On May 22, 1912, The News reported the death of an artist whose “paintings show a deep inspiration.” This artist was Gertrude M. Steiner, and she made a career painting portraits, landscapes, and sacred images in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Her artwork has recently gained new appreciation through research conducted by Heritage Frederick staff after two of her paintings and a collection of family photographs were acquired by the museum and archives in 2023.
Self Portrait in Oil by Gertrude M. Steiner, Heritage Frederick Collection
Born near Petersville in 1854, Gertrude was the second of four children born to Francis Jacob and Margaret Wissel Steiner. Francis was born in Baden, Germany, and Margaret was from Bern, Switzerland. After immigrating to the United States, the Steiner’s settled along the Ridge Road (today’s MD Route 180) between Jefferson and Petersville. Francis operated the Eagle Mill, a merchant grist and saw mill along Catoctin Creek in a place still known as Steiner’s Hill.
Francis J. Steiner’s “Eagle” Merchant Mill on Catoctin Creek shown on the 1858 Isaac Bond Map of Frederick County. The inset photograph of Steiner’s Mill is from the Jefferson 1774-1999: Frederick County, Maryland by Nancy Cherry (1999).
Gertrude first garnered attention for her work as an artist in her mid-thirties. Described in 1889 as “an amateur artist,” Steiner was apparently self taught as no record of her receiving instruction or attending an institution to study art has been identified. The earliest mentions of Steiner’s artwork in local newspapers relate to two paintings she completed for Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church on Carrollton Manor near Buckeystown.
Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church on Carrollton Manor as it appeared in Gertrude’s lifetime, from the Heritage Frederick Archives.
The first of these large works, measuring 4′ in width and 6′ in height, depicts a story from the Gospel of Luke of a twelve-year-old Jesus teaching the elders and priests in the temple at Jerusalem. The work is entitled “Christ before the Learned Doctors” and was completed by Steiner in 1889 on commission from the Jesuit Brotherhood of the Frederick Novitiate. A second work of equal scale was completed in the same year and depicts the death of Saint Joseph. Both works demonstrate Steiner’s talent for capturing emotion in the many figures featured in each scene. These paintings have been lovingly preserved by Saint Joseph’s Church and are now displayed in the new church building after having hung in the original church for over a century.
“Christ before the Learned Doctors” (left) and “Deathbed of St. Joseph” (right) by Gertrude Steiner, courtesy of Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church on Carrollton Manor.
Steiner’s works of religious themes were the most celebrated during her lifetime. According to an obituary from Steiner’s death in 1912 printed in The Baltimore Sun, James Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 to 1921, admired her sacred paintings which were presented to several Catholic Churches throughout his archdiocese. He visited her on one occasion at her home near Jefferson in Frederick County.
Apart from works of religious themes, Steiner was an accomplished portrait painter. Newspaper accounts record her trips to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York to visit art exhibitions and occasionally submit her own works for review and/or sale. During these trips, she took commissions for portraits. In a collection of photographs from Steiner’s family acquired last year by Heritage Frederick is a cabinet card portrait made in Baltimore. On the reverse of this cabinet card are notes for Gertrude indicating that the subject of the photograph was having her portrait painted by the artist.
A cabinet card photograph from one of Steiner’s portrait commissions and its inscription on the reverse (left). Newspaper abstracts documenting Steiner’s trips to sell paintings and collect commissions for portraits.
In addition to her own self portrait, Heritage Frederick also preserves a portrait in oil of Gertrude’s brother-in-law Eugene Etchison.
Gertrude Steiner died in May 1912 after battling stomach cancer at the age of 58. For the last several years of her life, she lived with her sister Emma and her husband, Eugene Etchison, at their home in Buckeystown. Gertrude was buried in the graveyard of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Petersville with her parents and siblings. Her obituary in The News recorded “Miss Steiner will be remembered in Frederick by the many beautiful paintings she has exhibited year after year at the Frederick Fair…her pictures were as dear to her as her family and for years they had almost been her life.”
The Michael Mill House at Buckeystown where Gertrude lived with her sister and brother-in-law during the last years of her life (left). Gertrude Steiner’s obituary from the May 22, 1912 edition of The News (right).
Heritage Frederick would like to thank St. Joseph’s Catholic Church for allowing us to photograph and feature Gertrude Steiner’s paintings displayed in their church as part of this article.
September 11, 2024 by Jody Brumage, Heritage Frederick Archivist.
Maryland’s section of the Blue Ridge Mountain Range defines the landscape of Frederick County and has been a significant factor in shaping its history. These ridges informed the paths of migration used by the earliest immigrant and colonial settlers to the county. They provided the raw materials that fueled the early industrial development of iron furnaces. During the Civil War, a significant battle was waged for control of three passes on South Mountain in the lead up to the Battle of Antietam. In the decades after the war, the mountains became the focus of a new industry: tourism.
A postcard view of Braddock Heights, the mountain-top resort on Catoctin established in 1894.
Entrepreneurs recognized the scenic beauty of Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains and their potential to be popular resort locations for families living in crowded cities like Baltimore and Washington, DC. In 1877, the Western Maryland Railroad developed Pen Mar Park on South Mountain. A similar development was started by George William Smith at Braddock Heights in 1894. The Black Rock Hotel at Wolfsville, the Valley View Manor on Catoctin Mountain, and dozens of boarding houses established in communities close to the mountains like Middletown, Sabillasville, and Thurmont catered to growing numbers of visitors seeking a quiet and cool refuge from crowded, bustling cities.
View of Lamb’s Knoll from the east in the Middletown Valley.
Amid the rapid development of resort spots in the Maryland Mountains, two farmers living in southwestern Frederick County attempted to create another. On September 13, 1895, Middletown’s Valley Register reported that John W. Wilson and Oliver Sigler were opening a two-story observation tower on Lamb’s Knoll. Rising to 1,758 feet above sea level, Lamb’s Knoll is the second highest peak of South Mountain during its course in Maryland (the tallest, Mount Quirauk, is located near the Mason Dixon Line at Pen Mar). The observatory was built on a fifty-seven acre tract which Wilson had purchased six years earlier from Dr. William Boteler.
A letter describing a visit to the White Rock Observatory from “The Valley Register,” October 4, 1895.
Local reporting on the new observatory speculated that it might become the central attraction of a new resort. One month after its completion, the Valley Register published a letter describing a visit to the observatory. The author, Rev. George Sigler, declared “It is certainly well worth any man’s while to make this trip. The wide, long, and beautiful scene that feasts the eye is beyond description.” The observatory had an uninterrupted panoramic view of four states and, according to Rev. Sigler, the unaided eye could easily see landmarks of the cities of Hagerstown and Frederick on a clear day. Rev. Sigler wrote that “there is a broad level surrounding this point of the mountain that could be converted into a beautiful park.”
The Observatories at Pen Mar (left) and Braddock Heights (right).
Wilson and Sigler had reason to believe in the possibility of such a development around their observatory. One of the first attractions built at Pen Mar was the observatory built at High Rock on South Mountain. A similar attraction enjoyed enduring popularity at Braddock Heights. They also had an important ally who saw their investment as part of a grander plan for the development of South Mountain as an attraction.
George Alfred Townsend, the popular journalist and author who built his mountaintop estate “Gapland” in Crampton’s Gap, had his own vision for making South Mountain a scenic and historical destination. Townsend formed a corporation that improved the road leading from Crampton’s Gap down to the nearby depot on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s Washington County Branch. He also formed the Gapland Improvement Company that advertised building lots to families in the cities looking for mountain land to establish vacation residences. However, Townsend realized improved roads to access the top of the mountain were necessary in order for South Mountain to flourish as a resort destination.
George Alfred Townsend (left) and an 1892 advertisement for his Gapland Improvement Company (right)
In an editorial that appeared in “The Valley Register” on October 18, 1895, the author (likely Townsend) wrote “the look-out just placed on Mount Panorama [Lamb’s Knoll], near the White Rock, South Mountain, suggests to me the importance of having the government in the present generation, which is alive to the subject of illustrating the Civil War, connect the three battle gaps on South Mountain by a road along the mountain’s nearly level ridge.” This road would have passed by Wilson and Sigler’s observatory on Lamb’s Knoll and made the site easily accessible.
However, no such road would ever be constructed, and without it, the observatory on Lamb’s Knoll remained accessible only by the several narrow, steep logging roads that climbed the mountain from the south, east, and north. The structure was nearly destroyed just two months after it was built when a wildfire swept over South Mountain in November 1895. The observatory was saved from this fire, but may have fallen victim to another blaze in 1910, by which time the dream of a resort on Lamb’s Knoll had ended. In 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps erected an 80 foot fire tower near the site of the 1895 observatory. This tower became a popular viewing spot for many decades to a different type of recreational tourist: hikers passing over Lamb’s Knoll on the Appalachian Trail.
The Lamb’s Knoll Fire Tower as it appeared in 1963.
August 7, 2024 by Jody Brumage, Heritage Frederick Archivist
I despise only knowing part of “the story.” I grumble at television “cliff-hangers” and movies that are released in two or three parts. I stay-up late reading through the excitement of books and sit in my car in my driveway when I get home from work so I can hear more of my audio book. As a monthly contributor to Frederick Magazine, I write an article called Uncovered, my goal for the article is 250-300 words and I always go over. I feel like a story worth telling, is worth telling completely so while in the end, you might only read 300 words, several hundred more get left on my desk, dutifully stashed in object files and databases to be shared in the future.
If you’ve read the article over the last two years you might have noticed that I like to make the article a sort of “Thank-You” to those who have recently donated something to our collections. It’s a small way for me to honor their gift and show them that Heritage Frederick is proud to be the keeper of their family heritage not just for today but into the future as well.
One of the most enjoyable parts of my job is sleuthing out what personal stories might be attached to an item in the collection. Whether it is a cannonball, a portrait, a child’s shoe, a hat or a tea cup, what brings each item we display to life for our visitors is an interesting backstory and our ability to solidly connect a particular location or person in Frederick County to each item. This is a glimpse into what that process looks like for me.
My example for this article is a portrait of a young girl recently donated to our collection. The painting, like most of the 100+ items that are donated each year to Heritage Frederick, came with a bit of information. The donor of the piece is the girl in the portrait’s great grandson. When she grew up the little girl in the painting married a man that opened a business in Frederick that would last for 103 years making their last name synonymous with the shopping experience downtown for generations of Fredericktonians.
Genealogy is usually my jumping off point. When an object is donated I need to confirm the information that comes along with it, the what (is it), the who (did it belong to), the where (was it made) and the when (was it made). Sometimes the story has gotten lost or altered as the item is handed down through the generations, and before I write an article or a gallery label I need to make sure that what came in as “my grandfather’s top hat” isn’t really more likely to have been the donor’s great great grandfather’s hat. The dates have to line up so that it’s reasonable to believe that the item and the person existed at the same time and a family tree helps me do that. If the item’s donor is a relative, sometimes I will start with them to create a family tree.
In this case, because the woman pictured and her husband were such notable residents, I started the family tree with them. I use Ancestry.com because I have many years of experience on it and have come to understand what sources should and should not be trusted on that site. To begin, I visited findagrave.com, another online resource that I have many years of experience using, to search for the couple’s graves and get the exact years of their births and deaths. I build the tree out going back in time to find the couple’s parents, grandparents and so on. Whenever possible, taking each branch of the family back to their immigrant ancestor, the first person on that line to arrive in America. I find that knowing what culture, traditions and values might have followed these families into our corner of Maryland from their home countries sometimes flavors their lives and decisions once they are here and sometimes for many generations, therefore it’s important in creating a complete picture of who the little girl in this portrait would someday be.
I arrived at Heritage Frederick two years ago this month and fairly quickly realized that at this point in my research, finding their ancestors, there was a further step I could take. I realized that this little girl, who’s heritage I now knew was English on her father’s side and Dutch, Irish, and Scottish, as well as English on her mother’s side, most certainly had many living relatives. I could extend the family tree forward to the present, connecting not only the donor of the painting but all her other current living descendants as well. These names, as well as addresses when I am able to find them, have been instrumental in contacting family members to let them know when their family’s heirlooms will be exhibited. When necessary it has also been a valuable resource for exhibition planning, to contact those descendants to see if they have any more information or other artifacts that relate to the ancestors represented in our collections.
The information collected while building a family tree lets me know what places the family lived and traveled to, what occupations the men of the household had, how many children there were in the family, as well as triumphs of business and tragedies of health or accident. It reveals newspaper articles about weddings, parties, meetings and events that these people attended and their obituaries, sometimes revealing a little about their personality, their values, their hobbies and about the people they left behind. If I’m very lucky, this research reveals a photograph of the person or an image of their home and very often, a photo of their grave.
After collecting all the information that the girl in our portrait’s family records have to offer. I then turn to the object itself. In this case we have a painted portrait, under glass neither signed nor dated. To find out more and to also assess the condition of the painting, I unframe the work. The backing board, a thin rough sheet of wood tells me that it is quite old as it is hand hewn, the nails that once held it in place are a combination of handwrought nails and furniture tacks. Once out of the frame I find that the portrait is painted on an oval piece of artist board but is not signed. That it is not painted on canvas may help me identify the artist, as some would have preferred to use only canvas. It also tells me a little bit about the economics of the girl’s family and perhaps of the artist as well in that a painting on board is less grand both in size and expense and more portable. The painting is very well done, the small girl’s slick dark hair and the intricate embroidered pattern on her white dress are expertly rendered. I have now collected all the information I need to take my next step.
To recap and reveal what I have found to this point: the portrait is of a young girl born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1858. Her parents descended from early settlers who came from the British Isles and Holland and the couple, born in Frederick County, MD, and Berkeley County, WV, traveled together to Indiana looking for opportunity and to start their family. The girl in the portrait lived in Indianapolis until her marriage in 1883 so we can infer that the portrait was painted in Indianapolis. She appears to be between 3 and 7 years old. I make this judgment on her age, by looking at the length and style of her hair, still short, ear length, parted in the middle and combed flat ending in curls around her face. Her hair hasn’t been growing in for long and if pushed, I would say she is much more likely to be only 3 or 4 years old. Also the style of her clothing, a white, short-sleeved, cotton or linen with delicate floral embroidery across the front, is something commonly worn by toddlers and young children during this period. Knowing all I can about the life of the people our objects represent would only be giving our visitors half of each object’s story. When I look at a doll owned by Julia Roelkey Myers or moveable printing type used at the turn of the 19th century by the Frederick News Post I also want the story of the maker, manufacturer, creator or artist that produced these items (in these cases J D Kestner Doll Company of Germany and the E. J. Hamilton Holly Wood Type Company in Two Rivers, Wisconsin).
I now take what I know and look for professionals with more specialized knowledge to assist me in learning any more that I can. I am hoping to identify a talented and very skilled portrait artist who was working in Indianapolis between 1861-1865, one who is known to have painted, at least occasionally, on artist board instead of canvas. I needed to find someone who knows everything possible about early Indianapolis, which was only incorporated 11 years before our portrait sitter was born there. After a bit of internet sleuthing, I decided to contact the staff at the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. I emailed a selection of staff at each location, explaining my research and sending along photographs of the portrait of the little girl, both framed and unframed. The information that I have received back, while not definitive, is something worth exploring. I now have the name of an artist who I can investigate. Both making my own determinations about how similar his body of work is to our portrait and continuing to search out museum professionals who might offer more insight. For now, I’m content that the timeline, career, and talent of this particular artist all seem to correlate with whomever painted our portrait and I have been able to determine that several of his works, both portrait and landscape paintings, were done on artist board.
While we do not currently have plans to include this portrait of a young girl in an exhibit, this research was done as part of the normal intake process that each donation goes through when it is added to the collection of Heritage Frederick. All the details of this portrait will be revealed in my Uncovered article in the July 2024 issue of Frederick Magazine.
June 4, 2024 by Amy Hunt, Heritage Frederick Curator
Since 1973, Historic Preservation Month has been observed during the month of May. Preservation Month highlights the importance of saving our built environment and celebrates the role preservation plays in local economies and the continuation of cultural heritage.
Marshall Etchison on East Church Street in Frederick.
One of Frederick’s early preservation activists was Marshall Lingan Etchison (1894-1960). Marshall came of age in a Frederick that saw rapid growth and change as a result of industrial innovation. With the development of new technology, Frederick’s industrialists established dairies, canneries, garment factories, and other manufacturing enterprises, which fueled the growth of Frederick beyond its eighteenth century boundaries. This economic activity also encouraged the “modernization” of the city’s downtown commercial district.
Etchison was a lifelong student of history and an avid researcher and collector. He appraised local estates and led the Historical Society of Frederick County (now Heritage Frederick) to curate a collection of local artifacts and archives. In 1945, in the midst of Frederick’s bicentennial celebration, the Historical Society opened its first museum in the restored Steiner House under Marshall’s leadership. After his death in 1960, he directed his family to donate much of his own collection of Frederick County material culture and his personal papers to the Historical Society.
Among these papers now preserved in Heritage Frederick’s archives are hand-written drafts of letters and editorials Marshall wrote in support of preserving Frederick’s historic architecture. In 1926 as the city pressed forward with the demolition of the historic Zentz Mill to clear the way for the development of Baker Park, Marshall wrote an impassioned plea to consider what the city was jeopardizing in its continued destruction of local landmarks.
The Old City Mill or Zentz Mill on North Bentz Street beside Carroll Creek.
Written while he was traveling in Italy, Marshall commented that saving old buildings was imperative to maintaining “that elusive thing called atmosphere; a real background and preservation of things ancient and beautiful: things that have real meaning and upon which our modern civilization is based; things made by vanished hands not for monetary reward, but to exist through future generations, as a monument through all times.”
The editorial notes several local landmarks that had been destroyed besides the mill, including the original Saint John’s Literary Institution building on East Second Street and the Old Stone Tavern on West Patrick Street. Interestingly, some of the fabric of the old tavern was repurposed for the reconstruction of the Barbara Fritchie House, including portions of its stairway and floors.
A decade after his pleas for Frederick to balance its modernization with the preservation of its past, Marshall Etchison again committed his feelings to paper when plans for construction of the C. Burr Artz Library called for the demolition of the Frederick Academy. Built in the 1790s, the Academy was a three-story brick building that stood on the corner of Council and Record Streets facing the Court Square. While initial plans for the library project entailed saving part of the Academy, it was eventually demolished to make way for an entirely new structure.
The Frederick Academy Building
Marshall countered the argument that the building was too old and deteriorated to be remodeled for the purposes of the new library, instead suggesting that the historical nature of the Academy would be an asset to this new public institution for learning. Moreover, Marshall suggested that preservation efforts should focus on saving Frederick’s Court Square, of which the Academy was an essential part.
“Court Square is almost the last spot of ancient beauty left to us in Frederick. It is the great admiration of all outside architects and antiquarian visitors and its atmosphere should be zealously guarded by us, as a heritage to pass on to future generations.” Interestingly, Marshall contextualized his thoughts in the contemporaneous efforts to preserve places with significant links to the United States’ colonial past such as Williamsburg, Virginia; Annapolis, Maryland; and New Castle, Delaware.
Apart from speaking out on the matter, Marshall Etchison committed his time and attention to documenting historic sites that were disappearing around him. Among his papers are sketches he made of the landscape and structures on the site of the old All Saints Episcopal Graveyard and the original Asbury United Methodist Church on East All Saints Street. His sketches include depictions of grave vaults that remained intact on the site as well as notes about people interred in the graveyard. He also sketched the “Old Hill Church,” the early-nineteenth century brick building where Asbury United Methodist Church was founded and worshiped until their present church on West All Saints Street was completed in 1921.
Near the end of his life, Marshall’s knowledge and belief in the importance of preserving Frederick’s history was sought out by a local committee formed in 1952 to begin documenting the surviving historic architecture in the city. This committee surveyed 976 structures in the city. The work of this committee continued after Marshall’s death in 1960 and laid the groundwork for the creation of Frederick’s historic district, which was established in 1968.
May 3, 2024By Jody Brumage, Heritage Frederick Archivist
Heritage Frederick’s Research Center is temporarily closing this month to allow masons from Gruber Latimer Restoration to remove loose mortar and repoint the stone and brick foundation walls of our historic headquarters at 24 East Church Street. This crucial preservation work is possible thanks to a grant from the Delaplaine Foundation.
The foundation walls supporting the museum are two hundred years old. Architectural remains offer clues to the historical uses of the basement space. Portions of whitewash remaining on the walls reveal the outline of the back stairway that once descended to the basement. This stairway provided direct access to all four levels of the building and was likely used by enslaved servants as they completed daily domestic jobs in the household. Houses built in the same time period as 24 East Church Street typically had cellars or basements for storing food, kitchens, and spaces for storing fuel sources for heating the structure. Surviving documents and archaeological evidence indicate that coal was in use on the property as early as 1854, and part of the basement likely held a bunker for coal storage.
The basement before the 1993 renovations, showing the mixture of brick and stone used in the foundation walls. This view is looking through the center hall of today’s Research Center.
A whitewash outline indicates the original location of the back stairway.
From 1882 until 1956 when the building served as Loats Female Orphan Home, the basement continued to house equipment for heating while the long room in the center (beneath the main hallway) was used by the girls for indoor exercise and roller skating. After the closure of the orphan home and the transformation of the house into the Historical Society of Frederick County, the basement continued to be used for children’s activities where antique toys were exhibited.
By the 1990s, the Historical Society’s library and archives, housed on the second floor and in the attic, were overflowing with manuscripts, photographs, maps, and books. The weight of these collections became a problem, placing too much stress on the wood floors up of the upper stories of the building. The Society looked to the large basement space as an opportunity for alleviating this problem while simultaneously expanding the capacity of the archives and research collections. The project was spearheaded by longtime volunteer and Historical Society President Bill Willmann. Work spaces, a library, a reading room for researchers, and collections storage facilities were designed into the basement space. At that time, extensive repairs were made to the foundation walls, including the replacement of over 1,200 bricks. The organization also installed new HVAC units to maintain consistent temperature and humidity levels for the preservation of archival resources. On September 28, 1993, the renovated basement and new Frederick County Research Center opened its doors to the public.
Dedication of the new Research Center in 1993. Bill Willmann is pictured on the front row, second from the left.
Thirty years later, Heritage Frederick remains committed to the preservation of the building our organization has called home for the past sixty-five years. Once masonry restoration is completed, we plan to reopen the research center in mid-April.
March 6, 2024, By Jody Brumage, Heritage Frederick Archivist
