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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.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
NRFRED_181116_01.JPG: The Road That Built The Nation
Frederick: A Town becomes a City
Frederick Town was founded in 1745 when Daniel Dulany the Elder carved out an eastern portion of his 7,000 acre parcel patented as "Tasker's Chance." The town was then laid out in an orderly grid with Patrick Street designated as the east-west thoroughfare and Market Street running north-south. Most agree that the first house in town was built at the northeast corner of Patrick Street and Maxwell Alley by schoolteacher John Thomas Schley in 1746. National Road mile stone 45 now stands in front of the Schley house site.
Frederick Town prospered from the start. It became the seat of government when Frederick County was established in 1748. By 1800, it had 2,600 residents in 450 houses. Soon after, the Baltimore and Frederick-Town Turnpike, the first leg of the new National Road, arrived. During the next few decades, millions of travelers passed through Frederick which, by 1817, dropped the "Town" as it became a more respectable city.
NRFRED_181116_10.JPG: The John Thomas Schley House, rendered in an artist's conception, stood here until it was demolished in 1853.
NRFRED_181116_12.JPG: An 1841 map of the "City of Frederick" distinctly shows the grid of streets that still exists in downtown Frederick. In the town's lower third, the National Road curves into Frederic's east end, straightens out on Patrick Street and then again curves southwest as it leaves town headed for the Braddock Heights.
NRFRED_181116_17.JPG: This coach is stopped at J. Walter's shop in Frederick c. 1880. According to his sign, Mr. Walter was a dealer in wool and sheepskins, as well as a manufacturer of Neat's foot oil.
NRFRED_181125_01.JPG: The Road That Built the Nation
A Crossroads of American History
The Frederick Square Corner
The Square Corner, at the intersection of Patrick and Market Streets, has long been the commercial and financial heart of Frederick. It is here that the National Road meets several important north-south roads that lead to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The Square Corner has witnessed both dramatic and ordinary events for over two hundred and fifty years. British, Hessian, and Tory prisoners marched through town during the Revolutionary War, while Union and Confederate armies marched through as they headed to fateful collisions at Sharpsburg and Gettysburg during the Civil War. Conestoga freight wagons and "Concord" stagecoaches rolled west on the National Road, while in recent times, presidential motorcades passed through on their way to the nearby retreat in the Catoctin Mountains.
NRFRED_181125_07.JPG: By the 1890s, brick had replaced dirt on road surfaces, Trolley tracks and power lines crisscrossed the Square Corner as Gilded Age technology came to Frederick.
NRFRED_181125_10.JPG: A Hagerstown & Frederick Trolley car rumbles through the Square Corner in 1911. The electric railway made travel convenient from Frederick to other rural communities farther west and north.
NRFRED_181125_13.JPG: The Prime real estate at the Square Corner has always called for memorable architecture. The massive Farmers and Mechanics Bank Building still dominates a corner of the intersection. Many of the old buildings in the well preserved downtown have survived with new uses.
NRFRED_181125_21.JPG: The Road That Built the Nation
A Good Night's Rest
Frederick's Hotel Block
This part of downtown Frederick has long been a place of lodging and hospitality for travelers along the National Road. Kimball's Inn, Talbott's Tavern, the City Hotel and the Francis Scott Key Hotel have occupied this site for over two hundred years.
Among the many notable travelers was Revolutionary War hero, Frenchman Marquis de Lafayette. He was a visitor to Frederick on a triumphal tour of America. "He was received with pomp and parade. He last night attended a public dinner at Talbott's Tavern. He is now receiving the citizens and strangers at Talbotts & tonight he will attend a ball at Talbotts. Our whole town is in an uproar all about Lafayette." This news was recorded by Jacob Engelbrecht on December 30, 1824. He was an observer who left behind a vivid record through his diaries, of life along the 19th century National Road.
NRFRED_181125_27.JPG: The City Hotel succeeded Talbott's Tavern on this site. It hosted many notable travelers, including President-elect William Henry Harrison, Senator Henry Clay, Mexican General Santa Anna, Inventor Alexander Graham Bell and President Woodrow Wilson. On the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg in late June, 1863, 23-year-old George Armstrong Custer was at the City Hotel when he received word he was promoted brigadier general.
NRFRED_181125_31.JPG: City Hotel was finally demolished for "a modern fire-proof hotel of 200 rooms partially air conditioned." The Francis Scott Key Hotel opened to great fanfare on January 8, 1923.
NRFRED_181125_33.JPG: The Marquis de Lafayette visited Frederick in 1824, on a triumphal tour of America.
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.
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