Paul William Kuhns, Nebraska Banker

The former owner of this cabinet card portrait of Omaha, Nebraska banker Paul William Kuhns (1869-1927) can be forgiven for assuming he was a “Rev,” because Paul’s father and brother were prominent Lutheran pastors.

His father, Rev. Henry Welty Kuhns (1829-1899), journeyed from Pennsylvania to the Nebraska territory in 1858 with the charge of serving small, far-flung communities of Lutherans. Kuhns is credited with organizing dozens of churches, chief among which is what became known as Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church in Omaha. Widely respected and well-liked, he served as chaplain to the Nebraska legislature, and helped found a school for the deaf.

Paul’s brother, Rev. Luther Melancthon Kuhns (1861-1939), was, like their father, a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Luther Kuhns served as president of the Luther League, the Lutheran church’s national organization for youth. In 1888 he founded Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Omaha, served as secretary of the Nebraska Lutheran Synod, was a member of the board of trustees of Midland College, and wrote for several Lutheran publications. Kuhns served as Grace Lutheran’s pastor from 1888 to 1903.

Paul’s portrait was taken in the Westminster, Maryland studio of Albert L. Rogers, presumably during the Kuhns family’s sojourn there from 1878 to 1887. Paul, like his father and brother, attended what was then known as Pennsylvania College at Gettysburg (now Gettysburg College), and graduated in 1889.

The young banker married Grace Virginia Detweiler in Omaha in 1896. They had one son, prominent Nebraska attorney Barton Hay Kuhns (1901-1983).

Through their mother, Charlotte Josepha Hay Kuhns, Paul and Luther traced their ancestry back to York County, Pennsylvanian Lt. Col. John Hay (1733-1810), who was active in organizing York County’s participation in the American Revolution, served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and was elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature.

Rogers chose a vignetted bust for this portrait. The lighting from below left highlighted Paul’s somewhat prominent and deeply shadowed eyes. The elaborate studio advertising, filling the entire space with scrolls, escutcheons, vines and a rampant lion, reflect the prevailing style of the cabinet card’s heyday in the 1880s.

Paul, Luther, and their parents are buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Omaha.

Leo J. Beachy: Inauguration Day on the MD Hills 1917

Thanks to its title, we can date this photograph, a real photo postcard by acclaimed Garrett County, Maryland photographer Leo J. Beachy (1874-1927), to March 4th, 1917–the day President Woodrow Wilson was sworn into office.

Thanks to a Miss Ethel Handy, who probably bought this hand-made postcard in the town of Grantsville, we also know that it was mailed on August 23, 1917.

Beachy made postcards out of his thousands of glass plate negatives in a converted out building on his parents’ farm. He named it Mt. Nebo Studio, after the farm. A genuine vintage postcard will be identified on the postal side with “L. J. Beachy, Mt. Nebo Studio, Grantsville, Md.”

You can view an award-winning documentary, “Leo Beachy: A Legacy Nearly Lost,”  about his life, his work, and the miraculous story of the loss and recovery of his photographs on WQED’s website.

Thanks to the efforts of his niece, Maxine Beachy Broadwater, more than 2,700 of the glass plate negatives were digitized and restored and placed on line at the Garrett County Historical Society. Now, anyone can order a copy of one of Beachy’s beautiful photographs on line.

From Susan Bear’s Album: Levi Rowland Bear

There are six tintype portraits of children in Susan Bear’s photograph album, all identified, all in the same period ink hand, all by anonymous photographers.

These were the children of John M. and Elizabeth Bear, emigrants from Washington County, Maryland to the Church of the Brethren-dominated “Maryland colony” in Ogle County, Illinois.

Ogle County, centered on the village of Mt. Morris, began to attract transplants from Washington County in the 1830s. Members of the Church of the Brethren, in particular, were drawn to the hilly, sparsely-settled prairie west of Chicago.

According to the laudatory Mount Morris: Past and Present, a 1900 history published locally in Mount Morris by the Kable Brothers, the earliest settlers were “so impressed by the beauty of the country and the richness of the soil,” well-watered by springs and streams, that they determined to settle there.

In 1836, two men from Washington County, Nathan Swingley and Samuel M. Hitt, brought a number of Maryland men to the area as laborers, “promising them $1.00 a day for service in building houses, splitting rails and building fence, breaking the prairie and harvesting the crops” (Mount Morris, Past and Present, 13).

The typical route was “by wagon to Wheeling, West Virginia, by boat on the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois rivers to Peru, and the remaining distance by wagon” a trip of perhaps more than 800 miles (13).

John M. Bear (b. abt. 1822, Washington County, Md.), made his move in 1844, and while working initially for well-to-do Maryland emigrant John Coffman, took up a claim in 1849  in Pine Creek Township, some 10 or so miles south of Mount Morris village, east of the Rock River.

There John Bear and his wife, Martha Elizabeth, prospered, and six children were born to the couple between 1856 and 1865:

Isaac Martin Bear 1855, John Buchman Bear 1857, Rose Miranda 1860, Levi Rowland Bear 1861, Lily Almira 1863, and Mary Kate 1865.

Their situation began to deteriorate with their father’s death in 1878. Elizabeth continued to farm with the aid of the boys, but about 1886, she, along with Isaac, Levi and Kate, moved to Mount Morris Village, where Levi took up work as a barber.

Mount Morris: Past and Present mentions Levi several times as an up-and-coming young businessman who was entering into village life with vigor. He played violin in a small orchestra, and belonged to a fraternal order called the Modern Woodmen of America.

After their mother’s death in 1903, Levi, Lily and Mary Kate made a big decision: They left their settled lives in Mount Morris to pioneer, once again,  in Williams County, North Dakota.

Levi took 160 acres on the southern edge of Tyrone Township; Kate took an adjoining 80 acres just south of the township line in Missouri Ridge Township, and Lilly another 160 adjoining Kate’s land to the south of Lily’s–460 acres in all, about 10 miles north of Williston, North Dakota.

They called their new home Four Bear Ranch, and seemed to prosper.

Mary Kate died in 1916; Lily, now in her 50s, continued to keep house for her brother.

On 9 April 1923, Levi Rowland Bear hung himself in their barn. According to his obituary in the Williams County Farmers Press, he planned his death so that two of his friends would be coming to the ranch in time to find him, in order that his sister would not discover his body alone.

“It is thought,” said the paper, “that despondency was the cause of his act.”

Isaac Bear left a note for Lily. It said “Dear Sister, you will forgive me for this for I am too crazy to live.”

He is buried in Riverview Cemetery, Williston, North Dakota. His grave is unmarked.

From Susan Bear’s Album: John M. Wisherd

Hagerstown photographer Bascom W. T. Phreaner took this carte de visite portrait of a seated John M. Wisherd on the 10th of February 1870.

I found a John M. Wisherd, born 24 September 1847 in Pennsylvania, living with his family in Washington County in 1850. He seems about the right age for this photo. John’s parents were farmers Jacob Wisherd (b. abt. 1817, Pa.) and Catherine (Stahl) Wisherd (b. abt. 1822, Pa.).

What’s the connnection to Susan Bear? My hunch, based on a Maryland marriage record, is that John’s uncle William Wisherd (b. November 1829, Pa.) married Susan Bear’s sister Lydia Bear (1828-1865).

I think of them as the “wandering Wisherds,” because they were always moving on. In 1860, William and Lydia were farming in Fulton County, Illinois. They had two little daughters, Elizabeth and Mary. It was here that Lydia died at the age of 37.

Other family members had also migrated west: Jacob and Catherine Wisherd and all their children, including John. By 1870, their farm was in McDonough County, Illinois, and John was running it with his widowed mother.

John married Mary Drake Hatch, a widow with two children, about 1878, but they did not remain in McDonough County. By 1900, they were farming in Cottonwood Falls, Chase County, Kansas. They had four children of their own, Minnie, Floyd, Perry and Ida.

Again they moved west: finally, to 17th Street, in Los Angeles. Minnie had married and had a son, Edgar Heintz.  Perry was a coffee and tea merchant, and Floyd was selling shoes.

John M. Wisherd, now widowed,  last appears in the census in 1920, still living in Los Angeles with some of his children. I believe this young Washington County farmer with the far-away gaze came to his final rest here where the west ends.

Leo Beachy: The Cove, Garrett County, Maryland

“Of all the early Maryland photographers whose work I have seen,” photographer Marion E. Warren said, “Leo Beachy had a sensitivity for human interest that was unique” (The Eye of the Beholder: Photographs by Marion E. Warren 1940-1988).

When I purchased this 5 x 7″ print of unknown vintage, a landscape entitled “The Cove Garrett Co., Md.,” I didn’t realize it was a photograph taken by the prolific Leo J. Beachy (1874-1927). It was the distinctive handwritten caption that made the connection.

Beachy, a teacher, writer and photographer who grew up in Garrett County, made a number of photographs of the Cove area. It may have been taken from Garrett Highway (US 219), which offers numerous viewpoints of the lovely country north of Accident. The lane that can be discerned snaking its way from the lower left toward the center of the photo may be Cove Road.

Beachy took many thousands of superb photographs of the area, its people and their pursuits during his life. He sold many as postcards at the Granstsville drug store. National Geographic even published one. But but his work was not fully recognized until decades after his death. His relations destroyed the majority of his glass plate negatives when they decided to turn his studio into a chicken house.

Through a remarkably fortuitous chain of events documented in WQED’s documentary “Leo Beachy: A Legacy Nearly Lost,” his niece, Maxine Beachy Broadwater, discovered and acquired 2,700 glass plates that had been kept by Leo’s sister, Kate Beachy.

Through her efforts and those of others who recognized Beachy’s remarkable body of work, the plates were conserved, digitized and painstakingly digitally repaired after years of neglect. Life magazine published a portfolio of his photographs in 1990.

Today the collection can be viewed at the Grantsville Museum in Grantsville, Maryland.

2,887 images can also be viewed on line via the Garrett County Historical Society website, and now, one can order prints on the web.

The Maryland Historical Society acquired a collection of Beachy’s real photo postcards, as well as 200 glass plate negatives, in 2010, and is engaged in cataloging the collection.

Beachy died from complications of multiple schlerosis on May 5th, 1927. He is buried, along with his devoted sister Kate, in Otto Cemetery, near Grantsville, Maryland.

From Susan Bear’s Album: Martin L. Hightman

It’s tricky, trying to glue the fragments  of a family back together through photographs.

This carte de visite by an unidentified photographer is one of only 11 in the Susan Bear album that has some identifying text. In the Washington County, Maryland Bear/Baer family tree I’ve constructed so far, the surname Heightman had not come up. Only when I searched ancestry.com records with a different spelling, Hightman, and without the initials M. L., did something slip into place.

A Martin L. Hightman was born into a Burkittsville, Frederick County family of dry goods merchants about 1852.  Burial records for other Burkittsville Hightmans brought up the grave records of his parents: John Hightman (1825-1891) and M. Elizabeth (Bear) Hightman (1825-1913).

One of Susan Bear’s sisters was named Mary Elizabeth, and her birth year, about 1826, fit. Was there a record of a marriage between a Mary Elizabeth Bear and a John Hightman that fit the time frame?

There was. Mary Elizabeth Bear and John Hightman married in Frederick County on 2 October 1851.

This photograph had to be of Mary Elizabeth Bear Hightman’s eldest son, Martin Luther  Hightman (1852-1891). It was, judging by the subject’s age and the style of the carte, probably taken in the early to mid-1860s.

Why it lacks a photographer’s imprint is hard to say. Certainly the photographers of Hagerstown and Frederick of the era–E. M. Recher, Jacob Byerly and others–promoted their work vigorously with a variety of advertising backmarks. The photographer may have been one of the many itinerants who worked during the Civil War. Or it could have been a copy.

Like his father, Martin L. Hightman became a Burkittsville dry goods merchant. He was also the village’s postmaster. He and his wife Lovetta Arnold had five children: Frederick Arnold, Cora, John Roy, Harrison Martin, and Mabell E. Hightman.

Frederick obtained a bachelor’s degree at Gettysburg College in 1902 and graduated from Gettysburg Theological Seminary in 1905.  In 1908, Rev. Frederick Arnold Hightman  (1876-1967) founded the northeast Baltimore congregation that became Ephiphany Evangelical Lutheran Church. The stone church in the Gothic Revival style still flourishes on Raspe Avenue just south of Belair Road.

Martin and Lovetta Hightman are buried in Burkittsville Union Cemetery in Frederick County. Rev. Hightman is buried in Moreland Memoral Park, Parkville, Maryland, a few miles from his church.

From Susan Bear’s Album: Mr. and Mrs. Martin Bear

Taken at the Hagerstown, Maryland studio of Elias Marken Recher, this carte de visite photograph was found in an album that belonged to their daughter, Susan Bear (1836-1909) of Hagerstown.

On the reverse is written “Mr. and Mrs. Martin Bear’s pictures taken from a Ferrotype [aka tintype] June 18th 1872”.

Well-to-do Maryland-born  farmer Martin Bear or Baer (1799-1872) and Elizabeth (Stahl) Bear (1795-1875) had seven daughters: Christianna (b. 1824), Mary Elizabeth (b. 1825), Lydia (1828-1865), Sarah Catherine (b. 1831), Louisa (1834-1888), Susan and Anna (1839-1927) .

Only four of the seven Bear girls married that I can determine: Lydia married Washington County farmer William Wisherd, Louisa married a Troup,  Mary Elizabeth married Burkittsville, Maryland dry goods merchant John Hightman or Heightman, and Sarah married Williamsport grocer Caleb F. Eakle.

According to the 1878 advertisement of the trustees’ sale of Martin Bear’s estate, Bear owned at his death 208 acres about five miles from Hagerstown, where the Williamsport and Greencastle Turnpike crossed the Western Turnpike. The estate included a stone house, orchards, a well, a stream, a barn, etc.

Although I have not yet been able to determine Martin Bear’s parentage, I am guessing that two others who lived close to him–Isaac Bear (b. abt. 1790, Md.) and John Bear (b. abt. 1796, Md.) were his brothers or close relations.

Another Bear/Baer named John M. Bear (1822-1878), who was probably a close relation, emigrated quite early to Pine Creek Township, Ogle County, Illinois. The evidence for the connection is the presence in Susan Bear’s album of six tintype portraits of John M. Bear’s children: Isaac Martin Bear, John Buchman Bear, Levi Rowland Bear, Rose Miranda Bear, Lilly Almira or Elmira Bear, and Mary Kate Bear (more about this family in future posts).

Susan’s jewel-like album, studded with white beads and held by metal clasps, measures about 4-1/2″ x 6″. It is inscribed on the flyleaf “Christmas gift / Presented to Susan Bear / Dec 25th 1869 by / Mr. L . . . R . . . . . “

The Bear family may have scattered to Ogle County and beyond, but the affection Martin Bear felt for his wife, even after a long and arduous life together, still feels fresh in this wonderful image.

Martin Bear and Elizabeth (Stahl) Bear are both buried in Riverview Cemetery, Williamsport, Washington County, Maryland.

Old Mount Zion Lutheran Church, Feagaville, Maryland

This frame church, located on the Jefferson Pike just outside Frederick, Maryland, lost its tower and other features when it was converted into apartments about 1950.  Does it still exist?

According to the Feagaville Survey District document that was filed in 1980, the church was built in 1880. The building to the right was a stone schoolhouse built ca. 1840-1850; perhaps it had been whitewashed. The hand-drawn map accompanying the survey document locates the church just north of Feagaville Lane.

A newer, brick church, surrounded by its cemetery, thrives just a few miles away at Mount Zion and Mount Phillip roads.

The history of this church is confusing. The History of Frederick County, Maryland, Volume One, published in 1910, speaks of the church being built 1819, but says it was a stone structure. There is no mention of a frame structure. But, as mentioned above, the 1980 survey says this frame church was built in 1880. The History mentions a new stone church being built on the site in 1885 (p. 503)–but nothing about a brick church.

A contemporary photograph taken by Jody Brumage shows a stone above the new church door on Mount Phillip Road with the date 1885.

Stereoview of Christ Protestant Episcopal Church

This stereoview of Christ Protestant Episcopal Church, St. Paul and Chase streets, Baltimore, was probably published by William M. Chase in the 1870s. The view looks east from E. Chase Street, toward St. Paul Street.

Christ Church, organized in 1797, was the second Episcopal church in Baltimore. The congregation occupied a variety of locations before the present church building was constructed at a cost of $125,000 (Henry Elliot Shepherd, A History of Baltimore, Maryland, S. B. Nelson publisher, 1898, pp. 217-218).

E. Francis Baldwin and Bruce Price designed the Gothic Revival structure in the Mount Vernon area in 1869, when the new ecclesiastical architectural style was first being introduced into the U.S.  According to The Architecture of Baltimore: A Pictorial History, this particular church’s style was known as French or Norman Gothic:

Its details are elegantly restrained and carried out in rough-faced white marble–narrow lancet windows, carved stone trefoils, pointed-arch doorways and window lintels, stone columns with leafy medieval capitals, and carved stone rosettes. The massing is symmetrical with a tall main tower and secondary smaller towers and spires (199).

This beautiful and historic church structure has been occupied by an independent non-denominational African-American congregation since the mid-1990s. Today the church is called the New Refuge Deliverance Cathedral.

Christ Church is located three blocks directly north of Mount Vernon Place, and is part of a historic neighborhood rich in cultural and architectural landmarks such as the Washington Monument and the Walters Art Gallery.

The fashionable Mount Vernon neighborhood developed in the 1830s in the elegant streets and parks laid out around the Washington Monument by Charles and William Howard on their father’s former estate, Belvidere (Architecture of Baltimore, 118). The area remained the epicenter of wealthy and cultured Baltimore until the late nineteenth century.

View a contemporary photograph of Christ Church taken by the author of the Monument City blog.

Sunrise Near Baltimore, August 24 1907

In mid-August, 1907, an unknown photographer named Ferdinand W. Hahn–perhaps an amateur, perhaps a tourist from abroad–took a series of photographs documenting a trip to New York City, Norfolk, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

I came upon the prints on an internet auction site, and I couldn’t resist trying to track Hahn’s holiday.

Each print is dated and its location noted in black ink. The earliest, dated August 15th, 1907 to about August 20th, 1907, were taken at Sea Breeze Beach and Midland Beach on Staten Island, and Coney Island.

As the days of late August go by, there are photos of the North German Lloyd ocean liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie docked at Hoboken, New Jersey; Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge and New York harbor; battleships off Hampton Roads, Virginia; snaps of the Jamestown Exposition at Hampton Roads, and finally Washington, DC.

There the series ends.

I suspected Hahn was a passenger on the Kronzprinzessin Cecilie, but no one of that name is listed as a passenger of that ship when it arrived in New York on August 14, 1907.

Most are fairly commonplace vacation snaps. This one, along with another of the bay off Norfolk, stood out from the others.

I am not enough of a technician to confirm that it is a silver gelatin print. I only know that the rich warmth of color, the deeply shadowed sails outlined against the sky, the meandering track of the boat’s reflection in on the water’s surface, leave me breathless with  hushed anticipation of a Chesapeake Bay dawn.