Smithsburg Days (SMI)

Smithsburg Days will be celebrated in Veterans Park and the library will join the festivities with a book sale, special craft, special story time, story walk, mini lectures and more.  Stop by to join in the celebration.  The lectures will include the following presented by the Smithsburg Historical Society:

A Connecticut Yankee in Smithsburg: Dr. Elijah T. Bishop and the growth of Smithsburg.  In the 1820s a young physician from Connecticut buys land in Cavetown and Smithsburg, and becomes a pillar of the community.  Learn how the Bishop family's legacy is literally found in the streets of the town, and more.

How to Talk Smithsburg: A fun look at many of the expressions and ways of talking about things that is peculiar to the Smithsburg/Washington County area.  This will look at sayings that come from early German settlers, as well as a linguistic study written in the 1950s by Prof. Alfred P. Fehl, and word lists collected by the late Virginia Kuhn Draper of Wolfesville. (Note: this is a repeat of the lecture given earlier this year-- Part Two will be given this fall sometime.)

Solving the Mystery of Christopher Smith: The founder of Smithsburg died at the county almshouse and was buried in an unmarked grave in the graveyard at the Lutheran Church.  Apparantly all of his children left the area and went West.  Learn about where Christopher Smith came from, what may have encouraged him to speculate in land development and found Smithsburg, and why we wound up in the poorhouse, his "missing" house, and what happened to one of his children who "went west", who apparently never told his descendants about the town that Christopher Smith founded in Maryland.  This is an update of a previous lecture with several new items of information.