James McHenry
I visited James McHenry a short while ago when I found myself unexpectedly in Baltimore. Technically, I found myself in downtown Washington, driving northward, and I had convinced my two brothers traveling with me to take and extra few hours out of our trip in order to stop in Baltimore and see James McHenry.
When I pulled over on the side of the road to see where he was buried, I had been mobile for right around thirty hours, save a few hours sleep at an inn in North Virginia. I say “mobile,” because we weren’t straight traveling; I make stops along the way on any road trip when an interesting brown sign speeds by on the highway, or my history sensor map starts beeping wildly saying “historical landmark nearby historical landmark nearby.” And I say “we,” because the strenuousness of my trip was added to by the fact that my two traveling compatriots were none other than my slightly post pubescent brothers. When we woke up that James McHenry morning, we were in Alexandria, Virginia, having made an even longer trek the night before. While Baltimore to the history nerd seems like an amazing place to explore, the most obvious to explore with two unegotistically history obsessed humans in that region was our nation's capital. If we planned to remain for more than a day, I surely would have dragged them to both, but we set out for our “short” tour of DC. Now, there are plenty of people ripe for the visiting in and around Washington (including Washington himself), but I had a single goal for this few hour escapade in the city: the constitution. As we crested a bridge over the Potomac and made our way into the city, my brother began to blast the Cory in the House theme song. A walk across the National Mall, a waving through security line, and many steps up and around led me to be faced with that which encompasses everything I hold dear: the constitution. I scanned down the first line, my eye purposefully catching on James McHenry, the man who this sidetracked story is meant to be about, and who I knew I was going to see about an hour away later that day. I read the names back and forth over and over and I know the world already appreciates my toughness to the at which I’m not afraid to say that my eyes may have gotten a little watery at the time. And for the sassy girl standing next to me who said it was all underwhelming, I have a long drawn out and under-my-breath sigh: *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*. |
After leaving the national archives building, it was only an hour drive northish to get to Baltimore. I had my brother plug in the name of the churchyard, confirming its expected location as I drove down the freeway, eventually onto the straights and turns of the city streets. I felt a little bit uncomfortable as we pulled into a bad part of town, eager to just be driving through on the way to the intricately ornate and well-endowed cemetery that must belong to the McHenry legacy, before my brother says, “We’re here.” I stop at a light and look around. There are slums on one side of me, a university building on the other side of me, and thick, gated brick edifice to my left. The door to the church is small and two small gravestones stand, overrun by mud, between in and the gates. They are locked. “I hope that’s not it,” my brother says. I kind of laugh nervously and get sucked into a waterslide going through my head.
'Okay I know Edgar Allan Poe is buried here too so it can’t just be the... Oh wait there’s two tombstones. Oh my goodness I hope those two aren’t the only two. Is this even a graveyard? Are we even in the right place? What if it is and we can’t find someone to let us in the gate? That would be so disappointing. No don’t worry, it’s all going to work out. It’s all going to work out. Just pull around the building and see if we can park and get inside. And not get robbed in the slums while we’re at it. Okay pulling around the corner. New views, new opportunities. Another gate? An open gate! Oh boy more gravestones! Ah a LOT of gravestones. A real filled and slightly crumbling graveyard! Oh no parallel parking! No!'
It was such a mixture of emotions: finding out that we would in fact be able to get in, mingled with the stress of parallel parking on a busy city street. After some (too many) minutes, I finally felt like I had squeezed in close enough to the curb to get out and go look around. I closed the driver side door and looked back, to see two faces still peering at me from inside the car. “What are you guys doing?” I say, opening back up one of the doors. “...” No reply comes. I stare both of my brothers down.
“No offense,” my older brother weighs in, “but it’s just dead bodies. I really don’t care.”
“Aw man you guys! But you thought James Garfield was so cool,” I whine back. Garfield had taken place just a month previous. Some sort of enticing maybe about the magic of history or about safety in numbers in sketchy downtown Baltimore got one of them out of the car and walking into the graveyard with me. It was cool, for a summer day, and the rustling of the trees only added to the ambiance that fully supports the next statement I am going to make: Westminster cemetery is the single creepiest place I’ve been to in my entire live. Imagine an over-dramatized stereotypical Halloween graveyard setup, with crumbling tombstones, washed up graves, and the ravens crowing. It was all that, just short of having a skeleton hand reaching up out of the ground.
All of that being said, I am still doing research on his life story, a thorough summary of which I will post here soon. For now, we have the picture and the knowledge that this is the man whose namesake is the Fort McHenry of the War of 1812 fame, so tightly intertwined freedom and the song of our nation.
'Okay I know Edgar Allan Poe is buried here too so it can’t just be the... Oh wait there’s two tombstones. Oh my goodness I hope those two aren’t the only two. Is this even a graveyard? Are we even in the right place? What if it is and we can’t find someone to let us in the gate? That would be so disappointing. No don’t worry, it’s all going to work out. It’s all going to work out. Just pull around the building and see if we can park and get inside. And not get robbed in the slums while we’re at it. Okay pulling around the corner. New views, new opportunities. Another gate? An open gate! Oh boy more gravestones! Ah a LOT of gravestones. A real filled and slightly crumbling graveyard! Oh no parallel parking! No!'
It was such a mixture of emotions: finding out that we would in fact be able to get in, mingled with the stress of parallel parking on a busy city street. After some (too many) minutes, I finally felt like I had squeezed in close enough to the curb to get out and go look around. I closed the driver side door and looked back, to see two faces still peering at me from inside the car. “What are you guys doing?” I say, opening back up one of the doors. “...” No reply comes. I stare both of my brothers down.
“No offense,” my older brother weighs in, “but it’s just dead bodies. I really don’t care.”
“Aw man you guys! But you thought James Garfield was so cool,” I whine back. Garfield had taken place just a month previous. Some sort of enticing maybe about the magic of history or about safety in numbers in sketchy downtown Baltimore got one of them out of the car and walking into the graveyard with me. It was cool, for a summer day, and the rustling of the trees only added to the ambiance that fully supports the next statement I am going to make: Westminster cemetery is the single creepiest place I’ve been to in my entire live. Imagine an over-dramatized stereotypical Halloween graveyard setup, with crumbling tombstones, washed up graves, and the ravens crowing. It was all that, just short of having a skeleton hand reaching up out of the ground.
All of that being said, I am still doing research on his life story, a thorough summary of which I will post here soon. For now, we have the picture and the knowledge that this is the man whose namesake is the Fort McHenry of the War of 1812 fame, so tightly intertwined freedom and the song of our nation.