_150828_096.JPG	[20] WHITES_150828_102.JPG
[21] WHITES_150828_105.JPG	[22] WHITES_150828_108.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. WHITES_150828_006.JPG: White's Ferry: Before you is the last operating ferry on the Potomac River. Early settlers recognized these relatively still water would provide an ideal location for a ferry. The first known ferry operation here was Conrad's Ferry in 1817. After the Civil War, former Confederate soldier Elijah White purchased and made many improvements to the service. He named his ferry boat in honor of his former commander General Jubal Early. More than a convenient river crossing, the ferry provided a place of commerce between the canal and surrounding community. Farmers from Virginia used the ferry to get their crops to market in Washington DC, and Maryland via the canal. In the days before modern refrigeration, a farmer's access to reliable transportation meant the difference between prosperity and watching a year's worth of work rot in storage. Together the canal and the ferry shortened the time it took farmers to get goods to market. Today, White's Ferry continues to the serve the needs of its community to provide a safe river crossing and a living link to the past.
2. WHITES_150828_013.JPG: Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. The Canal and towapath [sic] are dedicated to Justice William O. Douglas of White Ferry.
3. WHITES_150828_081.JPG: Take Notice: The Historic Public Ferry Service was first authorized by an act of the general assembly of Maryland entered January the 19th, 1782 and continues service for your convenience and pleasure. It is the only public ferry operating on the Potomac River or its tributaries, and is still in private ownership. The General Jubal A. Early is regularly inspected and certified by the U.S. Coast Guard. Thank you for your patronage. White's Ferry, Inc.
4. WHITES_150828_102.JPG: White's Ferry Invasion or Liberation? Antietam Campaign 1862 The serenity of the Maryland countryside was shattered on September 4-6, 1862 as 35,000 Confederate soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia waded across the Potomac River. Gen. Robert E Lee, hoping to rally support in the divided state, sent the bulk of his army across at White's Ford two miles north of here. The military operations would change the lives of the fighting men and affect local residents and businesses. The largely indifferent reaction to the Confederates as they entered Montgomery County was described by a Missouri soldier, "[I]nstead of an outburst over overflowing joy, at the sight of their deliverers, not one solitary soul had come to the River bank to see us cross or welcome us to the soil." A resident recalled the veteran troops as "the dirtiest, filthiest, piratical-looking, cutthroat men I ever saw... Yet there was a dash about them that the Northern men lacked." The invaders passed the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal via road culverts and bridges erected by their engineers. Walls of the canal were breached to disrupt commerce and the enemy's supply lines, but efforts to destroy the Monocacy Aqueduct were unsuccessful. As the largest part of the Confederate army marched toward Frederick, Gen JEB Stuart's cavalry formed a protective screen to the south.
5. WHITES_150828_108.JPG: The Confederate army crosses the Potomac River into Maryland
Wikipedia Description: White's Ferry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White's Ferry, originally Conrad's Ferry, is an inactive cable ferry service that carried cars, bicycles, and pedestrians across the Potomac River between Loudoun County, Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, and is the last one of its kind to cross the Potomac. The location offered fishing services and water recreation including canoeing. It transported between 600 and 800 customers daily until its operations were suspended indefinitely in 2020 due to a legal dispute over the land surrounding it.

History

Early settlers recognized that the relatively still waters of the Potomac River at the location would provide an ideal location for a ferry. One of the earliest mentions of the ferry appeared in an act of the Maryland General Assembly passed on December 27, 1791 (Liber JG. No. 1, folio 447):

Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland, that the following roads shall be laid out, surveyed, marked, bounded, and cleared in the manner herein directed, to wit: One road through Anne-Arundel county from the turnpike road in Baltimore county until it intersects the road from Frederick-town at the line of Frederick county, near William Hobbs's; one other road from Green's bridge, on Patuxent river, to the mouth of Monocacy, on Potowmack river, through Montgomery county; and one other road from Conrad Myer's ferry on Potowmack river aforesaid, until it intersects the road from Green's bridge aforesaid, to the mouth of Monocacy aforesaid, southwestward of the road leading from Frederick to George-town in Montgomery county aforesaid; and one other road from Conrad Myer's ferry on Potowmack river to the mouth of Seneca, or to intersect the road from Georgetown to the mouth of Monocacy, by way of Brooke Beall's mill on Watt's branch, in Montgomery county.

A road map published in the Maryland Land Records for Montgomery County in 1795 (Liber F-6, folio 195) showed a side road near Seneca Bridge coming off the main road between Georgetown and the mouth of the Monocacy River labeled "Road to Conrad Mire's ferry." Another early mention of the ferry appeared in the book: "The life and adventures of Robert Bailey, from his infancy up to December 1821" written by himself: "From the house of this good man, I crossed at Conrood's ferry, and went to Montgomery County, in Maryland, where I once more (after an absence of nearly six years,) had the heart feeling gratification of beholding my dear and affectionate mother and my kind and loving sister." Assuming the book is chronological, the crossing apparently took place after December 15, 1778. But, "The Moco Show" claims that the ferry was opened to the public in 1786. The following advertisement appeared in the National Intelligencer on Thursday, February 1, 1821: "Ranaway in September last, Abraham Dublin, a black man; from Geo. Ward, Montg. Co, Md; living about 17 miles from Gtwn, on the road leading to Coonrod's ferry." The first known ferry operation at the location was Conrad's Ferry, pronounced contemporaneously by the locals as "Coonrod's Ferry" in 1861. After the Civil War, former Confederate officer Elijah V. White purchased it and made many improvements to the service. He named his ferry boat in honor of his former commander, General Jubal Early. The ferry boat was renamed "Historic White's Ferry" in June 2020.
Currently, the ferry is owned by Malcolm Brown, whose father purchased the location in 1946 with other business partners. He eventually bought out his partners and shipped new ferries from Baltimore in 1953 and from Norfolk in 1988; both of which were named after Confederate General Jubal A. Early because of his, "rebellious, no surrender attitude".
The Confederate statue that had been moved from Rockville to White's Ferry in 2017, was moved to a private storage location by the owners on June 16, 2020, although the base of the monument remains.
Each May, White's Ferry hosts an event honoring wounded soldiers recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Escorted to the area by a large motorcycle honor guard, the soldiers enjoy a day of music, food, fishing, and rides on the ferry. The event is sponsored by the town of Poolesville, Maryland, and receives support from many groups and individuals within the community.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].