Eighty years ago, the Museum of Frederick County History was born. In 1944, Heritage Frederick, then known as the Historical Society of Frederick County, acquired its first property, the historic Steiner House on West Patrick Street.

Beyond Frederick’s art circles, Florence Doub might not be so well known. She should be.

It’s hard to fathom, but 35 years ago, residential curbside recycling in Frederick County was nonexistent. At the time, residents only had garbage collection three times a week. Linda Norris-Waldt oversaw the launch the county’s recycling program.

Baltimore—Most Fredericktonians are quite familiar with Francis Scott Key, or at least they know he authored the national anthem. Key’s name and likeness can be found throughout Frederick County, from minor league baseball uniforms and a radio station to the names of local businesses and social organizations. His final resting place is…

Joy Hall Onley clearly remembers her first day at Frederick High School, just not very fondly. Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling integrated public schools across the nation…

EMMITSBURG—As the first person born in what would become the United States to be named a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, Elizabeth Ann Seton led a remarkable life. 

Throughout the 1990s, Hood College experienced growing debts that almost forced the institution to close. Ronald Volpe, who served as Hood’s president from 2001 to 2015, recounts this tumultuous chapter in the college’s history and the events that led to its remarkable turnaround.

A slip of paper is carefully wrapped around one small piece of flatware. The note, in the handwriting of Ruth Carty Delaplaine, reads. “My father’s fruit spoon.” The silver-plated spoon, made in 1883, is marked with the retailer’s name, George E. Myer, a Frederick jeweler. It has an elongated and pointed bowl for scooping out segmented fruit, like oranges. Even without the note it might be possible to guess the item’s owner by the “CCC” monogram on the handle. This amazing, small piece of history is just one of the artifacts from a large collection of items recently donated to Heritage Frederick by the family of Frances Delaplaine Randall.

It’s back. Following a three-year break that began in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Frederick’s Candlelight House Tour returns this year. One of the community’s most anticipated holiday events for more than three decades features as many as eight homes whose owners generously open the doors of their beautifully decorated homes to the waiting public for two evenings.

There are few Fredericktonians who have as great an impact as did Edward Schley Delaplaine. He practiced law, was elected to public office and served as a prominent judge. Today, however, he is best remembered as the leading historian in Frederick County over the last 100 years.

Feb. 4, 1967, offered clear skies above the green, mountainous region north of Hanoi, North Vietnam. It was perfect FLying weather for U.S. Air Force Capt. John Fer, who at age 29 had already successfully piloted 53 missions jamming enemy radar and ground equipment and conducting reconnaissance. The 54th flight would be his last.

The collections of Heritage Frederick are focused on items produced, used and owned by people from Frederick County. This watercolor painting reveals three great local stories in just one object.

On a winter day in February 1915, Frederick native Marshall Etchison and a few friends visited Catoctin Mountain. A photo album loaned to Heritage Frederick from Etchison’s family contains snapshots of the journey from Spout Spring to White Rock and High Knob. Of particular interest are two images showing the group at the ruins of the “Old Tavern” at Hamburg, a rare photographic record of one of Frederick County’s ghost towns.

Robert Downing isn’t a name most people would know today. But back in the late 1800s, the actor was quite something, sort of a Brad Pitt of his time. “He was well-known and revered,” says Chris Haugh, historian and preservation manager for Mount Olivet Cemetery.

In 1971, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked a top-secret report, known as the Pentagon Papers, that documented the impossibility of winning the Vietnam War. Frederick resident Jack Topchik worked as an editor at The New York Times, the newspaper that was the first to publish the report. He shares his memories of the event that led to America’s long-awaited withdrawal from Vietnam and played an important role in the preservation of the free press. Ellsberg died in June of this year at age 92.

From 1979 to 2016, Larry Murray served as the farm manager at the storied Glade Valley Farms in Walkersville where, during that time, some of America’s finest racehorses were sired and trained. Murray shares the farm’s history and recalls the more than 35 years he spent overseeing its operation.

A member of three fishing halls of fame, Kreh is a certifiable legend in the fly-fishing world, and rightfully so. Before passing away in 2018 at the age of 93, he had cast a line on every continent but Antarctica, caught 126 species of fish, was the author of 32 books and thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, plus made frequent television appearances.

Louise A. Weagly was hard to pin down. The Frederick County math teacher had local roots, but they crawled around the globe. Literally.

Jim O’Hare climbs up a seemingly never-ending flight of stairs in the former Visitation Academy building, the temperature cools (at least 10 degrees, if you ask him), the hallways get narrower (a product of 19th-century design) and the graffiti on the walls becomes more pronounced. “Isn’t it so cool?” he asks a visitor.

Joseph Shelton grew up in Frederick hearing the stories of his family who first came to the area in 1780, and more specifically hearing about the parts they played in the Civil War. It would inspire a lifelong and committed interest in Civil War history as Sheldon went on to become a superintendent at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and a president of the Frederick County Civil War Round Table, as well as a reenactor portraying Confederate Gen. James Lawson Kemper for the past four decades.