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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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June 13, 2018
Published by Anna C. at June 13, 2018
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Women fight for their rights – and their fashions?

I’ve been thinking a lot about ladies recently. Besides being an absolutely delightful one myself, I spend a lot of time around powerful, accomplished, intelligent women who work hard every day to make life better for those around them. On a much larger scale, it is impossible to deny that American women are once again in the spotlight, receiving national attention as we define women’s rights, roles, and personal agency moving into the 21st century. American women were doing much the same 100 years ago as the world moved into the 20th century. Questions about women’s rights, roles, and personal agency needed to be answered for a rapidly changing world. The answers to those questions revealed themselves in a variety of ways – in the passage of the 18th and 20th Amendments, which started Prohibition and granted women the right to vote, respectively, and in the swift and major changes in women’s apparel from the 1890s to the 1920s. While changes in fashion might seem frivolous next to major political change, women’s clothing and activities have always closely reflected that society’s attitudes towards women. Women’s leisure clothing saw the largest innovations and changes as women gained more agency within American […]
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March 13, 2018
Published by Anna C. at March 13, 2018
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Where is William?

Eagle-eyed visitors to the Miller House Museum will notice something missing from the front hallway: our iconic portrait of William Price! Created circa 1835 by noted Early American portrait artist John Beale Bordley, the portrait of the stately Price-Miller House builder greets all who enter through the doors of the museum. So where is William? He’s away on vacation, getting some much-needed TLC! The portrait of William Price and its traveling companion, the portrait of Major Peter Seibert, are currently resting in the conservation studio of Barry Bauman, in scenic River Forest, Illinois! Both portraits will receive cleaning and minor repairs, compliments of some grant funding from the Delaplaine Foundation of Frederick, Maryland. We’re extremely grateful to the foundation for helping to preserve these important pieces of Maryland artwork. William Price was a prominent Maryland attorney who was born and raised in Hagerstown. He moved his young family into the West Washington Street townhouse shortly after its construction in 1825. It served as the family home and his office. He would have been in his early 40s when this portrait was painted. William Price served as the United States District Attorney for the State of Maryland from 1862 to his […]
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