What are you reading now?

[L Verge]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll stop blaming Mrs. Campbell. I have a vested interest in Charlotte Hall because I am the first generation of one side of my family to not attend the school since the late-1700s. That was because I was a girl before it went co-ed. It has now gone out of existence.

Years ago, I spoke with Dr. Henry Guyther, who wrote a book on the school's history, and he agreed that neither Herold nor Surratt is listed on the many rosters over the years. The Civil War years are missing, but we can account for where both of the young men were during that period.

The school was very Confederate, and a number of the young cadets ran away one night to slip across the river to join Maryland units that were forming in Virginia. My great uncle, Charlie Braddock, was one of them, and he never came home. His mother kept a lantern in her parlor window until the day she died hoping that he would make it home. It wasn't until I met James O. Hall that we found out that Charlie made it to the last days of the war, but was killed in the fighting around Weldon Railroad. We don't know where he's buried, but there is a memorial stone for him in the family cemetery - with a Confederate marker.