Appalachia and Garrett County, MD History: General

Meshach Browning spent decades as a professional hunter and trapper of bears, boars and deer in rural Maryland during the early 1800s - this is his story, in his own words. Born in modest circumstances, Browning grew up at a time when the United States as a nation was in its infancy, with much of the population living in rural areas. From his youth, the author vowed to be self-sufficient, leaving his home and first love to hone his abilities as a hunter. Returning with money gained from selling pelts and meat, it is then that Meshach contemplates hunting as a career. The equipment used by the author is much inferior to that of the modern day. Meshach's use of a musket - a gun whose reliability is demonstrated as poor in several instances - leads him to rely on his skills in close quarters combat. On multiple hunts, described with stunning vividness in these pages, Browning's ability to battle animals in melee saves his life. The dangers of his trade are balanced by its lucrativeness: bear meat and pelt for instance fetched high prices on the open market. Though his life's work is the primary subject, Meshach Browning shows a tender side when describing his first marriage; his loving wife Mary bore him several children. In later chapters, he proudly teaches his sons the craft which sustained their family for so many years.

Story of Friendsville, MD founder John Friend, who came to what is now Garrett County before the American Revolution.

A "fascinating slice of rarely considered American history" (Booklist)--the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison--whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life. In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America's roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is "a portrait of America's burgeoning love affair with the automobile" (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford's reputation, even as Edison's diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.