Was That A Tornado That Hit Us?

Aunt Betty and I enjoy local Frostburg, Maryland history. The last time I was in to visit we had a good chat about the Underground Railroad that ran through Frostburg. I always had a feeling that the Underground Railroad did run some branches through there up to Pennsylvania or west to Ohio. But you know how it is with the Underground Railroad: it was a pretty secret business and I mean seriously secret because lives depended on it.

Here's a really nice web site about the Underground Railroad, "Pathways to Freedom": http://pathways.thinkport.org/flash_home.cfm
There's an interactive at http://pathways.thinkport.org/flash/fio_2_2.html where you can mouse over and see the number of slaves held in each county. Start with Allegheny County, the western most county, and move east. You'll see that the numbers of slaves increases dramatically as you move right on the map.

Anyhoo, that's not what I set out to share with you. I wanted to mention a wonderful web site and one of my all-time favs about good ol' Allegheny County and Western Maryland, a very special part of the world for me and a lot of other people! Allegheny County has Mom, Aunt Betty, the Princess Restaurant, and Frostburg State University. Here's the web site: http://www.wmdhistory.org/index.php

Aunt Betty sent an email with a link to a page about the Frostburg Tornado of 1891. I saved looking at it until I had a chunk of time to really enjoy it! Glad I did. Go see for yourself! There are photos and everything. You can read a very detailed article lovingly transcribed by Mary Jo Price from the Frostburg Mining Journal (housed at the Ort Library on FSU's campus, microfilm available and a real treasure.) Shout out to Mary Jo... thanks so very much!!!

Here's a link for you... and I really think you'll enjoy this one a whole bunch. So go grab a cuppa whatever and sit for a spell, and read all about the Frostburg Tornado of 1891!
http://www.wmdhistory.org/allegany/frostburg-tornado-1891.php

Here's one of the photos from that link above...seriously, go see!