City of Frederick circa 1858

While doing research for this blog I came across an amazing Pre Civil War Map of the City of Frederick:



Frederick County District 2
Isaac Bond, Map of Frederick County, 1858, Library of Congress, MSA SC 1213-1-457

As much as I'd like to take credit for finding this amazing piece of Frederick Maryland's history I cant. All I can take credit for is for being a enough of a search engine wizard to discover a little known map of the City of Frederick from 1858.

Republished with permission for use on Life in Frederick Maryland


I'm told (full disclosure: some one I worked with told me this, I've not yet researched it fully) I'm told that before the civil war Frederick was basically 5 farms and the homes in the historic district.

The old home just past the crest of the hill coming down Market Street from Rt 70 and before you get to the Maryland School for the Deaf (on the right side heading north) is one of those original farm houses. A guy I did temporary work with (heating and air conditioning guy) told me he wanted to buy that home but changed his mind due to the fact that it was prohibited to upgrade an historic home with air conditioning.

Apparently if a home is listed in a "historical register" then you're required to leave it much as it was, sort of like if it was a museum.

I can appreciate that, but have mixed feelings about the restriction... thinking it might have the opposite effect; one of retarding interest in maintaining a Frederick Icon.

I caught our County Council in action yesterday. While channel surfing I stopped at the Frederick County Government Channel on Comcast. I'd never paid too much attention to local politics and I'm glad I saw this taped meeting.

The topic was how to best coordinate the Frederick County Fire Department and it's Volunteer Fire Department. I did NOT know that such a huge portion of our Fire Department was privately funded. I thought Chevy Chase and Bethesda were the only ones rich enough to have a private Fire Department.

The meeting displayed the shortcomings and good parts of the relationship between the Frederick County employed Fire Department and it's public counterpart. There were some jabs at each other (enough to make watching it interesting) but overall I was impressed with our local elected officials. I found them thoughtful, more than I'd have expected. The cable show illustrated warm caring people representing us, not the nameless faceless (unresponsive to the public) concept I previously had regarding local government. I wished I'd have written down the council members names but I will look at them with more interest having seen this discourse.

I've got a story for you I'm working on but now that I'm moving more and more towards actually being a reporter, I've got to be more through in my research.

This blogs traffic is exploding, better than I'd expected and I had some pretty high expectations.

That's all I got for now.
c ya

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