Pioneering Women

Julia Walker Ruhl, Suffragist 

Charlotte Bristowe Browne – A Nurse at Fort Cumberland

The Legend of "Lover’s Leap” describes the love of an American Indian princess for a young English trapper named Jack. They wanted very much to marry, but her father, Chief Will, wanted his daughter to marry one of the British soldiers who was garrisoned at Fort Cumberland. Meanwhile, Jack had found a map to a silver mine located somewhere in the Narrows, and offered the map to Chief Will in return for the hand of the princess in marriage. The Chief promised they could be married if he was given the map, but once in his possession, he refused to allow the marriage.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of Abraham Lincoln, was born in 1784, in Hampshire County, (West) Virginia. The birth occurred in a cabin along Mike's Run at the foot of New Creek Mountain in what is now Mineral County, West Virginia. Lincoln said of his mother, "God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her." She died in 1818.

Along with husband Meshach, Catherine is considered to be one of the 1812 co-founders of Frostburg. Her father Nathan Mejers from Harford County was one of the early settlers of Mt. Savage. When the Frosts bought the property, construction of the National Road was already underway. They soon found they were feeding and housing laborers working on the road. The Frost family also was instrumental in developing the coal industry that kept the town prosperous after the railroad surpassed travel along the National Road.

Jane Frazier was the wife of Lt. John Frazier. They lived in a log cabin which had been built in the early 1750s just beyond the present-day Cumberland city limits. In 1755, while returning to her home from the Fort Cumberland Trading Post several miles away, Jane was captured by American Indians and taken to the Miami Nation near Dayton on the Miami River in Ohio.

Hannah Cresap was a real “frontier woman” of the mid-18th century. She accompanied her husband, Thomas, from their home near Havre de Grace, Harford county, Maryland, to the untracked frontier of Western Maryland. In 1741, they settled, built a home and stockade fort in what is now Oldtown, thereby making this the oldest town in present-day Allegany County (established in 1789). A sixteen year old George Washington stayed at Hannah’s home for several days in 1748 while doing survey work on his first trip to Maryland.