Faith in the Furnace

[harriet chapel, late 19th century]

"During those troubled years, a young man who would play a significant role at Catoctin, Ernest McGill, was preparing to enter the priesthood..."

- Elizabeth Y. Anderson, Faith in the Furnace

When I first moved to Thurmont for the summer to write, and everyone started asking me what I was working on, what I was writing about, I often told them that it was the beginnings of a novel based on what I imagine as the life of my great Uncle Wake (John Wakefield McGill), between the ages of 20 and 30, when he was a young man and a schoolteacher in Maryland. Wakey died last December, while I was in India, and I didn't get to be at his wake (yes, the wake for Wake), so I missed out on a lot of the ribald stories about his life, and I've been content for the last few months to wander, entranced, around his house, the Wild Rose Lodge, read his old papers and postcards, look at the oil portrait of him as a young man by former MICA professor Stanislav Rembski, and let my imagination do the work.

One of the more interesting responses to my plan for the summer came from Roy, who said something along the lines of, "So, you wanna be one of those regional writers?" -- not exactly disdainful, but it made me wonder if something was wrong with the fact that I'm not writing about New York or Chicago or Paris.

But the honest truth of it is, my family has a long, important history in this region, and in the state of Maryland as whole, and if I end up as the Voice of the Catoctins, I think I'd be happy with that. And I've taken some time to study it since I've been here. The story I'm telling you all today, kids, is about Catoctin Furnace, the tiny hamlet about 3 miles down the road from Thurmont, and some photos 'n historical snooping I did there.


















[the machinery at catoctin furnace]

Catoctin Furnace is the place where two illustrious clans, the McPhersons (my middle name is McPherson) and the McGills, came together. This happened when my Great-Great-Grandfather, an Episcopal Priest named Rev. Ernest McGill, married Mary Buchanan McPherson, the daughter of Dr. William S. McPherson, the company physician for Catoctin Iron Works, the company that owned one of the biggest blast furnaces in the state. He was a University of Maryland Med School grad and made $600 a year to treat the ailments and injuries of the black slaves, and later the Eastern European immigrants, who churned out pig iron at Catoctin Furnace.

The furnace itself, had been around since 1774, and had changed ownership several times, but it was John Brien, a Northern Irish rake who charmed the daughter of Col. John McPherson, a distant ancestor of mine, who really whipped the place into shape around 1820, when he bought it. At the time, he was living at the McPherson family mansion, which is known as Auburn, and has been in the McPherson family since shortly after it was built in 1805. It is still, in fact, owned by the Maryland McPhersons, but there are no more male heirs to the property. I recently met Mr. Gardiner, the current owner, at church in Catoctin Furnace, and he promised to show me around the place, which is a historic landmark, sometime soon. It's on your left, and almost visible from Rte. 15 as you drive towards Thurmont from Frederick, and it once looked like this:















[auburn, the mcpherson mansion, in lithograph]

Paul, Roy, Matty So Phatty, and I took a hike recently from the site of the ruin of Catoctin Furnace all the way around the Catoctin Mountain Trail, through the national park, to Cat Rock, about 6 miles in all, and a beautiful hike. The furnace site currently looks like this:

















[the fiery furnace]

and inside:

















[cathedral to iron]

Historians at Hopkins tell me that iron produced at Catoctin Furnace was used to fight off the bloody Brits, in the form of cannonballs for the Continental Army's 16-pounders, and to whop some Confederate ass at the Battle of Hampton Roads by providing the plates for the first-ever American iron-clad warship, the USS Monitor.

But by the time when my G-G-Gramps, old Reverend Ernie McGill arrived at the Furnace to be rector of Harriet Chapel, the local Episcopal church, the glory days were over...

















[dani with photo portrait of rev. ernest mcgill, september 2007]

Elizabeth Y. Anderson, a parishioner at Harriet Chapel and author of local history Faith in the Furnace, has this to say about it:

"The decade of the 1880s brought the most startling change in the life at Catoctin since the iron furnace began production more than a century earlier. The United States as a rapidly expanding nation was particularly dependent on rail transportation. A vast network of railroads crisscrossing the country demanded thousands of miles of steel rails and bridges... In 1873, Andrew Carnegie, a pioneer in railroading, entered the steel manufacturing business with the construction near Pittsburgh of the biggest steel mill in the world, the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works. Utilizing the improved Bessemer process, Carnegie's company dominated rail manufacture. In addition to Pittsburgh, vast steel enterprises were consolidated in the South, the Midwest and the Western Mountain Region. Proximity to raw materials, improved technology and reduced shipping costs made it impossible for small independent furnaces to compete with these corporate giants..."

It was the beginning of the end for Catoctin Furnace, and the operation finally closed in 1903. So in a twisted way, my being from Steeler country means that my direct ancestors, the beneficiaries of modern steel production in Pittsburgh mills, ruined the livelihoods of my less modern ancestors, the McPherson-McGills of late-10th century Western Maryland. Whooooaaa....

This is a creepy old rusty old iron wreath, hung out a split-trunked tree in the woods near Catoctin Furnace. Like something out of the Blair Witch Project. Or maybe just the work of some sauced old Maryland moonshiners...






















[well i go to some hollow, and set up my still...]

And this is the steeple of Harriet Chapel, the little church across the road from the Iron Works. I'm told that the Rev. Ernest McGill used to ride in horse and buggy between three churches: Harriet Chapel, St. Stephens in Thurmont, and St. John's in Walkersville, delivering a eucharist mass and a sermon at each one, every Sunday. And that he never recycled material. And, he could shoot under 75 on a par-4 golf course, and he got a 1580 on his SATs.

















[open the doors, see all the people...]

But the most important tale from the Rec. McGill era, and possibly from all of Catoctin Furnace history, is the story of the Ransom Wreck, about which, now that I know about it, I intend to write a killer train-wreck ballad about it, which will effectively make me not just a regional writer, but a regional song-writer, as well. Wait a second... am I a regional blogger, too?






















[train-wreck in 3 parts]

You can read some really incredible eye-witness accounts of what happened in the Ransom Wreck here, as well as see some sweet pictures in addition to the one I posted above, but the story goes, quite basically, like this.

When Catoctin Furnace shut down its iron-making operations in 1903, a bunch of the workers were forced to seek work on the rods, doing day labor for the Western Maryland Railway as "floaters" -- clearing wrecks, making repairs, and doing various other odd railroad jobs. A crew of these floaters from northern Frederick County, on a team organized by a man called "Foreman Wade," were sent to repair a wreck near Baltimore at Mt. Hope, on Wednesday June 14th, 1905. Three days later, when they had finished their contract work, they made for the station to take the No. 5 train, out of Hillen Station, Baltimore, to the Catoctins. It was filled mostly with day laborers bound for their homes in the Western Maryland resort towns, and as the baggage car allotted to Foreman Wade's men was full, most of them sat on the bumpers between the cars, watching the ground pass by beneath their feet and trying not to fall asleep and fall off onto the tracks.

Further west, at Gorsuch, a heavily-loaded freight train was waiting on the siding with instructions to let three west-bound trains pass it by before it got back on the tracks and continued its east-bound journey. The Union Bridge Accomodation and the Blue Mountain Express went by, and then for some reason, the freighter forgot about the third train and moved back onto the track, continuing on its way. The third train was, of course, the high-speed passenger No. 5 train. The two locomotives collided head-on near the Patapsco River crossing. All of the crewmen, except one foreman who jumped, were killed, and Foreman Wade's day laborers met a particularly gruesome and fiery fate because they were sitting between cars. Most of their bodies were burned almost beyond recognition.

Of the 26 kiled, 16 were from the Emmitsburg/Thurmont/Catoctin Furnace area, and Great-Great-Gramps Reverend Ernest buried seven of them at Harriet Chapel. The community was devastated, and Reverend McGill died almost exactly a year later, at age 50. I like to think it was a broken heart.






















[st. francis mourning the lost, catoctin rectory in the background]

I took a trip last Sunday with KB, JMc, and RA to Harriet Chapel for Sunday services, and to see the stained-glass windows dedicated to my great-great-grandfather and mother.

Here's the church's cornerstone:

















[179 years and counting...]

and the interior of the chapel...

















[harriet chapel, september 2007]

The sycamore tree on the front lawn between the chapel and the rectory, we are told, is the second oldest in Maryland. No one seemed to know where the first is.






















[r.a. at h.c.]

And finally, the windows. This is Mary Buchanan McPherson McGill, a fine, right-minded woman if there ever was one, pointed out by KB...






















[not actually m.b. mcgill. a saint, in fact]


















[dedication]

And a saint dedicated to the Rev. Ernest...






















[in memoriam]

And finally, in memory of the orphaned children of the Ransom Wreck, because all memorials of tragic events have at least something to do with patriotism and American dignity, but also, and equally significantly, because there was an ill aviary in the Catoctin Mountain Park trailhead area that Matty So Phatty, Paul, Roy, and I discovered on our hike near Catoctin Furnace, here's a photo of our national bird...

















[slept funny on my neck...]

Goodnight, and God Bless America.