Stories from Mom: Part 8, Walking and strawberries

By Virginia Williams Kelly

I always loved to walk not for my health but just because I enjoy it so much. Walking is a good time to contemplate on life, mine, yours, ours or someone else’s. It is also a time to plan and dream.

I'm 95 years old now and don't walk as much I did. I always loved to walk thru the Catholic Cemetery and I have one particular grave that I visited often and that is Father Montgomery, our late pastor of St. Michael’s Church and a dear friend. I always stopped to say “hello, and how are you?” telling him what a wonderful day it is and to "take care". That’s all. I don’t know whether that message ever gets to him but it certainly makes me feel better. I continued down to McDonald’s where I met a friend and have coffee with her and then leave to walk home, all together about 3 miles every day and I really enjoyed that time.

Many memories came back to me as I walk. I remember being 7 years old and "skinny" as the relatives all said. It was an extremely beautiful summer day, not a cloud in the sky and the birds and flowers abounded. I decided to take a walk thru the fields in back of my grandfather’s house to the stream, but I didn’t get very far. The field called to me and I plopped right down in the middle of it and lay on my back for what seemed a long time. I can even today feel that sun warming my bones and what a delicious feeling that was. A few clouds finally wended their way across the sky and once in a while a bird flew overhead but I heard not a sound from anywhere else. It was as if I were suspended in time in some nether land. Often now when I get chilled I put myself back to another time and place when that little girl was at peace with the world and ‘oh so warm and happy.’ I can then become as that little girl and once again be ‘oh so warm and happy’.

Small things like seeing the first ripe strawberry in the market in late spring can set off a nice memory. We lived near the old Braddock Trail in Western Maryland, now long gone, but at the end of my Grandfather’s property someone had erected a stone commemorating Braddock’s March. At the time I first found it, the wildflowers and meadow grass were abundant.

One day as I was inspecting it I found the most delicious strawberries at the base of that stone. To my young eyes they were every bit as large as the ones we see in the market today. Of course I know that I like to savor that dream of yesteryear. 

For many years after, I looked forward to a fine feast of strawberries every spring. But as time has a habit of doing, things change, the house my grandfather built and lived in for many years is now occupied by Pullen School at Frostburg State University, and Braddock’s Stone occupies a prominent place at the Frostburg Museum. But I know that no one else has such a good memory of that stone and the land surrounding it.

St. Michael's Cemetery in Frostburg Maryland.

This is my husband's great grandfather's stone.

John Patrick Kelly was born in 1829 in Shannonbridge Ireland and died in 1891 in Eckhart, Maryland.


The photos below are of the old Braddock Stone, now residing at the Frostburg Museum.

 

 

 

You can read previous post of Mom's stories here:

Part 1: Those were the days my friend, we though they'd never end

Part 2: Center Street

Part 3: Summertime on Center Street

Part 4: Mushrooms!

Part 5: Fall and Winter on Center Street



Part 6: Growing up
Part 7: Friends and neighbors, life and death on Center Street

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/11/stories-from-mom-part-8-walking-and.html

The Braddock Stone

Housing for the Braddock Stone
at the Frostburg Museum,
Frostburg, Maryland

Front

Didactic panel

Back

 

 

The Bradock Stone, now ensconced in its new pavilion in front of the Frostburg Museum and recently dedicated on September 13, 2012 just preceding the town's bicentennial, is not only a historical object but a family object. Oh yes, we too join the long line of people of the town who claim a history moment attached to this large rather strange item!

If you can't easily read what it says in the rather poor photos I took on my most recent trip, here's what's carved into the Braddock Rock, text below. As you might be able to tell, it's been infilled with paint so as to make the reading easier.

Front: "11 miles to Ft. Cumberland, 29 MS to Capt Smyths Inn and Bridge Big, Crossing The Best Road to Redstone, Old Fort, 64 M"

Back: "Our Country's Rights We Will Defend"

It's a strange and fascinating object. Reads like an early road advertisement for Captain Smyth's Inn. Because of where it was placed long ago, it was thought that the stone marked the actual path General Braddock took in 1755 trying to oust the French from Fort Duquesne at present day Pittsburgh. However there is nothing substantive to substantiate that theory, except the proximity of where it was found in relationship to Braddock's presumed road.

The DAR, ever patriotic, looked to enshrine the stone in a pavilion similar to the one you see in the pictures above. I think I remember that their efforts took place about 100 years ago or more. They lost interest, it is said, when the inscription seemed to indicate that the stone wasn't likely to have been marking Braddock's route at all.

Local legend says that the stone was split and then was going to be used as steps to an outhouse... or... that a local stonemason grabbed it but when discovered was persuaded by the authorities to make the repair you see so evident in the photos.

Our family's connection with the stone is on the Whetstone side, that's Mom's mother's parents. They had a farm, or actually a parcel of a few acres, and the stone resided just outside of the fence defining the back yard. It was already split but not repaired when Mom played there in the 1920s. She still remembers the very sweet wild strawberries that grew at the base of the stone.

Mom likes to say that her cousin George broke the stone. George was an awful tease and one of his favorite targets was Mom, a dangerous number of years his junior. Devilish George was the most likely candidate to have been making mischief enough to break that stone. If anyone did it, it was probably George! Or so Mom liked to say;)

Mom and her cousins.
(Hey Mom, is that George on the right..
although any of these three look like they'd enjoy making
trouble for the sweet little girl in the hair bow!)

Mom's Whetstone Grandparents:

Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939) and
Catherine Elizabeth House Whetstone (1865 - 1947).
Mom sports a hair bow!

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-braddock-stone.html