The Day the Women Saved Unionville

It's Wednesday, May 2nd, 1917.

Twenty-seven days ago, the U.S. declared war on Germany. The first American warships are racing toward Ireland to join our Allies. In sixteen days, the Selective Service Act will pass, requiring millions of men to register for the draft for only the second time in U.S. history - including Al Capone, Irving Berlin, Harry Houdini, Duke Ellington, Norman Rockwell, Babe Ruth, and more than 10,000 men from Frederick County. Our nation is preparing for war.

Here, in the rural village of Unionville, spring planting has begun. All but two men, who stayed to run the general store, have gone out to lend a hand to neighboring farmers. The nation's entry into the two-and-a-half-year-old war likely weighed on their minds and might have been a topic of conversation that day. Meanwhile, back in the village, fifty women - young and old, widows and wives - were about to face a frightening battle of their own.

President Woodrow Wilson initially kept the U.S. neutral. However, escalating German submarine attacks - most notably the sinking of the RMS Lusitania - and Britain’s interception of the Zimmermann Telegram which proposed a German-Mexican alliance against the U.S., pushed him to call on Congress for a declaration of war. Five months into his second term, he proclaimed, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” (Lancaster Intelligencer, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, April 07, 1917.)

The heart of Unionville just before the Civil War. (Insert map from the Isaac Bond [E. Sachse & Co] circa 1860 updated Map of Frederick County, MD. This insert is absent on the 1858 map.) Key: WW-wheelwright, BS-blacksmith, Sh-shoe shop, GM-grist mill, PO-post office.

Unionville, a typical and once prosperous “turnpike village” of Frederick County, sits just east of Libertytown exactly halfway between Frederick and Westminster. We shouldn't confuse it with Unionville in Talbot County, founded in 1867 by eighteen Black men, both formerly enslaved and free, who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. It's also not to be confused with nearby Union Bridge and Uniontown, both in Carroll County.

Unionville lies between Libertytown, left, and the Carroll County border, right. (Portion of the 1873 D.J. Lake [Titus & Co.] Atlas of Frederick County, Maryland. Click image to expand.)

In the early 1900s, Liberty Road (Route 26) ran through Unionville. The village was on a decline as trade routes through the county were changing, but it was still a very important hub for the surrounding farms.

Its citizens, many of whom were related by blood or by marriage, had roots in the area that went back to the early 1700's. A few of those families still remain. In 1917, there was a grocer and confectioner, a harness maker, a creamery, a farm equipment shop, and two general stores.

Two young boys walk along Unionville Road in this circa 1900s postcard, just east of the Unionville and Clemsonville Roads intersection. The fire occurred to the right. The clad structure to the left is gone, but the two tree-shaded houses on the right flanking Clemsonville Road still stand. (Author's collection.)

Traffic flowed through regularly with no issue, but on this early May afternoon it is thought that someone's engine sparked, a strong wind blew, and Uniontown was set ablaze.

The Pennsylvania Railroad ran up N. East Street passing St. John's Cemetery between 3rd & 4th. The rails are still visible in the road. The track is part of the East Street Rails with Trails project and is partly used by the Walkersville Southern Railroad. (The News, Frederick, August 08, 1893.)

With the main drag running through town, it is understandable that the fire could have started from a passing vehicle. Too often, sparks from engines, threshing machines, even passing trains set fire to structures all over the county including barns and whole fields of crops. In 1890, 84-year-old Joseph Coblentz, originally from Middletown, was killed on his farm in Dayton, Ohio, while trying to extinguish a brush fire on his farm. The News in Frederick reported that it was, "kindled by a spark from a passing engine, the railroad running through his land."

Unionville itself wasn't a stranger to fires. Two years earlier, the Methodist Episcopal Church South at Unionville, known as Pearre Chapel, burned down in a terrible blaze "licking the Heavens" with "a roar and shrieking hard to describe."

One of several articles published nationwide. (The Baltimore Sun, May 03, 1917.)

The fire in this story started in the barn of Ann "Matilda" Poole Lugenbeel. She was a widower living in the village center and was about to celebrate her 88th birthday. At the time, she shared her home - built on the site of the former "oldest house in Unionville" (c.1790) - with her daughter Minnie L. Boone. As it burned, the blaze spread to the neighboring barns of Edward Danner and Mary Nusbaum. Mary was a widower in her late 60s. She had moved to Unionville just one year earlier from Carroll County. James E. Pearre, whose house was saved, was Ann's son-in-law.

Edward Lindsay Danner and his brother, Benjamin, ran Norman Creamery. A family business since 1888, it was an important component to this agriculturally-focused community. It can be imagined that if they were home at the time, Edward's wife Marian, daughter Mary, and mother Rebecca would have worked to put out their flaming barn.

Edward would have also driven up and down the roads through town. In 1911, he and his neighbor G. R. Sappington purchased Fords at the 5th annual Baltimore Auto Show as reported by The Evening Sun. That year, there were 8,740 cars registered in Maryland. By 1917, there were 54,000. (This included D.C. drivers who, until 1923, were required to be licensed in Maryland to drive on our roads, and vice versa.) This was also the year that The Frederick Motor Company was founded.

The use of cars was growing exponentially at the time. It is hard to find a magazine that isn't filled with full-page ads from every car manufacturer around, descriptions of the correct wardrobe for driving and proper road etiquette, and images of the newest accessories for your car. (An extra seat for a child that hangs over the door, anyone?)

These images from the March, 1917, issue of The Ladies' Home Journal teach "Little Things About a Car That Every Woman Who Means to Drive One Ought to Know." (That summer, several ads for Hood College appeared in the magazine, one with a picture of Alumnae Hall.)

These postcards, both mailed in 1906, are a great example of modes of transportation you would have seen traveling through Unionville at the time: car, carriage, and foot. You might have waved to passing motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, and wagons as well.

Two postcards show an overview of the Jug Bridge east of Frederick along the National Road. The bridge collapsed into the Monocacy River on March 3, 1942. [Author's collection.]

With only a handful of engine companies in the county, when a fire broke out in these rural areas it was all hands on deck! In 1917, the closest fire department was in Libertytown. It would have taken their United Volunteer Fire Company at least 20 minutes to arrive at Ann's barn. Even more if they were pulling their engine, "Old Lady," memorialized on the Frederick County Fire & Rescue Museum logo.

A county resident said this of his rural area:

John C. Roderuck of Ladiesburg manufactured "Roderuck's Family Liniment." A topical medicine which claimed to cure a number of ailments. (The News, Frederick, August 15, 1891.)

We don't know who made the initial call to the telephone exchange in Mount Airy when the fire was discovered, or what message was relayed. But when operators got the call they likely sprang into action, taking charge of the switchboard to furiously ring nearby farms, urging the men to return home immediately. I imagine the guys would have remembered the catastrophic fires that nearly decimated Libertytown and Mount Airy and would have raced back home watching the distant, dark smoke billowing in the air.

There were two men in town, however. Clarence A. Lindsay, age 53, and Carl P. Brightwell, age 42. Clarence ran the local mercantile at the heart of the village, so it's no wonder he stayed in town that day. As he learned of the fire at Ann's, he might have flashed back to his father's store, that stood where his did, burning to the ground in 1887. They lost almost everything.

In 1918, Carl Brightwell was a clerk at Unionville's second general store owned by Claude Wilt, so we might assume that's why he was in town that day as well. Carl lived with his sisters (or aunts depending on what census you're reading), Margaret and Alice May Brightwell, ages 51 and 44. The women worked out of their Unionville home as dressmakers. Later in life, Carl owned a store at Sam's Creek.

Can we pause for a moment and and mourn the fact that (not surprisingly) none of the fifty women that rushed to the rescue that day are named in any newspaper? You can take a look at the 1920 Census to see the names of many of the women that would have run out of their houses, grabbing any container they could fill with water to douse the flames. Imagine them rushing from their homes, many of which still stand, calling to one another as they formed a bucket brigade with their children. Racing toward the flaming buildings, climbing ladders, tossing water from wash bins, pitchers, buckets and pails - embers flying, wood cracking and collapsing - while other women pulled animals and belongings to safety. The wind blowing their skirts and aprons around them as the fire grew.

Also, let's not forget the other group of women that saved Unionville that day: the telephone operators. They were the early 911 dispatchers.

Just one month after the fire, these operators sprung into action as well. The Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, June 05, 1917.

Army Signal Corps trainees at the Chesapeake and Potomac central office at Camp Meade, Maryland, 1917. (National Archives)

Several weeks before President Wilson urged Congress to declare war, the U.S. became the first major nation to enlist women in a non-nurse capacity in its military. By late 1917, about two-hundred "Hello Girls," as they became known, operated the front-line's telephone switchboards as part of the Army Signal Corps. According to author Elizabeth Cobbs, the operators served as simultaneous translators between the French and American troops and gave the time to soldiers. Sometimes the men would call the switchboard just to hear a woman's voice.

One could say their involvement in the Unionville fire was foreshadowed in this piece:

The News, Frederick, October 10, 1911.

The telephone operators that were called that day would have known the urgency necessary in this situation. Their town, Mount Airy, was nearly wiped out three times by massive fires. In 1903, their bucket brigade was aided by a Frederick City fire company which arrived with equipment by rail. Many telephone exchanges like Frederick and Braddock Heights had gongs that the operators could ring to signal their local fire fighters. Unfortunately, Mount Airy wouldn't have an organized fire department until 1926. They couldn't come to Unionville's aid.

The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, our local provider, ran an ad promoting its telephone service as a way to quickly summon the bucket brigade in rural communities, capitalizing on the real fear of fire to market phones.

Barn on fire? No problem. Use your telephone to call the bucket brigade into action! (The Evening Post, Frederick, March 05, 1913.)

As small and local as this event might have been, it ended up in the papers of D.C., Boston, Salt Lake City, out to San Bernardino, California.

A day later, 2,350 miles from here on the front page of the Santa Barbara Morning Press among a flurry of articles regarding the raging World War, the draft that would be shipping men away from home, and the ongoing German submarine warfare threatening the very existence of Great Britain, France, and the world's shipping capabilities, appeared this little article at the very bottom corner...

The Morning Press, Santa Barbara, California, May 03, 1917.

The Route 26 by-pass running north of Unionville. (Aerial imagery, 2006)

In 1950, to avoid a dangerous turn in the road east of the village, the Unionville by-pass was built. This new section of Route 26 separated Unionville from its local church and neighbors to the north. It is the route we drive today.

I wonder if any of the women in Unionville knew how far away from home this story was shared. True or not, in 1921, Phoenix's Arizona Republic reported, "Women are now eligible to membership in the volunteer fire department in Frederick, MD." Would the women of Unionville have joined up? Or were they happy their fire fighting days were behind them?

[I'd like to add an addendum to this. I happened to start writing this blog the day that the historic Cannon Hill Place Antiques building on South Carroll Street, Frederick, was destroyed by a massive fire. Thank you to our local dispatchers and to the fire fighters and emergency personnel who put their lives on the line every day in order to keep us safe.]

For fun, I wanted to share this Charlie Chaplin film, The Fireman. It played at the Frederick Opera House in July, 1916.