Boonsboro Reflections: Boonsboro’s Christmas Past

Leisure time for the approximately 860 citizens of Boonsboro was practically nonexistent in 1879, but Christmas was celebrated with gift-giving, extravagant dinners and Christmas “exercises” at the town’s houses of worship.   The Civil War, understandably, intensified...

Boonsboro Reflections: Short Hill Cemetery

Many of Boonsboro’s buildings and landmarks of the Civil War era have vanished with the relentless pressure of time, weather and human action. For example, the community that arose around the Roxbury distillery is gone, but for a few walls of the old hotel that are...

Boonsboro Reflections: The Wizard of Zittlestown

The exploration and colonization of the Americas occurred during the early modern period in history, a time when scientific understanding of the natural world was in its infancy.  Settlers of the New World naturally brought family traditions and folklore with them as...

Boonsboro Reflections: Mayor Nyman Robbed

Certainly most soldiers of the Civil War were respectable men who served honorably.  But rogues unavoidably crept into the ranks and preyed on their fellow soldiers and innocent civilians, causing suffering and chaos through their misdeeds.  Local officials sometimes...

Boonsboro Reflections: Boonsboro’s First Physicians

The early settlers of Boonsboro and the surrounding areas faced the risk of injury and disease without the benefit of modern medicine.  Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur first established the germ theory of disease in 1870, 82 years after the founding of Boonsboro.   And...