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February 16, 2024
Published by wpengine at February 16, 2024
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Bellevue Asylum records recall the lives of local residents with mental and physical needs

Article Author: Abigail Koontz (This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail June 11, 2023) The name “Bellevue” may bring to mind the infamous Bellevue psychiatric hospital in New York City, which has a history reaching back to an 18th century almshouse. But did you know that Washington County had its own institution named Bellevue Asylum? Built in 1879, the historic Bellevue Asylum was located on the present site of Coffman Nursing Home. Bellevue Asylum stood for 77 years before it was torn down in 1956, and its history is deeply connected to the lives of Washington County residents and the development of healthcare facilities in the United States. To understand Bellevue Asylum’s history, we must return to the year 1800, when Trustees of the Poor for Washington County proposed building a home for the “relief of the poor” in Elizabethtown (now Hagerstown). This building, completed in 1800, was called the Washington County Almshouse. It still stands at 239 N. Locust Street. But attitudes toward the almshouse location caused concern. The almshouse developed a reputation for attracting “tramps” and “idlers,” and town residents requested a more remote location. In 1878, John Nicodemus of Boonsboro gifted farmland to Washington County for a […]
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January 16, 2024
Published by Zach Brooks at January 16, 2024
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A piece of 19th-century student art is the first item in a new preservation program

Article Author: Abigail Koontz (This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail January 14, 2024) In the early 1860s, Linda Wert, a student at the Hagerstown Female Seminary, packed up her painting supplies and headed off to paint the Hager Mill, only an eight-minute walk from campus. Wert’s painting, which she later titled “The Old Hager Mill,” now resides in the Washington County Historical Society collection. It represents a young woman’s story, and the history of an institution in Washington County that provided young women with vital education in the 19th century. This month, the painting becomes the first item selected for a new restoration program that invites donors to help preserve the important artifacts in the society’s collection. Malinda “Linda” E. E. Wert (also spelled Wirt) was born on Aug. 2, 1841, in Millersburg, Pa., to Simon and Sarah (Mark) Wert. The Wert family deeply valued education; of the five Wert children, three daughters and one son pursued higher education. The 1860 census recorded Linda Wert’s occupation as “Attending Female Seminary,” indicating she had already begun her education at the seminary, nearly 96 miles from Millersburg. The Hagerstown Female Seminary was a young institution when Linda Wert arrived. Built in […]
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November 16, 2023
Published by Zach Brooks at November 16, 2023
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Blast from the past: Fragment of Revolution-era cannon discovered near iron furnace site

Article Author: Heidi Schlag (This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail October 30, 2023) A cannon fragment dating from the Revolutionary War was recently discovered hiding in plain sight not far from where it was originally forged nearly 250 years ago. It was found by Andy Stout, a trained archeologist who began his new position as the executive director of the Washington County Historical Society several months ago. Discovered on a junk pile off Mt. Aetna Road in Hagerstown, the cannon was a cast-off that was never completed by the Mt. Aetna Furnace that operated in the area from the 1760s to 1830s. “This cannon never saw any battle. It didn’t survive the forging process, which is why it was discarded as scrap,” Stout explained. “There must have been a flaw in the cannon when it was forged, and it wasn’t finished, or it didn’t come out of the forging process appropriately,” he said. “We have about three-quarters of it. The end of it — the muzzle — is missing.” Owned in the 1760s by Barnabus Hughes and his sons, Samuel and Daniel, Mt. Aetna Furnace was one of four furnaces built by that family in Washington County, and Franklin […]
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August 2, 2018
Published by Anna C. at August 2, 2018
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A Servant’s Life – Exhibit Update

It has recently come to our attention that some of our local community members have raised concerns about the content of our upcoming exhibit, ‘A Servant’s Life,’ and we wanted to reach out to ensure that those concerns are addressed prior to the opening of the exhibit. In a recent teaser article for the exhibit, some details of the duties were listed to give readers an idea of the activities and displays they will encounter during a tour. As is often the case with the monthly column, we run into a word limit, and attempt to make the content of the article and its prose as approachable as possible, so that even those with a limited understanding of the topic find it engaging. It is for this reason that we chose to exclude in-depth detail on the specific servants that worked in the household during the 1800s and 1900s. We know from records that the families living in the Miller House from 1825 to 1966 used exclusively African American staff for service purposes, and that the Price family owned slaves, as well as employing free black people during the 20 years they lived in the home. The home’s history of […]
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