Early Port Tobacco

[BettyO]

Found these wonderful images in the December 1945 Maryland Historical Society Magazine Vol. XL, No. 4 -

The article is here.

Port Tobacco in 1930 - and it appears to look much as it looked when Atzerodt called it home - pretty rustic and with a very interesting old history....

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Mr. Barbour who made this sketch used to run the Old Quenzel Book Store in Port Tobacco - and sold quite a few books on the assassination!

We used to stop there occasionally on the Surratt House Booth Escape Route Tours back in the day when we went on a school bus. We also went there on the one and only Atzerodt Escape Route Tour led by Ed Steers back in the day!

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[Lindsey]

Scroll down to page 261 for the Port Tobaco article, the first couple of pages is about Hagerstown--nowhere near Port Tobacco!

[Laurie Verge]

I jumped through the Hagerstown beginnings of this to the Port Tobacco section.

A little clarification: I don't remember the Port Tobacco Hotel being called the St. Charles Hotel (that's been in Hughesville my entire lifetime). It was Brawner's Hotel in Port Tobacco, at least during the Civil War.

Also, the R.G. Barbour listed here was actually the brother of Jim Barbour who owned the Old Quenzel Store - a wonderful bookstore that got a lot of my money in the 1970s and 80s. The father of the Barbours did much of the original research that led to the formation of the Society for the Restoration of Port Tobacco about forty years ago.

What was once a thriving port town is now just a ghost of its former self. The Port Tobacco River has largely silted up, the old hotel is gone, Christ Church was moved to the new county seat of LaPlata in the late-1800s - as was the courthouse files shortly before the old courthouse mysteriously burned (had something to do with the railroad coming through about five miles up the road).

The Restoration Society has been able to reconstruct the brick courthouse, and two gracious old homes still exist, Stagg Hall and Chimney House. The graveyard for the original Christ Church is now largely underwater. There is also the old Port Tobacco School, which dates to the early-1900s, and a cat-slide house that has been restored but is used for storage.

Also, our Atzerodt Escape Route Tour of the 1980s actually started in D.C., but of course, George began his tragic journey when he left Port Tobacco to do Booth's dirty work.

[jonathan]

Wow, I didn't know there had been an Atzerodt Escape Route Tour, I bet that was kind of neat. On a side note, the only time I've ever been to Washington D.C., when I was a teenager, we did our very own self-guided Powell Escape Route Tour, wherein we wandered around lost and confused for a couple of days.

[RJNorton]

Laurie, you are using those big words again that Joe Beckert and I do not understand...what in the world is a cat-slide house?

[Laurie Verge]

I apologize. Cat-slide roof lines were very popular in Southern Maryland and Tidewater Virginia in colonial and 19th-century times. If you have seen a photo of Mrs. Quesenberry's "Cottage" before it was enlarged, you will see a front roofline that starts at the peak and slopes drastically down to form the porch roof. Most cat-slides were small cottages with just one or two rooms downstairs and one room up with low ceiling -- a one-and-a-half story house.

Cats are supposed to be able to cling to almost anything, but the old-timers swore that this type of architecture was so steep that a cat would slide off. The Eli Huntt house in T.B. was a cat-slide in 1865 when Booth and Herold rode by. It is now a 13-room huge Victorian!

---

Jonathan,

Shortly after Ed Steers guided us over the Atzerodt Escape Route from D.C.'s Georgetown to the Richters' home in Germantown, Maryland, the Richter home burned down. The site is now a huge development.

[DanielC]

Great photos Betty!

Thank you!

Dan

[BettyO]

Thank YOU, Dan!

So very glad to see you posting! I'm still running now and then into Atzerodt stuff and will forward you all that I've found....

[RJNorton]

Dan, I second what Betty said. Also, be ready for Theo to be sent back to Boston. Have you seen the Cubs' record lately?

[BettyO]

Found this drawing (supposedly drawn by GATH; i.e. George Alfred Townsend) which is of a structure in Port Tobacco at the time of the assassination. He had described it as a "hotel"....but compare this with the 1930 photograph of the Compton House above....

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I notice similarities between these structures....what do ya'll think?

[Laurie Verge]

This is what I always thought was Brawner's Hotel in Port Tobacco. I'm not going to check land records, but I suspect that Brawner's changed hands after the Civil War, maybe became the Compton House and then was replaced or enlarged into the St. Charles Hotel (which now resides about 15 to 20 miles away in the town of Hughesville). There is no Compton House now - only Stagg Hall and Chimney House. One of them was up for sale -- Stagg Hall, I think.

[RJNorton]

There is another picture on the Historic Port Tobacco site.

[Laurie Verge]

Oh, thank heavens! I'm not as dumb as I thought I was...

[DanielC]

Roger, it's been a horrible year for both the Cubs and the Sox!! Thank goodness football starts in a few weeks!

[L Verge]

I hope you noticed that this Redskins fan steered clear of mentioning the game with the Bears the other night. That last minute field goal hurt so bad...