8 Settlers Hill Place

[Donahue Granados]

Note: The grounds of Ferry Hill are open to the public, but there is no public access to any buildings.

". . . on a hill over against Shepherdstown, where from the gallery of its old house I could look for miles out into Old Virginia."
- Henry Kyd Douglas

Located in Sharpsburg, Maryland, with a view toward Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Ferry Hill Place has stood for two centuries above the Potomac River and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, participating in and watching history pass by. Ferry Hill is best known as the home of Henry Kyd Douglas, Confederate Officer and author of his Civil War personal account, "I Rode With Stonewall."

In the 18th and early 19th century German settlers migrated from Pennsylvania south into Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, where they then farmed the rich soil. These settlers crossed the Potomac using Packhorse Ford and later Blackford's Ferry below Ferry Hill. Come the 1830s the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal crossed this north/south route, tapping the river waters to provide a controlled water transportation route into western Maryland.

John Blackford who built and resided at Ferry Hill benefited from this crossroads of commerce. Unlike southern plantations, Ferry Hill profited from not just one cash crop, such as tobacco or cotton, but from a variety of crops, including grains, wheat, corn, an orchard, and even lumbering.

"I was with the company that set fire to [the bridge], and when . . . I saw the glowing windows in my home on the hill beyond the river . . . I realized that the war had begun."
- Henry Kyd Douglas, 1861

By 1860, Ferry Hill shifted through marriage into the Douglas family as Reverend Robert Douglas. As the Civil War began in 1861, Reverend Douglas' son Henry Kyd enlisted in the Confederate army where he served under Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Both young Douglas and Ferry Hill became fully engaged in the war. Douglas and his unit burned the bridge crossing the Potomac to limit Union forces from entering into Virginia, and Union forces burned the Ferry Hill barn.

Throughout the war, Boteler's Ford, also known as Packhorse Ford, a mile downstream from Ferry Hill, provided a frequently used crossing for soldiers from both North and South. Due to its strategic location on the border, Ferry Hill was occupied at various times by both armies. During the 1862 Antietam campaign Ferry Hill served as a headquarters, hospital and artillery base for Confederate forces. During the Battle of Antietam residents of Sharpsburg, fled west along the C&O Canal towpath and sought shelter at Killiansburg Cave, waiting for the fighting to pass. One resident noted that the cave "... was crowded with a variety of people of all classes." Following Antietam, the Battle of Shepherdstown played out along the river below the Ferry Hill. As troops moved on to fight elsewhere, Ferry Hill was scarred with it fences burned, livestock gone, and fields trampled.

"We encamped near Shepherdstown and I visited my home across the Potomac and saw the desolation of war. My beautiful home was a barren waste and a common, and the blackened walls of the burnt barn stood up against the sky as a monument of useless and barbarous destruction. I felt that it would be hard for me, going into Pennsylvania, to set aside all ideas of retaliation."
- Henry Kyd Douglas, "I Rode With Stonewall"

Then during the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, and the Monocacy Campaign in 1864, Boteler's Ford provided a crossing for both Union and Confederate troops. And, Ferry Hill again suffered the impact of the war.

At the end of the Civil War, Ferry Hill lost its previous grandeur. Henry Kyd Douglas moved to Hagerstown to pursue his career as a lawyer as the site then went into the hands of Henry Kyd's sister, Nancy. In the 20th century, Ferry Hill operated as a pig farm, and by mid-century, as a restaurant. In 1979, the C&O Canal National Historical Park headquarters moved into Ferry Hill and operated here until 2002. For the past ten years, Ferry Hill shifted into a slower period as the house was opened for tours during summer weekends.

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In 1815, Nathan Arnett settled on the Hinchliff farm, and Abraham Piatt, William Doty and Nelson McDonald settled near him. Solomon Snider and James McDonald moved from Johnson County, and settled in Grassy Precinct. Dempsey Odum settled on the F. C. Kirkham farm, Spencer Crain at Bainbridge and Aaron Youngblood on the Jacob Sanders place.

In 1822 Hamilton Corder settled where he now lives, Charles Erwin on the farm where he lived and died, Hugh Parks on the Jack Thompson place and Daniel Mosely on the Furlong place. In 1823 William Campbell settled at the site of Blairsville, and Samuel Stacks in Southern Precinct.

These early settlers being scattered as they were, all over the county, had made but little impression on the face of the country prior to 1823. Like the Indians, they depended mostly on hunting for their living. They never dreamed of living to see again a thickly populated community, and having imbibed the spirit of frontier civilization, with its attendant adventures, in a land where game and wild honey were abundant, they seemed content to live in their log cabins, surrounded only with a few acres of cleared land on which they raised corn and vegetables for the partial subsistence of their families, and obtained their meat from the abundant game of the woods.

After the year 1823, the settlement of the county increased more rapidly, though not with great rapidity, as will be observed by reference to the census of 1840, the first one taken after the organization of the county, when the entire population was only 4,457. The early settlers of the county were nearly all from the State of Tennessee, and consequently the most of them were either natives or the descendants of natives of the Carolinas or Virginia. The later settlers were also mostly from Tennessee, but many came from Kentucky, Ohio and other States.

It will be observed that only a few scattering tracts of land in this county were entered prior to the year 1833, when a large number of entries was made, and that the largest number of entries made during any one year prior to 1840 was in the year 1836. During the decade of the forties, but few entries were made. Only about one-fifth of all the land in the county was entered prior to the year 1850. And during the decade of the fifties, more than one-half of all the lands in the county were entered.

After the gradation act was passed by Congress in 1854, reducing the price of the public lands from $1.25 to 12 cents per acre, they were entered very rapidly for a few years, and until nearly all of the best quality was taken up. Those who made the entries, as mentioned in the foregoing lists, were all early settlers, nearly all of whom located in the townships where their lands were located. For further particulars concerning the early settlers, their disadvantages and inconveniencies, and their manner of living, the reader is referred to this subject in the history of Franklin County, as given in this work.

At one point, 150 million acres of tallgrass prairie stretched from Texas to Canada. The majority transformed into the agricultural heartland of America through 200 years of settlement and development. American settlers carved up the tallgrass of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas. Their harvests fed a growing nation and world. But, the Flint Hills would follow a different path.

When U.S. Army Captain Zebulon Pike passed through this area in 1806, he wrote in his journal, "passed very ruf [sic] Flint Hills," putting a name to this unique region. When Euro-American settlers arrived in the 1850s, they struggled to farm the land because of the overabundance of rock in the soil. Observing the healthy bison on the land, they began to herd cattle, which like the bison, fattened quite easily on the rich prairie grasses. With cattle driven up from Texas and the introduction of barbed wire, ranching boomed into a huge business, making it a staple in the Flint Hills to this very day.

Today, only 4% of the original tallgrass prairie ecosystem survives, the largest piece being in the Flint Hills. Threats remain to this ecosystem. Introduced plants and animals compete with native ones. Land owners continue to plow up untouched soil. Fragmentation of land threatens species like prairie chickens that require large scale intact prairies.

The Flint Hills Learning Center exists to educate and inspire the next generation of land stewards. Only by reaching our youth can we instill in them a pride of place and love of landscape. Because in the end, the path to protection passes through the hearts and minds of everyone who has set foot in these hills, past, present, and future.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought settlers from New England. Settlers were met by heavy forests and many animals, including; bear, wolf, lynx, and fox. Early settlers engaged in self sustaining farming. Farm-produced food and products provided the family with sustaining food and extra goods could be sold or bartered for goods, services or cash.

Sheldon Corners (Michigan and Sheldon roads) was established in 1825 adjacent to the Sauk Trail (Michigan Avenue). The center spawned a small village made up of a number of homes, post office, general store, blacksmith, church and school. Today Sheldon Corners is but a remnant of its past, falling to the widening of Michigan Avenue. A few of the historic structures remain/The Inn, the school and a few homes. Canton owns the completely restored Sheldon School (built 1870). Sheldon is listed as a Michigan State historic site.

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