Posted on 02/06/2011 5:01:36 PM PST by Viking2002
CUMBERLAND — Two local mountains need new names, a group of state senators say, and they want a commission created to select new monikers for Negro Mountain and Polish Mountain which “reflect more accurately the history and culture of the region within which they are located.”
None of the nine senators sponsoring Senate Joint Resolution 3 represent the region where the two mountains rise in the Allegheny Mountain range, with Negro Mountain in Garrett County reaching a height of 3,075 feet and Polish Mountain in Allegany County climbing 1,783 feet from sea level.
The senate resolution isn’t too popular with the legislators who do represent those who live on and near the mountains.
“It’s just asinine,” said Delegate Kevin Kelly. Kelly wondered why Polish Mountain ended up in the resolution. “I’m of Irish descent. We’d love to have a mountain named after us. Let’s rename it Irish Mountain,” he quipped. State Sen. George Edwards and Delegate Wendell Beitzel joined in the skepticism.
“I grew up on Negro Mountain and have a farm on Negro Mountain. I don’t know why people in the Baltimore area are so worried about it,” said Beitzel. The mountain, he said, was actually named in the language of the time in tribute to a black man’s heroism.
(Excerpt) Read more at times-news.com ...
“It has Civil War roots you know.”
No, not at all.
It is much older than that. They are the heraldic colors of the Calvert and Crossland families, former who were granted proprietorship here.
Suggest you read this .
http://www.sos.state.md.us/Services/FlagHistory.aspx
During the war, Maryland-born Confederate soldiers used both the red-and-white colors and the cross bottony design from the Crossland quadrants of the Calvert coat of arms as a unique way of identifying their place of birth. Pins in the cross bottony shape were worn on uniforms, and the headquarters flag of the Maryland-born Confederate general Bradley T. Johnson was a red cross bottony on a white field.
By the end of the Civil War, therefore, both the yellow-and-black Calvert arms and the red-and-white colors and bottony cross design of the Crossland arms were clearly identified with Maryland, although they represented opposing sides in the conflict. As officers and soldiers returned home after the war to resume their peacetime occupations, the greatest challenge facing the country was reconciliation. Nowhere was the problem more serious than in deeply divided Maryland, where veterans who had fought under the red-and-white secession colors” had to be reintegrated into a state that had remained true to the Union.
As the slow process of reconciliation took place in post-Civil War Maryland, a new symbol emerged. A flag incorporating alternating quadrants of the Calvert and Crossland colors began appearing at public events. While the design derived directly from the seventeenth-century Calvert family coat of arms, for Marylanders of the 1880s the new banner must have conveyed a powerful message. The passage of time had gradually diminished the passions of former Rebels and Yankees, permitting them to work together once again. Now the colors they had fought under had come together as well, symbolically representing through this new flag the reunion of all the state’s citizens.
I’m sorry if I’m wrong about the details of the particular flag. But it is still “rooted” in the original colonial Marylanders.
Yeah, yeah. Don't go muddying the debate waters with facts.
Whatever you say. No sense in arguing with someone who has read the history and still does not believe it.
Certainly the Calvert colors and the Botany Cross are rooted in colonial history, but the two were not put together to form the present day flag until after the Civil war.
The highest point in Maryland is the peak of Backbone Mountain at 3360', located at the SW crook of where Maryland's panhandle juts into West Virginia.
So, yeah, Maryland actually has a higher "mountain" than Pennsylvania, but we have a lot more of them.
The passage of time had gradually diminished the passions of former Rebels and Yankees, permitting them to work together once again
Not in some parts. lol.
"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away, for his name is Obama."
"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away, for his name is Obama."
Sorry; you said it had “roots” in the CW. I see “roots” as its background, not the flag itself.
Plus, in that same history, you’ll see they incorporated the Calvert/Crossland combo in the state seal just prior to the CW - never mind Calvert used both his families’ colors exactly that manner when he came here. So, such a combo was not brand new to anyone with some knowledge of their colony/state back then, apparently including 1854.
You’re right. For some reason my West Virginia state flag is gone.
It’s back now. Thank you for making me aware. Lately I’ve been noticing that state flags are not shown on many “about” pages. Wonder if during one of FR’s many recent outages some were dropped. I’d had mine up since I first joined and have no idea how/when it came down.
Born, raised and lived in NYC for 57 years. Moved here to Upshur county in early 2002. Between scouting out the area and moving myself, I passed by the Negro and Polish Mountain signs many, many times.
Explode they would.
How about "Obama Mountain" and "Mikulski Mountain"?
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