D

URING the week of September 10-15 the city of Baltimore celebrated its recovery from the great fire of Feb

ruary, 1904, by six days of general jubilation. At the same time, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad occupied its magnificent office building in that city, gathering in all departments which were scattered in various portions of the city.

Seventy-eight years ago the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began its existence in the City of Baltimore-the first railroad in America. It started with a single track and small framed shed on Pratt Street and has steadily grown to enormous proportions, and now may be said to be Baltimore's most important institution. Every stride of its growth meant the advancement of the city. With increased terminal facil

ities of the railroad came greater export and import business, and to-day, Baltimore stands among the leading seaboard cities of the world. The great ships of every nation receive and deliver cargo at the many piers of the Baltimore & Ohio. Emigrants and immigrants arrive and depart from its terminals.

There are about 10,600 employes of the railroad who reside in the city, and in the same ratio generally allowed in computing population, they with their families depending upon the railroad number over 50,000. During the fiscal year ending June 30th last, these people received about $6,500,000.

The passenger and freight facilities afforded the city are complete, and every commercial center of the country can be reached through this line.

A short explanation of the characters on the map will perhaps be of interest to both travelers and shippers:

A Mt. Royal Station-The beautiful up-town railway station in the center of the residence district. The tracks of the railroad connect this station with Camden Station, "B," by passage through tunnel under the city.

e. CANTON

f. BAY VIEW JUNCTION

8. FELL ST. STATION AND WAREHOUS h. HENDERSON'S WHARF AND TOBAG i. MT. CLARE SHOPS AND WAREHOUS j. CLAREMONT STOCK YARDS

MAP OF BALTIMORE SHOWING PASSENGEL

F

G

RAND FREIGHT TERMINALS AND OFFICES.

B

Camden Station-One of the oldest railway passenger stations in the United States, located in the heart of the wholesale district of Baltimore. Adjacent to the passenger station are the enormous warehouses where the greatest bulk of inbound and outbound package freight is received and shipped. The Camden warehouses have a capacity of 1,600 carloads, and are supplied with all modern appliances.

C Curtis Bay Coal Pier-This great coal pier, built to handle ocean business, has a capacity of 1,800 cars, and the possible maximum loading capacity is 1,000 tons per hour. It is 800 feet long and at the head of Curtis Bay, built in deep water to accommodate vessels of any draught.

D Locust Point Yard and Piers-At Locust Point the B. & O. have many wharves and warehouses together with many piers, two There grain elevators as well as coal piers. are trackage facilities for 5,000 or 6,000 cars. Canton Wharves-These wharves are located across the river in the southeastern portion of the city and are connected up with the Philadelphia Division of the main line at Bay View Junction.

E

Bay View Junction.

Fell Street Station and Warehouses-This station is also across the river from Locust Point and provides a receiving and delivering station for carload and less than carload business, and also extensive storage. H Henderson's Wharf and Tobacco Warehouse-The tobacco warehouse is a large institution in itself, and, as its name implies, handles this particular class of freight. Adjacent to it, is station used chiefly for the storage of coffee and canned goods.

I Mt. Clare Shops, Station and WarehouseMt. Clare Shops is the first railroad shop in America, at which many of the earlier types of locomotives were built. A freight station is also located here and an immense warehouse where hay and fruit are handled. The first regular freight station in the world is located at Mt. Clare and is still used by the company. It is the same station from which S. F. B. Morse sent the first telegram to Washington.

A

BOUT seven miles northwest of Pikesville (near Baltimore), as the crow flies, lies Soldiers' Delight, a wild and picturesque portion of Baltimore County, embraced within the limits of the second and fourth election districts of the county, and comprising an area of four to five miles square.

The Soldiers' Delight of the present day, however, is not the Delight of former years in regard to extent of territory.

The old Soldiers' Delight "Hundred," or district as they are now called, began at the Patapsco, not far from the Relay House. Its eastern boundary line was the old Court road, extending from Elkridge Landing across the country to Joppa, the ancient county seat of the county. This road, which still follows the original bed, crosses the Reisterstown road at the 7-Mile House, and the York road at Towson, and is one of the oldest roads in the State, if not in the country. The citizens of Annapolis used it to go to Joppa and Philadelphia before Baltimore was thought about, and it was the old Indian trail leading from the Susquehanna to the Potomac at Piscataway. At or about the Reisterstown road, Soldiers' Delight Hundred met Back River Upper Hundred. The dividing line between these two election districts ran northwest through the sites of Westminster and Taneytown, Carroll County, to the Pennsylvania line, all of Baltimore County southwest of that line falling to Soldiers' Delight. This old hundred, now comprising an area of only four miles square, then (about the year 1670) included what is now Lisbon district, in Howard County, with part of what is still called "Carroll's big woods, "the second and part of the fourth districts of Baltimore County, the Freedom, Franklin, Woolery and New Windsor districts of Carroll County and the Liberty and other districts of what is now Frederick County, west to the Blue Ridge, comprising an area of territory twenty miles wide by forty in length, and including the plateau of Westminster, the Pipe Creek and Middletown

Valleys and the rich bottom lands of North Branch.

What is now Soldiers' Delight is a tract of land lying within the confines of the second and fourth districts of Baltimore County, six miles northwest of Pikesville, and comprising at this time an area of from four to five miles. The bed of this tract of country is composed of great masses of serpentine rock traversed by square and diagonal fractures at frequent intervals, giving to its hilly and weather-beaten surface the appearance of gaping wounds in a parched skin or integument. Here and there the monotony of the scene is relieved by a patch of the glistening ivy bush or a group of stunted oaks or "black jacks."

Concerning the origin of the name of this interesting tract and the time it was applied, calls for several different versions. In 1666, or seven years after the formation of Baltimore County, the Susquehannock Indians, a fierce and warlike tribe then inhabiting that portion of the country that bordered on Pennsylvania, went on the warpath and broke in upon the settlers around the headwaters of the Gunpowder and Patapsco with the firebrand and tomahawk, and carried destruction far and near. For fourteen years this warfare continued, sometimes of a desultory or intermittent character, but withal necessitating the employment of a detail of troops to constantly patrol the frontier line of the county, then extending from the Patapsco through Soldiers' Delight, crossing two miles below Owings' Mills and extending southwesterly down into Green Spring Valley, and from there on through to the site of what was afterwards the town of Joppa. The soldiers in patrolling their beat frequently lost their way in that part of the country now called the "Delight," and named the section in irony, saying that it was a "delightful" country to get lost in, being full of pitfalls and treacherous ravines, and it would sometimes take them several days to find their way out. The old block garrison house, though erected in 1692, is still in a good state of preservation. It was the

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erection of this fort, which was one of three authorized by the Maryland Colonial Assembly of over two hundred years ago, that gave the name of Garrison Forest" to a large tract adjoining it. It was then under the command of Captain John Oulten or Oldham, who also owned the large tract of land on which it was erected.

The second version is, that early in the days of the county, a party of soldiers and settlers, who had penetrated into the wilderness of what is now Carroll and Frederick counties, were so harassed by the lurking

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several hundred yards west of the Deer Park road, which traverses this section, and from the highest one of these, known as 'Berry's Hill," was hanged and gibbeted John D. Berry, a young man of about 20 years of age, for the murder of his step-mother and the attempted murder of his step-father.

It is the history of this tragedy of Colonial times that forms the romance of Soldiers' Delight, which was considered as one of the most serious crimes that had been committed in the colonies:

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eleven men could be obtained for this duty, until the twelfth one was supplied in the person of the rector of St. Thomas' Parish Church, five miles northeast of the scene of the crime. Young Berry was dispatched to Baltimore Town (now Baltimore City), sixteen miles distant, for a physician, there being none closer. Tradition has it that young Berry became intoxicated and did not return for several days.

In the meantime the old man, through careful nursing and attention, had survived the murderous attack and was in a fair way to recover. It was not known that the old couple had any enemies, as they were respected by all their neighbors for miles around for their honor and integrity and upright mode of living.

In the interim, the jury of inquest had all of Clark's servants-two male and two female-called before them individually for examination, in hope of discovering the murderers. They could not withstand the cross-examination, and in their confession implicated John D. Berry, the step-son, whom they said had planned the deed and made them take a Bible oath, one Sunday afternoon back of the tobacco-house, that they would commit it; his idea being to gain possession of the property of his stepparents, promising the girls, who were indentured, their freedom. He also promised to marry one of them if she would strike the blows.

Berry, upon his return from Baltimore, was arrested. Upon being questioned about the crime he denied all knowledge of it, and related the following account in his own defense: He said that he had been out hunting all day with some of his companions and returning home after night, and not wishing to disturb anyone in the house, he entered the kitchen and threw himself upon a bench and went to sleep. About midnight he was aroused by the cry of "murder," which came from the room occupied by his step-parents. On entering the room he found that they had been murdered outright, as he supposed, by being struck on the head with some sharp and heavy weapon. The two girls were already in the room when he entered and they informed him that persons had entered the house for the purpose of robbery, and on being discovered had added murder to their other crime.

Berry and his two girl accomplices were

duly tried at Joppa, the old Colonial county seat of Baltimore County, and all three were found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. During the progress of the trial one of the girls made a full confession of the conspiracy, and had it not been for the fact that she had struck the blows, she would have been pardoned. The two women were hanged at Joppa on January 10, 1753. It is related that on the way to the scaffold one broke out into a violent fit of weeping at the thought of her untimely fate, upon which the other turned angrily upon her with the exclamation: What are you crying about, we will both soon be in hell's dripping-pan together."

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Berry, "the arch mover and conspirator in this terrible crime," was sentenced to be hanged and gibbeted on the 15th of the month, on the highest point near the scene of the commission of his crime." The sentence was duly executed, and Berry's Hill" still rears its head in attestation that on its high summit the body of the murderer swung in chains until its decaying mass was consumed by the vulture's beak, and his bleached and dismembered skeleton was scattered to the four winds.

It still remains a matter of controversy whether Berry was suspended in chains or an iron cage, like the one recently discovered in Virginia.

One hundred and fifty-four years have passed away since the scenes related in this narrative occurred, but the scholarly discourse on the crime, of the old rector of St. Thomas still exists, and is still very legible.

The aspect of the country in some places at the present time is as wild as in the days of Berry. From this point, the highest between the Patuxent River and the Blue Ridge Mountains, a magnificent view is spread out before you. Yonder are Catoctin Hills, here winds the valley of the Patapsco, over there is St. Thomas' Church, Garrison Forest, and over there again the historic