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Looking Back – 1917

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Galt Starts the Effort to Recognize Thomas Johnson

by James Rada, Jr.

Thomas Johnson was the first governor of Maryland, serving from March 21, 1777, to November 12, 1779. “John Adams said that Governor Thomas Johnson of Maryland was one out of four citizens of Maryland and Virginia without whom there would have been no revolution,” John Williamson Palmer wrote in Century Magazine.

Johnson was one of the forgotten Founding Fathers, which was a problem that Sterling Galt of Emmitsburg set out to correct in 1917.

Sterling Galt purchased the Emmitsburg Chronicle in 1906. He was the fourth owner of the twenty-seven-year-old newspaper. Back in those days, small newspapers had few employees. The owner was the publisher and the primary reporter. Galt was very active in the community and had shown that he had political aspirations with a failed run for the state senate in 1911.

In January 1917, he met with a group of similarly civic-minded men in the office of the school commissioner in Frederick. There, the group formed the Thomas Johnson Memorial Association and elected Galt its president and William Delaplaine the secretary. The group’s mission was to have a suitable memorial created for Maryland’s first governor and Frederick County resident, Thomas Johnson. The men planned to solicit donations of no more than a dime to fund the memorial.

Before the group could build up any steam, World War I started. A few fundraising drives were conducted, but people wanted to send money to support the troops, not build a memorial. Then, Galt died on December 28, 1922, and it seemed like his organization would die as well.

Then in 1926, life returned to the group. It reorganized and began holding meetings. Not only did they praise Johnson’s service as governor, but he had also been an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, a member of the Continental Congress, and the man who nominated George Washington as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

“The people of Frederick County have long felt that some recognition of his invaluable services to the State and to the nation should be given, and some suitable memorial erected here in Frederick to his memorial.”

A bust of Thomas Johnson was sculpted in clay by Joseph Urner in 1926. However, since all funds were being publicly raised, it wasn’t until years later that it could be finally cast in bronze.

The bronze bust in Courthouse Park was finally unveiled in 1929. It sat on a granite base with a plaque that listed many of Johnson’s accomplishments. The speakers at the event included Judge T. Scott Offutt, president of the Maryland Society, Sons of the American Revolution, and Charles Francis Adams, U.S. Secretary of Navy and the great-grandson of John Adams.

Galt’s efforts in organizing the group that eventually made the memorial a reality were noted in the speeches.

Some of Offutt’s comments seem oddly prescient of today and what eventually happened to the memorial.

“We stand in a different world from the one he knew,” Offutt said. “Manners, morals, methods, and indeed the whole face of civilization have changed.”

He then went on to criticize a society that was letting itself drift into “paternal socialism” and losing the freedoms that Johnson’s generation had won for the country. “The press does our thinking for us, the state guards our morals, boards and commissions of one kind or another manage our affairs, and hordes of bureaucratic officials consume our substance and pester and bedevil us with ‘don’ts’ and ‘musts’ until we are afraid to call our lives our own…” Offutt said.

In 2015, the bust of Johnson was caught up in the controversy surrounding another Frederick County resident and Supreme Court justice who had a bronze bust in the park. Roger Brooke Taney is known for delivering the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision in 1857, which said that slaves could not be American citizens. Johnson became part of the controversy because he was a slaveowner and that outweighed the good he had done for the country.

On March 18, 2017, both the Scott and Johnson busts were removed from in front of the courthouse. They will be refurbished and placed on display in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

Photo of the bust of Thomas Johnson, courtesy of Waymarking.com.

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Emmitsburg Editor Tries His Hand in Politics

by James Rada, Jr.

Sterling Galt purchased the Emmitsburg Chronicle in 1906. He was the fourth owner of the 27-year-old newspaper. Back in those days, small newspapers had few employees. The owner was the publisher and the primary reporter.

The debut editorial stated the goal of the newspaper as this: “Our first aim shall be to present the CHRONICLE as a medium through which the outer world may learn our aims, our hopes and high resolves. We shall not try to amuse our readers with rhetorical flourishes, nor with sonorous sentences, neither shall we indulge in meaningless jests, nor silly observations, but endeavor, in an unpretending way to give our readers the current news of the times, with such items of local interest that may present themselves: we shall try to practice the recent suggestion of an esteemed clerical friend, who we estimate as a model editor, substantially, that ‘the value of a newspaper consists not so much in what we put into it, as in what is kept out of it.’”

Galt worked hard living up to the dream of what the newspaper could be. He reported on community events and big stories, such as the murder of Edward Smith by Fred Debold. Although it didn’t happen in town, it was a big enough story that Galt put out a special issue on August 9, 1906.

Galt had his own plans for his future, though. As editor of the newspaper, he had become a leading member of the Emmitsburg community. He saw its strengths and problems, and he started to think he had solutions rather than simply reporting on what other people came up with. By reporting on other communities, he had a good feel for what issues were on the minds of their residents.

When readers picked up the October 27, 1911, issue of The Weekly Chronicle, they read a letter from Galt to his readers: “Having accepted the nomination by the Democratic party of the State Senatorship of Frederick county, I feel that the due observance of a practice, entirely ethical in its character, constrains me to withdraw from the active management and editorship of The Weekly Chronicle during the active campaign.”

He stepped back from his job to try and avoid the impression of bias. If that was the intent, it didn’t work.

During Galt’s absence, E. L. Higbee, a man Galt said had “long been associated with me,” was given management and editorial control. However, Galt still owned the newspaper. As someone Galt trusted, it wasn’t surprising that Higbee backed Galt, and the newspaper showed it.

The next issues of the paper focused heavily on Galt and his candidacy. Even that first issue, where Galt announced he was stepping down from running the newspaper, featured support for Galt’s candidacy.

  1. M. Gluck, Galt’s reverend, wrote: “I know his positions on practically all political questions will be assumed to the larger interests of his constituents and can say without reservation that if he is elected he will consider all such questions from the standpoint of their effect on the welfare of the people regardless of the influence they might bring to bear on his private affairs. In other words, he would be an unselfish public servant.”

Of his own candidacy Galt wrote, “If I am sent to Annapolis I shall go there untrammeled, uncoerced—not the tool of a boss or an organization or the vassal or representative of any league, clique, society, union, association, corporation or combination of interests, and I shall endeavor at all times and under all conditions to serve the PEOPLE as justice, honor and duty point the way.”

The election drew a lot of voters to the polls. Emmitsburg had more than 700 registered voters and 632 voted in that election. It took poll workers in the district until 4:00 a.m. the following morning to finish counting the votes.

The heavy positive coverage given Galt in The Weekly Chronicle wasn’t enough. He received 4,813 votes, but his opponent, John P. T. Mathias of Thurmont, was the incumbent, garnering 5,290 votes.

Following his loss, Galt resumed his duties as editor and went back to trying to help the community.

Galt died on December 28, 1922. Under his editorship, The Weekly Chronicle was considered one of the best weekly newspapers in the state, according to editorials in other newspapers.

Following Galt’s death, John Elder and Michael Thompson purchased the The Weekly Chronicle in 1922.

sc5620-1-3

Image source: Maryland State Archives SPECIAL COLLECTIONS (Charles McCurdy Mathias Collection) Cabinet Card of John P.T. Mathias, c. 1885, MSA SC 5620-1-3.