The Midnight Dome

“What fools we mortals be.”

About 150 people, “many of whom were ladies”, attended the first formal gathering to see the midnight sun on June 21, 1899. Weary mountaineers were greeted with a selection of nuts, candies and soft drinks at ...

McGregor / Ringling Brothers

McGregor

"Royal is my race," was the motto of Clan MacGregor of which McGregor's founder, Alexander MacGregor, was a descendant. It was 1837 when Alexander began a ferry boat operation on "MacGregor's Landing" that became a thriving town of 5500. When ...

The Gilmors

Scottish-born Robert Gilmor (1748-1822) brought his young family to Baltimore from the Eastern Shore at the outset of the Revolutionary War. Profiting from wartime shipping and industry, Gilmore emerged in the 1790s as one of Baltimore's leading merchant princes.

The Gilmore ...

United Daughters of the Confederacy Monuments

Hanging Rock Battlefield Trail

When Miss Massie Garst died in 1960, she bequested the Hanging Rock and Buzzard’s Roost to the Virginia Division United Daughters of the Confederacy. She will that this site be preserved as memorial to the brave soldiers ...

The Homestead

The Homestead was built between 1823 and 1826 for Dr. John Simpson Bratton and his wife Harriet Rainey Bratton, the second generation of the Bratton family to live at Brattonsville. Bricks for the chimneys were made on the plantation. The ...

The Influence of the Fairfax Family

William Fairfax:

• fought in Spain for Queen Anne;

• was a member of the Royal Navy;

• served as Governor of New Providence, Bahama Islands,

• served as an agent to manage, the Northern Neck Proprietary;

• was a Vestryman of Pohick Church;

• elected ...

The McDonoghs of Baltimore

Baltimoreans associated the name McDonogh with a well-known private school founded in 1873. Buried here are the parents of the school's founder, Irish natives John (1734-1809) and Elizabeth McDonogh (1747-1808).

John McDonogh, a brickmaker, took part in two events that shaped ...

The Carriage Gates of Westminster Burying Ground

Westminster's carriage gates, completed in 1815, were among the nation's first examples of Egyptian Revival architecture. Commissioned by the First Presbyterian Church, the gates were designed by Maximilian Godefroy (1765-ca.1840), a French architect who spent 15 productive years in Baltimore.

A Monument to the Memory of Edgar Allan Poe

"My idea in designing this monument was to produce something simple, chaste, and dignified, to strike more by graceful outlines and proportions than by crowding with unmeaning ornament."

George A. Frederick, ca. 1874

The November 1875 unveiling of the Poe Monument culminated ...

George J. Heisely Residence and the National Anthem

In the building at the northwest corner of N. Second and Walnut Streets lived George J. Heisely (1789-1880) who was a Harrisburg mathematical instrument and clockmaker. Heisely had joined the First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia's First Brigade during the ...