Quick - name the first organized resistance to British rule in Colonial America.
The Boston Tea Party, you say? Wrong! The first spark of what became a full-blown revolution took place eight years earlier in the courtyard square of City Hall in Frederick, Maryland, when twelve local judges, who came to be known as the "Twelve Immortals," assembled to repudiate the Stamp Act by burning effigies of government officials. One of the participants, John Hanson, later served as the first President of the Continental Congress, while another, Thomas Johnson, nominated his good friend George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
Surprised by this? Well then, you should get on over to Frederick and take the historic walking tour. There are a lot of other surprises in store for you.
The Frederick Historic District is an impressive 33-block area lined with stately mansions, historic churches, and lovely row houses. However, the heart of the district is an eight-block area covered on the ninety-minute walking tour. Our enthusiastic guide Barbara was brimming with stories to tell, and boy did she ever tell them!
Standing on the steps of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, she mentioned that Stonewall Jackson had worshipped there during theConfederate occupation of the city, drawing chuckles when she recounted the Sunday that Jackson fell asleep during services. While the pious general snoozed, the pastor, a Union sympathizer, indulged in some anti-Confederate sermonizing. Jackson slept right through it, congratulating the cleric on an excellent sermon as he left the church.
Another church a few blocks away, St. John the Evangelist, is the oldest consecrated Catholic Church in the U.S. Its gold-leaf dome is one of the famous "clustered spires of Frederick" lauded in Whittier’s poem about Barbara Fritchie, that feisty nonagenarian who dared Confederate troops to "Shoot if you must this old grey head, but spare your country’s flag." During the Civil War, captured soldiers were incarcerated here; most of the nearby churches served as hospitals for the thousands of wounded who flooded the town after Antietam and other nearby battles. Barbara explained how planks were set over the pews to form a raised flooring. At one point the number of wounded (some 8,000) equaled the number of town residents. Looking down Church Street, with its lovely tree-shaded brick sidewalks, it was hard to imagine.
The streets of Frederick have a stately grace that are best savored on a leisurely stroll, stopping to consider the stepping stones ladies used when getting into carriages or to pat the cast iron statue of "Guess," the pet dog of Dr. John Tyler, a noted ophthalmologist who was first to perform a cataract operation.
The tour ended all too briefly, as far as I was concerned. It seemed we had just begun to scratch the history of this fascinating place when the tour ended at the Historical Society Museum on Church Street, where I found another enthusiastic local historian ready to take up where our walking tour guide had left off.