Echoes from the Homesite

wanted the trains to go through, and Jackson seemed content to allow that at first, complaining only about the heavy trains disturbing his soldiers' rest at night. The Yankee railroaders, wanting no stoppage of their freight line, decided to "humor" Jackson, who soon had all the trains running both ways in the middaylight hours. Jackson bided his time for a few days, then struck, blocking the tracks at both towns and capturing most of the rolling stock of the B and O in his trap. Ashby's raiders burned the bridge and tried unsuccessfully to blast rocks down onto the tracks with dynamite. They returned a little later to burn the grain warehouse. Later in the war Jackson crossed at Point of Rocks on his way to capture Harper's Ferry again, this time just before the battle of Antietam. Near the town he was given a fine horse by a farmer who was a Confederate sympathizer . The horse proved to be a "Yankee horse," throwing its rider and inflicting enough damage so that the General missed the poetic "encounter" with Barbara Fritchie, riding through the city of Frederick in an ambulance. Sniping and quick attacks on the canal and railroad were common. What seems to have been the first armored railroad car was tied, and the Point agent, Mr. Schoch, boarded it for the run to Harper's Ferry. Fire from the south bank of the river was so severe that the car was abandoned at Sandy Hook and several of its occupants were killed. Random sniping resulted in the death of a civilian, Miss Fisher, who was leaning out of the upstairs window at the old station while talking to a soldier. Later in the war Colonel Mosby made frequent raids on the town, particularly on the store of a Yankee bearing the unlikely name of "Noble Means." On another of his expeditions he unloaded for Confederate use the store of Henry Besant, who traded with both sides, telling Henry that he "ought to have chosen friends more carefully." Historians claim that more skirmishes took place at the Point during the war than at any other location in Maryland. The bridge of Virginia was replaced in 1908 and destroyed again, this time in the flood of 1936. In building the new bridge, placed higher to prevent another flood from removing it, the final "Point" of rock was blasted off the mountain's face. Very contemporary plans call for another transportation link—a feeder to the outer Washington, D.C. beltway. A new bridge will be needed and the old town will face other challenges, including a considerable growth in population. The new highway, with cloverleaves as planned, will open the lower end of the Catoctin-Monocacy Valley to increase building of "bedroom" communities. Still a gateway to the rest of Appalachia and from it, Point of Rocks' railroad station is the town's symbol. Few trains go by without at least a photographer or two taking pictures of train and station. Point of Rocks has been and remains a slice of Appalachia in many of its varied forms. Echoes from the Homesite Everything was fine when banjo strings plucked the corn husk air and possum ghosts pattered the dust with quick feet. The family slept for years beneath rag quilts, patterned sunbursts. Their warmth evaded the chill of time. Always enough corn bread and pinto beans; never a consideration for the cloud's close contour or the moon's curved slip. —Mattie F. Quesenberry 38 ...