Books by Roberta J Wearmouth

During the years covered by this volume, life in Charles County was marked by currents of change that would lead to two major events before 1900. As indicated in Volume 3, the completion of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in late 1872 led to the founding of the new town of La Plata astride the railroad. The Volume 4 years also reveal an unbroken political, social and economic effort to move the county seat from its two-century-old site on Port Tobacco Creek to La Plata's more promising location on the Pope's Creek Branch of the railroad. In the early 1880s, Charles County legislators in Annapolis began making a pitch for state government support for the removal of the Charles County seat. By this time, several of Port Tobacco's most prosperous and most progressive merchants had moved to La Plata and had built new homes-probably more comfortable than any they had ever known in the sleepy, tidewater village. Political attitudes also were shifting, and the previously detested Republican party found new followers. The erratic but promising infusion of black society into the machinery of politics, government, and education was to be noted in many issues of the Port Tobacco Times of this period. The reader will find newspaper items of historical and genealogical interest, such as local events, marriages, deaths, court cases, and real estate listings. The every-name index includes property names, such as Burton's Hope, Clark's Inheritance, Stewart's Neglect, and Griffin's Trial.

In 1898, The Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser merged with the La Plata Crescent, providing county democrats with a steady and vigorous expression of their business and social views and tendencies for another 93 years. This volume of abstracts, the last in a series, takes the original Times newspaper up to the date of its consolidation with the Crescent. The merging of the two weeklies found many Charles County people still reeling and bitter over the outcome of the courthouse removal controversy. In 1896 the new courthouse in La Plata went into active service while the old one in Port Tobacco was marked only by piles of rubble, hidden by overgrowth and undergrowth. The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad remained a prime mover of goods and services until well after World War I, remaining pivotal in the lives of most Charles County people. Strong, heartfelt feelings about the relocation of the county seat would last until the Great Depression. In addition to colorful local history, the chronological abstracts in this volume offer an abundance of genealogical material concerning births, marriages, deaths, property sales, election results, probates of wills and a few sensational court cases.