Visiting the Damned

I visited the grave of Roger B Taney today, in St. John’s graveyard off 4th Street in downtown Frederick, Maryland. I was not planning to visit a grave today, but I had 30 minutes to spare after dropping off a small motor repair job, and I had not visited this graveyard in a year or two.

Taney was the fifth Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and he is famous for being the guy who lit the fuse leading to the US Civil War.  

This graveyard is full of Civil War dead and I hope Taney is haunted by their ghosts,

Taney’s tombstone describes him as “a pius and exemplary Christian”.  

Right.  

In fact, Taney was the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), ruling that African, Americans could not be considered U.S. citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories.

Taney, it should be said, was a relation to Francis Scott Key, another slave owner. Key was the fellow who penned America’s virtually unsingable national anthem.  He is buried about a mile up Market Street, which Reader's Digest has just ranked as the most beautiful main street in the US.

Huh.

As I entered  the graveyard, a Red-shoulderd Hawk lifted up and perched on a tall stone cross at the edge of the cemetery adjacent to a stick-frame row house.  As luck would have it, I had my camera with me, and squeezed off a few shots.

House construction in downtown Frederick shows the vestigial elements of 18th and 19th Century construction.  There are log houses in downtown Frederick proper, and they are not recreations.  A barber shop on 5th Street is undergoing a major roof-off renovation, and if you look through the window holes of the brick outer walls, now supported by temporary bracing, you can see that the inner joists and posts are crooked logs. Amazing.

I love downtown Frederick, but after living in a small row house with a deep yard, I traded up for a house four times larger on a lot 30 times larger that is a short and very scenic 12-minute drive away. Best decision ever.

Maryland’s history is soaked in blood and slavery, but things change… slowly.

Today, Maryland’s excellent Governor, Wes Moore, is black, as is our newest Senator, Angela Alsobrooks.  Frederick Douglas came from Maryland, as did Thurgood Marshall and Harriet Tubman.

An odd bit of history can be found by looking up “Maryland in Africa” in Wikipedia. The Maryland State Colonization Society referenced, was founded by Charles Carroll, a large land owner in Frederick County and signer of the US Declaration of Independence, and for whom Carroll Creek, flowing through downtown Frederick, is named.