Battle to Save Monocacy

By Jody Brumage / Archivist, Heritage Frederick

Efforts to preserve and memorialize America’s Civil War battlefields began before the conflict ended. Many individual regiments placed monuments on battle sites throughout the latter quarter of the 19th century. As the first major military parks were created in the 1890s, Frederick citizens looked to its own battlefield and its lack of monuments or official recognition. When a group of veterans visited the region during the 30th anniversary of the Maryland Campaign in 1892, a reporter for The News commented: “The Monocacy field has been overlooked … veterans of Maryland should see that the odium of neglect in this regard shall no longer rest upon them.” 

The first monument erected on the battlefield, seen in this photograph, was dedicated on July 9, 1907, to commemorate the 14th New Jersey Regiment. The monument stands between the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad mainline and the Monocacy River, with the Best Farm in its background. Three other monuments were erected within the next decade: Pennsylvania (1908), Vermont (1915) and a marker placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (1914). A monument to Maryland troops was dedicated on the centennial anniversary in 1964. 

The preservation of the Monocacy Battlefield extended beyond monuments. One of the earliest voices for federal protection of the site was Glenn Howard Worthington, who as a child, witnessed the battle as it raged around his parent’s farmhouse. His vivid memories later informed years of research and the publication of the first historical account of the battle in 1932, having recently retired as a Circuit Court judge. Two years later, Worthington’s petition to the U.S. Congress resulted in an act to establish Monocacy National Battlefield, though the site’s development languished for half a century due to lack of funding.