2015-0101 FL – DC Trip – DC

While still at Encore Terra Ceia Village in Palmetto FL Cliff help his younger brother Ken, and our nephew Bill our oldest brother Bill’s son, spread our brother Bill’s ashes in Tampa Bay on 01/30/2015. Also, on 03/18/2015 Pam had Knee Replacement surgery and was move to Riviera Palms Rehab. The picture is of the Riviera Palms Rehab Entrance.

Abigail visited Pam in rehab. Picture is of Abigail on Pam’s bed while she visited Pam. On 04/16/2015 Pam Came home to our RV. We finally left Encore Terra Ceia Village on 06/05/2015 for Thousand Trails Three Flags Resort Wildwood FL. Then on 06/09/2015 we moved the RV to Cummins in Ocala FL for service.

The next day on 06/10/2015 we started on trip to DC. The following stop were made:

06/10/2015 Walkabout Camp & RV Park, Woodbine FL
06/17/2015 Thousand Trails Oaks at Point South, Yemassee SC
06/24/2015 Bass Lake Campground, Dillon SC
07/01/2015 RV Resort at Carolina Crossroads, Roanoke Rapids NC
07/08/2015 ODW Williamsburg, Williamsburg VA
07/15/2015 Chery Hill RV Park, College Park MD

Then we move to Thousand Trails Gettysburg Resort on 7/22/2015. We travel to Boiling Springs PA to visit Carlisle Furnace on 08/09/2015.

The Carlisle Iron Works Furnace in Boiling Springs was built in 1760 and remains in excellent condition. This is one of the earliest blast furnaces and was founded by John Rigbie & Co. It was operated by Michael Ege, a well-known iron master, after 1781.

A marker located on PA 174 just east of Boiling Springs reads: “Founded about 1762 by John Rigbie and Co. Operated after 1781 by Michael Ege, noted ironmaster of the period. Ruins of the charcoal furnace still stand. The picture is of the Carlise Furnace.

Our next move was on 08/12/2015 to Thousand Trails Hershey, Hershey PA. we visited the Middletown & Hummelstown Railroad, Middletown PA.

The M&H Railroad was chartered in 1888 by local businessmen who wanted to increase competition in rates for passengers and freight to come out of Middletown. Up until that point, the Middletown / Hummelstown / Harrisburg area’s transportation needs had been served by the Union Canal (commissioned in 1791 by William Penn in order to connect the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg to Philadelphia and completed in 1827), the Pennsylvania Canal, the Pennsylvania Railroad and its predecessors. The Pennsylvania Railroad had a monopoly on freight at the time and there was little competition to drive the rates down.

In 1857, the Reading Railroad completed their line to Harrisburg and essentially put the Union Canal out of business. When the Union Canal was finally abandoned in 1884, Middletown realized that an alternate mode of transportation to transport freight to Philadelphia was needed; so, this group of local businessmen decided to build their own railroad to meet this need. The M&H railroad would be constructed along the path of the former Union Canal Construction on the railroad began in 1889 on the Middletown side and was completed as far north as Stoverdale by August 1889. In 1890, the bridge over the Swatara Creek was completed and the M&H line joined the Reading Railroad so that they could compete with the Pennsylvania Railroad together. The Reading Railroad purchased the line from the M&H directors and they served the line with passengers until 1939 and with freight until 1972. The picture is of the rail cars we rode in.

On 08/26/2015 we return to Cherry Hill RV Park. Then on 09/02/2015 we headed back to Thousand Trails Gettysburg Farm. we visited Catoctin Furnace, Thurmont MD on 9/13/2015.

In nearby Cunningham Falls State Park, the remains of the Catoctin Iron Furnace represent the area’s early industrial history. When a good grade of hematite ore was discovered in the Catoctin Mountains in the 1770’s, four brothers (Roger, James, Baker and Thomas Johnson) constructed the furnace to produce pig iron. The furnace began operating in 1776, on the cusp of the Revolutionary War, and its iron was used to manufacture a variety of household and industrial goods. The fuel for the furnace was initially charcoal created using trees from the Catoctin Mountains. However, in 1873, the furnace was converted from charcoal fuel to coal. One of the original owners of the furnace, Thomas Johnson, went on to become the first governor of Maryland.

The furnace remained in service until 1903, providing iron used in the manufacture of car wheels and for foundry rolling mill purposes. Also produced during the beginning of the nineteenth century were the “Catoctin Stove,” also known as the “Ten Plate Stove,” and the “Franklin Stove.” It is reported that during the Revolutionary War, cannons and cannonballs were cast at the furnace for George Washington’s Army when the Johnsons owned the furnace. Simple machinery for James Rumsey’s steamboat was made at the Catoctin Furnace Iron Works in the 1780’s. Robert Fulton is credited with building the first successful steamboat, but he was not the first to apply steam power to boats. Rumsey began his invention before 1785. Iron produced at the Catoctin Furnace during Jacob Kunkel’s ownership was used to make the plates on the famous Civil War vessel, the Monitor. The picture is of the Catoctin Furnace – Isabella Furnace.

Again on 09/23/2015 we travel back to Cherry Hill RV Park. our next move was to Thousand Trails Chesapeake Bay Resort, Zanoni VA on 09/30/2015. Then on 10/18/2015, We visited Historic Christ Church, Weems VA.

The first church erected at the site was a wooden building, the construction of which was funded by powerful landowner John Carter in 1670. Carter died before the construction was completed but was buried on the church grounds alongside four of his five wives. John Carter’s son Robert, a wealthy vestryman and planter, decided that the parish deserved a more substantial place of worship and, in 1730, funded and supervised the construction of a brick building on the approximate foundations of the old wooden church. Christ Church was connected to Robert Carter’s Corotoman mansion by way of a cedar-lined road, in order to emphasize the importance of the benefactor and his family.

The church thrived until the disestablishment of the Anglican church in Virginia in 1786. This event, coupled with the Glebe Act of 1802, which authorized the state to seize church property, crippled the Anglican (now Episcopal) church in the state, and Christ Church lost both money and parishioners. Operating only intermittently in the 19th century, the church fell into disrepair; the Carter family tombs in the yard were subject to weathering and neglect, and vandals stole bricks from the exterior. Still, the church fared better than many other colonial churches, and in 1927 the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities began work on restoration of the site. The Picture is of the Historic Christ Church West Side.

For our next stop we drove to Thousand Trails Williamsburg, Williamsburg VA on 10/14/2015. We visited Fort Monroe National Monument, Hampton VA on 10/16/2015. Also, on the fort’s grounds there are two other sites which are Casement Museum, and Old Point Comfort Lighthouse.

Fort Monroe is a former military installation in Hampton, Virginia, at Old Point Comfort, the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, United States. It is currently managed by partnership between the Fort Monroe Authority for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Park Service, and the city of Hampton as the Fort Monroe National Monument. Along with Fort Wool, Fort Monroe originally guarded the navigation channel between the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads—the natural roadstead at the confluence of the Elizabeth, the Nansemond and the James rivers.

Until disarmament in 1946, the areas protected by the fort were the entire Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River regions, including the water approaches to the cities of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, along with important shipyards and naval bases in the Hampton Roads area. Surrounded by a moat, the six-sided bastion fort is the largest fort by area ever built in the United States. The Sally Gate which is the Main gate to the fort.

The Casement Museum is housed within the brick and stone walls of Fort Monroe, the Casemate Museum chronicles the history of seacoast fortifications at Old Point Comfort. From Fort Algernourne, the first militarized structure at Point Comfort, to Fort Monroe National Monument, the museum shares over 400 years of history. The roles and uses of casemates varied over time. Casemates were constructed as gun positions but also used to house soldiers, store weapons and ammunition, and hold prisoners – including Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, also known as Chief Black Hawk, in 1833. Jefferson Davis was also imprisoned at Fort Monroe held in Casemate No. 2 after his May 1865 capture in Georgia. In June 1951, the Casemate Museum opened as a one room museum, but has since expanded. Today you will learn about the American Indian presence on site; the first English colonists who landed upon Virginia soil in 1607; seacoast fortifications dating back to 1609 and Fort Algermourne; the Endicott Battery Era; the American Civil War and Major General Benjamin Butler’s “Contraband Decision”; military and civilian life; and other history distinct to Point Comfort and Fort Monroe. The picture is of a model of Fort Monroe.

Origins of the Point Comfort Lighthouse may date back to sixteenth-century American Indians. Some historians have suggested that American Indians burned wood along the coast to aid Spanish shops entering the harbor. There may be some validity to these theories as the Spanish did set up a Mission along the York River in 1570. The Mission was short lived as Spanish Jesuits were killed by Indians the following year. This set off a small conflict between American Indians and the Spanish in the New World. A more viable origin of Point Comfort’s Lighthouse occurred in 1774 when Virginia employed John Dames as caretaker of the ruins of Fort George (destroyed by a Hurricane previously). Tradition holds that Dames passed his boredom by operating a light and guiding ships into Hampton Roads. By 1775, Dames was granted a salary of 20 pounds annually. The 54-foot white octagonal structure was built in 1802 and is the oldest structure at Point Comfort. A spiral staircase leads to the top where ten oil lanterns burned 486 gallons of oil per year (today the oil lanterns are replaced by modern bulbs). In the nineteenth century, the oil lanterns could be seen for up to fourteen miles out to sea. In 1813, the British captured this lighthouse and burned Hampton in June 25, 1823, as a result of their defeat at the hands of Virginia militia at Norfolk. The Point Comfort Lighthouse was a beacon of freedom to enslaved people seeking refuge at Fort Monroe. Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, James Townsend and other enslaved people may have followed the light from Sewell’s Point to Point Comfort. William Roscoe Davis arrived at Fort Monroe in 1861 seeking freedom. Born around Norfolk, Virginia in 1814 to an enslaved mother of mixed African and American Indian descent and a Caucasian father, Davis found an opportunity to escape as a boat operator pre-Civil War. While at Fort Monroe, Davis spoke to enslaved people and United States soldiers with a preacher’s aura. In 1870, Davis returned to Hampton from his time in New York and operated the lighthouse in 1870 for eight years. Following Davis’s tenure was another formerly enslaved individual, John Jones who kept his post for 30 years. Today, the lighthouse is operated by the Coast Guard and closed to the public. The picture is of the Old Point Comfort Lighthouse.

Safe Travels