Weird Western Maryland

"He led the world in mining coal," says the epitaph on the Finzel Cemetery tombstone of Lawrence Finzel (1873-1919), and that's no exaggeration. Eulogized as the "World Champion Coal Miner," Finzel was judged by Johns Hopkins doctors to be "the finest muscled man that ever came to the institution." In 1915-1916, when he was 43 years old, Finzel averaged 12 tons a coal a day single-handed, three times what was expected of anyone else. He earned $2,360.60 that year, equivalent to $60,000 today, a fabulous sum for a miner at the time. Understandably in demand, Finzel moved from place to place and set production records in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, all while avoiding the accidents that crippled, maimed or killed so many -- including his oldest son, Bernard, who died in a February 1916 cave-in in Fayette County, West Virginia, age 14. What finally killed Finzel at the young age of 45, when he lived on Bowery Street in Frostburg, was not the ...

Grave of Charles & Columbia Bolden. Matt Lake’s entertaining and colorful 2006 book Weird Maryland includes an elaborate Civil-War-ghost-story-turned-graveyard-ritual set in the Finzel cemetery in northeastern Garrett County, nearly at the Pennsylvania state line. As its only source, the Weird Maryland account quotes, verbatim, Baltimore County paranormal investigator Beverly Litsinger, whose MarylandGhosts.com website seems to be defunct. Here’s the story as Litsinger tells it; I have broken up the long paragraph for online readability. The town has one road with the old Finzel cemetery located at the end of it on the outskirts of town. During the Civil War two brothers took up arms on opposing sides – talk about a family feud! One brother fought for the South and the other brother fought for the North; both fought tirelessly. Nonetheless, the two brothers met often in secret inside the small, secluded graveyard to discuss the war and to catch up on stories about the family ...