The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1874-03-13
MI i 8 @ elIaneOu 8.
A Ramble in Hartford.
No. ".

BEL AIR AS 1T WAS AND IS:
Or rather, Bel dir as it uas Forty four gears
ago-7he Residences Of the Inhabitants, and
the characteristics Of some ofthem.
now come, Mr.. Baker, to the contem-
plation of Bel Air as it was when l left
it in 1920, and as found it at the close of
1878, embracing period of four and forty
years, or generation and a-half, according
to the ordinary computation of human life.
The sad as we'll as wonderful changes that
have taken place in all these years can on
ly be seen and appreciated by those who,
like myself, have been long an alien, and
to us, while the hills and woods and fields
and fountains still seem to flourish in per.
petual youth, the few of the associates of
our boyhood days who still linger around
the old hearthstones, are so different from
the light-hearted and joyous companions
that had been photographed on the page
of memory, the pleasure ola reunion was
sadly marred. don't love to feel gloomy,
nor to meet events half way that bring sad
ness with them, but when | met with
friends of the past in your county, a few
weeks ago, whose thin white locks and
feeble footsteps denoted that the weight of
years was upon them, and that l, too, had
trodden the same long journey and was
travelling the down-hill side of life as rap
idly as any of them, how could l feel 9TH
erwise than sad, and my cup of promised
pleasure mingled with very bitter ingre-
dients
But all this is DEPRESSION. l am booked
for letter about Bel Air as it was and is,
and have no moral right to take advantage
ola kindness that allows me the limit Of a
reasonable number OF pages of commercial
note, to substitute rs many Of foolscap.
So let me begin.
OF the thirty or forty families who
lived in Bel Air forty-four years ago,
only two remain, and these the mere rem
nants of what they were. | allude to the
families Of the Misses Hays and VIM. JEFF
ferry. Mr.. Thomas A. lays, the father of
the ladies who are his representatives in
industrious and frugal man, attending to
his own business well, and leaving to 9th
ers the privilege of attending to theirs in
then way. He was prosperous in all
his undertakings and as consequence
was one of the wealthiest as well as one OF
the most respectable men in the county.
The next house was owned and occupied
by DR.. Briefly, who died young and left u
young family. Ihad no acquaintance with
him, but knew Ii. who, after his
death, us long as. =" them, lived q
quiet, retired and unobtrusive life
The next building was a small one at the
corner, in which Joshua Bond for time
kept classical school, but perhaps before
that Methodist brother, whose name
have forgotten, used it as a saddler shop,
or rather old uncle Ned Jackson made the
saddles, while the proprietor swung around
town in his shirt-seeves rolled up to the
elbows, aud with his apron on. My obser.
walton through life has been, that where @
man boxes the compass of u village in his
shirt sleeves, he rarely, if ever, brings or
premature decrepitude by overlabor. This
however, may have been an eXceptiona
case
The next house was the hotel on the op
posite corner, kept by Mr.. John Mckinney
ST., whose son John kept the post office il
the same building. They were very re
fined family, and had the reputation O
keeping an unusually orderly and excel
lent house. No "Jugjuice," in halEpin
tieklers, was ever retailed or peddled Will
they lived there. The old gentleman wa
somehat eccentric, full of information, ant
fond ola joke-at somebody elses erpense. Il
summer he always wore hat cut full o
holes to let the air in among his locks
He made the first pavement in Bel All
reaching from his hotel to the Court House
1t was made of broken flint rock covered
with sand. He also built the first ice
house in the village, and made more i'm
provcments than any other man in tn
town. If he happened to see horse cut
ting unusual capers in the street, Garrison
his hostler, was forthwith dispatched afte