Another Leaf on the Pryor Tree: James Walter Pryor, Market Master of Hagerstown

After researching the Pryor family of Washington and Frederick counties for a playful Pryor group portrait awhile ago, I was primed to respond when I saw this cabinet card portrait come up for sale on an internet auction site.

An inscription on the back in period ink identifies the sitter as “Mr. J. Walter Pryor, Wolfsville, Fred. Co., Md., Oct. 17th, ’95”.  Based on what I have learned about the Pryors, I believe this young man was James Walter Pryor (1874-1965) the son of Frederick County farmers Peter Columbus Pryor (1853-1925) and Catherine Sensenbaugh (1851-1929).

Both James Walter Pryor and the Pryor boys in my other card photograph trace their ancestors to “Reds” Elliot (1760-ca. 1810-1820) and common-law wife Hannah Prior/Pryor (1760-1839). Both are believed by family history researchers to have emigrated from the British Isles and to have had 11 children together.

Known as J. Walter Pryor, perhaps to distinguish himself from cousin James Albert Pryor (1872-1919), our subject in 1902 married Olive Idella Wolfe, daughter of  a neighboring Wolfsville, Frederick County farmer and carpenter Jonathan N. Wolfe (1843-1918) and Amanda Blickenstaff (1844-1895).

The couple settled in Hagerstown, where J. Walter followed a variety of occupations. He worked as a bleacher in a knitting mill, and as a foreman for the Maryland Pressed Steel Company. In his later years he worked as a carpenter and a painting contractor.  He and Olive raised their seven children first in a brick duplex at 202 Cannon Avenue and later in a wood-frame house on North Mulberry Street.

It wasn’t until 1946 that he was appointed, by a narrow margin, master of the Hagerstown City Market, a position he held until  1954. In the announcement of his retirement at the age of 80, the Hagerstown Morning Herald said that he “was considered by many the best market master the city had ever had, “doubling the number of rented market stalls” and carrying out much-needed repairs and refurbishment to the building and fixtures (Hagerstown Morning Herald, 31 December 1954, p. 12).

Those who are familiar with Hagerstown history know that the City Market House, since 1928 located at 25 W. Church Street,  has been a center economic and social life in the county for over two hundred years, surviving the rise of supermarkets and international food distribution.

J. Walter sat for this bust portrait at the studio of Bascom W. T. Phreaner (1845-1932), who operated a photographic gallery in Hagerstown from 1866 to 1901. Phreaner used a traditional burned-out background to highlight the simple dignity of the young man’s clear-eyed gaze. Pryor chose a 5″x7″ cream card mount with a subtle pebbled texture.

James Walter Pryor and Olive Idella Wolfe Pryor are buried at Rose Hill Cemetery, Hagerstown. Peter Columbus Pryor and Catherine Sensenbaugh Pryor are buried in the cemetery adjoining St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Wolfsville.

Thanks to the many family history researchers and volunteers who have documented the Pryors of Hagertown and Frederick County.

Rare Images of Antietam and the Photographers Who Took Them

Thanks to a Hagerstown pal, I’ve acquired and am devouring Steve Recker’s wonderful new book Rare Images of Antietam and the Photographers Who Took Them.

A Washington County native, Recker has researched the lives of all the major photographers who took photos of Antietam battlefield: Elias Marken Recher, David Bachrach, W. B. King, J. H. Wagoner, and more.

Recker carefully investigated how each photographer came to take their pictures, and has painstakingly worked to understand what is depicted in each. Also included are some rarely-seen images of the photographers themselves. Some of these cartes de visite and stereoviews have never been seen before.

And you can’t get it on Amazon–only at area bookstores and at Recker’s site, Virtual Antietam. So virtually run, don’t walk, to his site and grab a copy before they sell out.

Read a Q & A with the author on John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

Read an article about Recker and his career in the Hagerstown Daily Mail.

“Death Came Softly”: Rev. Cornelius L. Keedy, Hagerstown, Maryland

Those are the first words of the headline on Rev. C. L. Keedy’s obituary in the Hagerstown Daily Mail of 25 March 1911. The paper made much of the gentle manner of Rev. Keedy’s passing. It was what used to be known as a “good death”: peaceful and without suffering.

This notion of the good Christian death was very different from mid-19th century accounts that stressed, says  historian Patricia Jalland, the spiritual nature of suffering and its ability to bring dying sinners to God :

“The ordeal could provide punishment for past sins, while also purifying, testing and strengthening the Christian faith of sufferer and attendants. . .[Christan writers’] emphasis was usually on the spiritual struggle and ultimate triumph rather than the physical ordeal” (Death in the Victorian Family, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 51-53)

At the end of the Victorian period, however,”the evangelical model of the good death declined in influence. . . . The decline in Evangelical piety and passion in the late Victorian period was paralleled with an increase in anxiety about the physical suffering of dying” (Death, 53).

Those who mourned Cornelius Keedy, Lutheran minister, physician and long-time president and proprietor of Hagerstown Female Seminary, could take comfort in the ease of his passing.

He had died  “sitting in his natural position when he was in the habit of reading, the paper in his hand, his arm on the table. His features were composed and peaceful, indicating that death was instantaneous, occurring without a struggle or any pain.”

This easy death might be taken as an indication that the longtime Lutheran educator had, in Christian terms, found his heavenly reward for an exemplary life. The obituary writer described him as “widely known” and “prominent in religious and educational circles;” the writer claims that “the news of his death produced a shock throughout the community”–but we really don’t know what kind of a man he was.

Cornelius Keedy (1834-1911) was one of eight children born near Rohrersville, Md. to prosperous Washington County farmers Daniel Keedy (1799-1876) and Sophia (Miller) Keedy (1809-1880). Rev. Keedy graduated from Gettysburg College in 1857 and was ordained as a Lutheran minister in 1859. He  served Lutheran congregations in Johnstown, Waynesboro, and St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Barren Hill, Pa.

He married Elizabeth Wyatt Marbourg (1840-1920), daughter of successful Johnstown merchant Alexander Marbourg, in 1860.

In 1863 Keedy earned a degree in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania. He practiced, according to his obituary, for about five years in Washington, Iowa, where some of his wife’s relations had settled.

But it was as president and owner of the Hagerstown Female Seminary,  later renamed Kee-Mar College, that Rev. Keedy was chiefly known.

The school, located at E. Antietam and King streets, had been established in 1853 by the Maryland Synod of the Lutheran Church.  Keedy purchased it in 1878, and according to J. Thomas Scharf, “continued to improve it until it has become one of the most beautiful and attractive places in any of the middle states” (J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland, v. 2, 1882, p. 1159).

“The seminary stands upon a commanding eminence just east of Hagerstown, from which may be had a magnificent view of hill and dale and of the town outstretched below. The main edifice is an imposing brick structure, four stories in height, and built in the Romanesque style. There are three wings of equal height with the main building. The grounds, comprising an area of 11 acres, are thickly set with upwards of one hundred handsome evergreens, and about five hundred trees of other varieties. Choice shrubbery marks in graceful lines numerous picturesque divisions of the inclosoure, and over the entire surface is spread a bright carpet of rich green-sward.”

The school had a fairly serious and  ambitious curriculum for its young women,  including ancient and modern languages, English literature, and music.

Mrs. Keedy served as principal, and she may have also had a considerable financial stake in the school. F. J. Halm published a song entitled “The Hagerstown Female Seminary March,” dedicated to Mrs. Keedy, in 1877.

Hagerstown Female Seminary was created as part of a wave of enthusiasm about women’s education that swept the Lutheran church after David F. Bittle published his 111-page “Plea for Female Education” in 1851 (Richard W. Solberg, Lutheran Higher Education in North America (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985, p. 102). Rev. Bittle even resigned his pastorate to raise funds and support for the proposed school.

After the college closed in 1911, the buildings were occupied by Washington County Hospital. The structures on the site were demolished in 2012, and the city is currently considering how to use the open space.

This cabinet card photograph, taken at the Hagerstown studio of Bascom W. T. Phreaner (1845-1932) is dated in pen on the reverse “1861-1862,” but Keedy’s white hair and wrinkles suggest a later date. Phreaner maintained a photographic studio in Hagerstown from 1866 to 1901.

For this portrait, the photographer chose a vignetted, head-and-shoulders composition, with the sitter facing a quarter turn away from the camera. The pose created deep shadows above eyes that look slightly upward, as if Keedy were thinking about his many responsibilities: four children to educate and provide for, and a school full of 150 lively adolescent young ladies to watch over.

Rev. Cornelius L. Keedy and Elizabeth Marbourg Keedy are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Hagerstown. Their children were Sarah (Keedy) Updegraff, James Marbourg Keedy, Wyatt M. Keedy, and Cornelius King Keedy.

My thanks to the wonderful Washington County Free Library and to the Hagerstown Neighborhood Development Partnership for the research on Hagerstown Female Seminary posted on their blog [re]Develop Hagerstown.

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.