Weird Western Maryland

Mark Stroud photo, May 2012 (Graffiti Soldiers) During the Civil War, Landon House in Urbana, Frederick County, was occupied first by Confederate troops, then by Union troops, and on the house’s walls they waged a battle of graffiti. Writing about this episode in 1973, the house’s then-owner, Marion Stancioff, quotes at length from a 1910 volume, Regimental History of 155 th Pennsylvania Volunteers (Antietam to Appomattox) . I have broken up the long paragraphs for ease of online reading. Clearly, the young Pennsylvanians were delighted to bivouac in what had been a girls’ school. One of the rendezvous affording a night's shelte r for the broken down and foot-sore inexperienced soldiers was a Young Ladies' Seminary building rece n tly vacated. There were many rooms and dormitories in the building, also a fine orchard of ripe apples and peaches adjoining, and plenty of limpid water, all of which made it for a night’s lodging a most welcome discovery. All the rooms on the ...

  Landon House, August 2016 (Google). A longstanding legend holds that historic Landon House, in Urbana in Frederick County, was moved to its present location in 1846, but originally was built a century earlier, across the Potomac near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Supposedly, the new owner, the Rev. R.H. Phillips, loved the house but not the location, and had it dismantled and moved 85 miles north, to be reassembled on the Maryland side of the river. Writing of this legend in 1973, the house’s then-owner, Marion Stancioff, was careful in her assessment: While there is no known archival documentation to substantiate this claim, the account exists of the dismantling of the house and its subsequent transportation by barge down the Rappahannock and up the Potomac to Point of Rocks and its re-erection on its present site, as given by two nieces of Reverend Phillips who were still living in Frederick in 1949.   Note that those two women, in retelling the events of 103 years pre...