Hole-in-the-Wall

 Just down the road, along Route 50 near Trappe, is an eerie landmark that hasn’t yet been swallowed by housing developments or shopping complexes. This lonely brick ruin is all that remains of Whitemarsh Chapel, a church dating back to 1665, which was mostly destroyed by fire in 1897.

This church stood on a main road that ran perpendicular to modern Rt. 50, linking the port town of Oxford and the vanished city of Dover, on the Choptank River.  The church ruins have become convoluted with the nearby historical marker, “Hole-in-the-Wall,” which actually refers to an ancient tavern that stood at the nearby crossroads of Hambleton.  It is easy to see how the confusion came about since the ruins appear, from the road, to be a wall with a hole in it!  The Reverend Daniel Maynadier served as rector of the church from 1711 until his death in 1745.

There is a book in our Special Maryland Collection, Land of Legendary Lore: Sketches of Romance and Reality on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, written by Prentiss Ingraham and published in 1898. It's in the chapter entitled “Weird Tales that are Told” that we find the shocking story of Hannah Maynadier, the rector's wife, who is said to haunt the Whitemarsh Cemetery to this day.

Hannah Martin Maynadier died, and her wish was to be buried wearing an old family ring. Two men who had attended her funeral made plans to break into her grave that night and steal it from her finger. After digging up and breaking open the coffin, they found that they couldn't get the ring off her finger and decided to sever the joint.  This injury to her body, along with the fresh chilly air, revived Hannah, who had been in a coma and not dead as everyone had thought.  She cried out and sat up in her coffin, no doubt giving the grave robbers the fright of their lives. They fled into the surrounding fields.  Incredibly, Mrs. Maynadier, although she was ill and in shock, managed to climb out of her coffin with her burial shroud and make her way through the dark countryside to the rectory, a mile away.   Reverend Maynadier was sitting alone in front of his fireplace when he was startled by a sound at the door as if something had fallen against it, and a low moan.  Imagine his shock and disbelief when he opened the door to find the fainting form of his wife!  He carried her to her bed, called his servants, and sent to Oxford for the doctor.  Hannah Maynadier recovered and lived for many more years.  Daniel and Hannah's grave is now in the church's existing foundation and is marked with a plaque. Some people say that the ghost of Hannah can sometimes be seen, wearing her (first) burial shroud, trying to regain her bearings in the old cemetery before finding her way home.

Mrs. Maynadier isn't the only ghost to lurk in this area, however. There is the ghost of an old doctor in a horse and two-wheeled trap, whose hooves and wheels can be heard on the road along with a voice calling, “Show me the way, show me the way!”  This beloved doctor traveled to patients all around the district and was well known to enjoy a drink.  One night during stormy weather, the doctor was quite drunk when he was summoned to the home of his best friend, who had accidentally shot himself.  After fortifying himself with more drinks, he went on his way, but unfortunately fell asleep while driving, lost his way, and was found the next day disoriented and wandering, still looking for his friend's house. “Oh, show me the way!” he pleaded with the person who found him, who replied, “There's no need now, doctor.  He bled to death two hours ago.  You could have saved him had you arrived last night.” The neighbor set him on the path back to his own home, but that was the last time he was seen alive.  He and his horse were found dead in a wreck caused when a bridge damaged in the storm went down as they crossed.  The old doctor's ashes now lie in Whitemarsh Cemetery, among the remains of so many he had treated in life.  Remember these tales the next time you're traveling the lonely stretch of road between Easton and Cambridge, especially late at night.

Witchcraft Accusations in Colonial Maryland

 During the 1600s, when Maryland society was just forming out of groups of immigrants primarily from the British Isles, early settlers were leaving communities in the grip of a politically- and religiously driven paranoia regarding the devil and witches.

When King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England) ascended to the throne in 1603, his 1597 dissertation Daemonologie was reprinted in London, making it newly available to all literate English-speakers. This of course included the clergy, who could convey its contents to parishioners along with James' new translation of the Bible. The imaginations, and fears, of ordinary people were set alight. 

Daemonologie not only included the king's own classification of demons, but arguments regarding divination, sorcery, and witchcraft, as well as endorsement of the practice of witch hunting by Christian societies.  His ‘expertise' was derived partly from his participation in the North Berwick witch trials of the 1590s, during which more than 70 men and women were tried for perceived crimes, beginning with the creation of a storm which damaged the (then) Prince James' ship on a return trip from Denmark. 

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in colonial Maryland, several individuals suffered accusations of witchcraft.  The two earliest of these cases are unusual, since they occurred on board ships bound for Maryland.  Like King James in 1590, their accusers blamed human agency for bad luck during their journeys.  Uncertainties and dangers of journeys by sea have always fostered a strong superstitious streak among sailors. 

In 1654, the ship Charityof London was on its way to Maryland from England when a rumor circulated among the sailors that passenger Mary Lee was a witch.  The journey had been stormy and the ship leaky, and seaman Henry Corbyn asked the ship's master, Bosworth, if Mary could be tried as a witch, which he refused.  He offered to have her put ashore at Bermuda, but when cross winds prevented that stop, and the ship continued taking on more and more water, Bosworth relented and allowed the trial to take place in order to satisfy his crew.  When a witch's mark was found, Bosworth retired to his cabin and decided on a policy of ‘non-interference.'  Mary was hung by the sailors and she and her belongings were thrown into the sea. 

 Just four years later, on the vessel Sarah Artch bound for Maryland from London, a Quaker woman named Elizabeth Richardson was similarly tried for sorcery and quickly hanged. There is even a theory that the accusation was a trumped-up charge that would allow her execution in order to avoid a fine of 100 pounds levied against the ship's owner for transporting a Quaker.  It was a fellow passenger, none other than George Washington's great-grandfather John Washington, who reported the ship's owner Edward Prescott for allowing this unlawful “extra-judicial killing” aboard his ship. 

Although both of these cases saw ship owners and masters tried by the Court of Maryland for allowing the executions to take place, ultimately, no one was held responsible for these crimes. 

 In an age when women's power and agency were primarily linked to that of their closest male relatives, it was often women living independently, having economic or social power coveted by others, having special knowledge or skills --- or traveling alone by sea --- who were accused of witchcraft.  

 In March of 2025, a resolution (HJ0002) was proposed in the Maryland House of Representatives to exonerate individuals accused of witchcraft in the years preceding the American Revolution, part of a national and international movement to rectify the wrongs of witchcraft trials. Adoption of this resolution would clear the names of the accused and cast the prosecutions as a failure of due process fueled by intolerance, themes which are again becoming a worrying and dangerous part of everyday life. 

https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/hj0002?ys=2025RS 

These cases and those of other early Marylanders are detailed in Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland by Raphael Semmes and Witch Trials, Legends, & Lore of Maryland: Dark, Strange, and True Tales by William H. Cooke.  

Tell it not in GATH

 “GATH”: A Washington College grammar school student becomes a celebrated journalist and author of works celebrating the history and lore of the Eastern Shore. 

 

In 1827, Washington College’s original (and only) college building was destroyed by fire.  Shortly after the new college building, today’s Middle Hall, was built, the college admitted a limited number of grammar school students, who were educated in that same building.  Among these young students was a boy who would go on to become a prolific, celebrated, and internationally-known journalist who also authored poems, short stories and novels about Maryland and especially, his native Eastern Shore. 

George Alfred Townsend was born in 1841 in Georgetown, Delaware, into a family with deep roots in the lower Eastern Shore.  His father Stephen Townsend, a Methodist circuit preacher, was descended from some of Virginia’s earliest settlers; his mother, Mary Milbourne, was from the area of Mattaponi Hundred in Worcester County, which bordered Virginia and the Pocomoke River (Ancestry.com). As a circuit preacher, Reverend Townsend ministered to churches all over the Eastern Shore and Delaware before settling his family more permanently in Philadelphia in 1854.  The family lived in Snow Hill, Cambridge, Princess Anne, and from 1849-1851. When the family lived in Chestertown, young George attended the Washington College grammar school from the ages of 8-10. He finished his education further afield, earning a Master of Arts degree from Philadelphia’s Central High School in 1860, at the age of 19.

He quickly secured a position with the Philadelphia Enquirer, the first of many publications for which he would write throughout his career. Two years later, at the age of 21, he was hired by the New York Herald as a war correspondent, traveling with the Army of the Potomac under General George McClellan.  He was with the Army during the Peninsula Campaign but caught malaria before the Second Battle of Bull Run; he took some time off to recover, traveling in Europe and giving a successful series of lectures in England detailing his experiences from the front lines of the American Civil War.

Gath, Mark Twain, and David Gray

In 1865 he resumed his duties as a war correspondent, spending his time based at Union headquarters in City Point, Virginia and at Petersburg.  He also returned just in time to cover the Lincoln assassination and its aftermath for the New York World during April and May of 1865.  This work culminated in a book published later that year entitled “The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth.”  The flight and capture of Booth are also imaginatively remembered in his poem, “The Imp in Nanjemoy,” published on November 6, 1873 in The Daily Graphic under “Laertes,” one of Townsend’s many noms de plume.  After travels in Europe with his new wife, Elizabeth “Bessie” Rhodes and the birth of their first child, Genevieve, in Paris, Townsend returned to Washington D.C. to resume his writing career. During this period, he was a successful and prolific columnist for the Chicago Tribune and the New York Graphic and was considered one of the most quotable.  He published letters several times a week, including lively portraits of political figures among his many opinion pieces.  He chiefly wrote under the pen name “Gath,” a biblical reference including his own initials 

It was under the “Gath” sobriquet that he authored his later works, which focused largely on the state of Maryland and his native Delmarva Peninsula.  In 1880, his “Tales of the Chesapeake” was published, including 9 poems and 17 short stories and retellings of regional legends and lore.  This was followed in 1884 by perhaps his best-known work, “The Entailed Hat,” a fictionalized story of infamous 19th century human trafficker Patty Cannon.  

Later in the same year, Townsend traveled to Western Maryland to conduct research for a novel based on events surrounding the Civil War.  He fell in love with the area and bought 100 acres of land just outside Burkittsville, in Crampton’s Gap, the site of an important battle leading up to the nearby Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the entire Civil War.  Here, he built an estate consisting of several structures: a house, a lodge, a den and a library building, along with a mausoleum inscribed with “Good Night------Gath” --carved in a facsimile of his own handwriting.  “Katy of Catoctin or the Chain Breakers: A National Romance” was first published in 1886.  This novel covered the years of the Civil War, from the John Brown raid on nearby Harpers Ferry in 1859 to the Lincoln assassination in 1865.  In 1896, he erected the National War Correspondents Memorial Arch on the site; this memorial, along with a tree at Arlington, is the only national memorial dedicated to correspondents killed in combat.  It depicts the names of 157 journalists and artists who saw and described the events of the American Civil War.  It incorporates quotations pertaining to communication, and striking sculptures of the Greek god Hermes and two horses' heads above tablets reading “Speed” and “Heed.” Gapland, as the site was called, is now Gathland State Park, and is well worth a visit. 

Gath’s mausoleum is not occupied; he became a recluse after the death of his wife in 1903, and his financial situation declined as his distinctive style of writing fell out of favor in the early 20th century.  He eventually moved to live with his daughter and son-in-law in Philadelphia, where he died in 1914, and was buried near his wife and his parents from the Eastern Shore. 

Townsend’s later works draw heavily on his life experiences and his family’s heritage, and many characters and locations are based on real people and places of Delmarva. Works like “Katy of Catoctin” and “The Imp in Nanjemoy” draw from his front-row experiences during and immediately following the Civil War.  Many of his shorter works feature country ministers, drawing from Gath’s childhood observations.  Meshach Milbourne, the enigmatic protagonist of “The Entailed Hat,” shares a surname with Townsend’s mother, and the character Sampson Hat in the same novel is based on Sampson Harmon, a free Black man and local folk hero associated with the Nassawango Iron Furnace in Worcester County.  Other characters are based on public figures in the lower counties of the Delmarva Peninsula.  His distinctive writing style is very old-fashioned to the modern ear,but his lush and vivid descriptions of the natural world and the sparse and haunted landscapes of the southern Eastern Shore are poignantly accurate to those of us who have spent time in that area. 

Anon the river spreads to coves, 

And in the tides grow giant groves

The water shines like ebony,

And odors resinous ascend

From many an old balsamic tree,

Whose roots the terrapin befriend;

The great ball cypress, fringed with beard, 

Presides above the water oak

As doth its shingles, well revered, 

O’er many a happy home endeared

To thousands far from Pocomoke. 

-from “Mother Nook,” introduction to “Tales of the Chesapeake” 

George Alfred Townsend’s published works, including “The Entailed Hat”, “Katy of Catoctin”, and “Tales of the Chesapeake” are available to be checked out from Miller Library’s Maryland Collection on the second floor. 

“The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth,” can be read in its entirety on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/lifecrimecapture4567town/mode/2up.