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Community
In 1909, St. Mary's hoped recession would lift
Crime and transportation also occupied county residents
Friday, Dec. 11, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo This is how the square in Leonardtown appeared in 1910 complete with a windmill. The dirt road running across the photo is Route 5. By 1905 there were 28 phones in Leonardtown connected to the outside world, evidenced by the telephone pole to the left.
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Francis King, the editor of the St. Mary's Beacon, hoped the county's finances would improve in 1909.
Things hadn't gone well in the two years before. In a century-old echo of the times today, there was a national banking scare in 1907 and a recession in 1908.
St. Mary's County had traditionally been a poor county in the state and King wrote on Jan. 21, 1909 that 1908 "was a trying year on our community and there was greater financial distress than for many years past."
One hundred years ago the county's population bobbed around 17,000 people between 1900 and 1910. Today more than 101,000 live here. The illiteracy rate for whites was at 15 percent in 1910, down from 50 percent in 1850.
Roads had yet to be paved as steamboats still moved the majority of people coming and going. Crops, mainly tobacco, headed out to the cities and supplies were shipped by water into the county.
But 1909 would arguably see the very start of the modern road system in St. Mary's County.
St. Mary's County made the national news in 1909 when a young man was convicted of killing his parents in Oakville.
A blizzard struck the region, beginning on March 3, 1909, the day before Howard Taft would be sworn in as the country's 27th president.
There were 10 inches of snow on the ground in Washington, D.C., by noon on March 4 and the temperature never rose above freezing. Across the area, trees and telephone poles were knocked over, including lines in St. Mary's County.
Telephones came to the county well before electricity did. The Southern Maryland Telephone Company, headquartered in Charlotte Hall, first brought phone service in June 1904. By June 1905, 28 phones in Leonardtown were connected to lines to Brandywine and Baltimore, with lines to Morganza and Bushwood planned next, the Beacon reported.
According to a history by AT&T, there were 3 million phones in the United States by 1904, and 6,000 independent telephone companies, which couldn't connect to one another yet.
The Maryland Roads Commission, which formed in 1908, began drawing state roads on maps to connect county seats to each other that year.
The road to become Route 5 was drawn to run west of Charlotte Hall, through Mechanicsville, Morganza, Loveville, Leonardtown, Great Mills, Park Hall, St. Mary's City and St. Inigoes.
In September 1909, the McCormick Company won the bid to bridge, grade and drain 5.3 miles of state road from Mechanicsville to Morganza for $6,408.
The company went out of business midway through work and the Thomas Mullan Company picked it up to continue the road from Helen to Leonardtown, a distance of 5.2 miles, for $16,559. The road was finished in Leonardtown in September 1911.
On May 15, 1909, William and Lillian Forrest were found dead in their modest Oakville farm home on Three Notch Road. Days later, their 19-year-old son was still missing and he was feared as another victim — or a suspect. A May 18 story that went out over the news wire reported that the Forrests were found lying on separate beds "in a well-developed stage of decomposition." The son was nowhere to be found and was last seen May 8.
"Fully dressed and lying face downward, the body of Mr. Forrest was tucked in by pillows and grain sacks, as though to hide it from view in the darkened apartment. The head was beaten to a jelly and the face so mashed and mutilated that identification was difficult."
As for Mrs. Forrest, "her head and face were also beaten beyond recognition and the body was in a fearful condition," the report said.
There were several theories reported to explain the motive for murder. One was that Joseph Forrest wanted to leave the farm to see the world, inspired by "yellow literature." Another was that he killed his father defending his mother. Another was that Joseph Forrest was angered his father sold an ox that he partially owned.
Joseph Forrest was found May 26 in Chaptico, 12 miles from home, disheveled and barefoot, asking for food. He was taken to the jail in Leonardtown where he said he accidentally shot his mother while trying to shoot a hawk, but denied having anything to do with his father's death, according to a report in The New York Times.
The trial in Leonardtown began Sept. 23, 1909 on two murder charges. The state asked for the death penalty; the defense pleaded insanity. There was standing room only in the courtroom. The jury came back with a verdict on Sept. 25 of "not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter," and Forrest was sentenced to 10 years in state prison. The Washington Post reported that many wanted to see Forrest hanged.
Joseph Forrest was the grandson of Capt. Joseph Forrest, who left Sandgates to join the Confederate Army during the Civil War. His farms, Sandgates and Cole's Creek, were confiscated by the federal government during the war. Capt. Forrest returned to St. Mary's in 1865 with his family and was pardoned that summer and got Sandgates back in March 1866, according to the Maryland Historical Trust.
He lost the farm in 1878 when the court ordered the property be sold to pay off his debts. He died March 8, 1889.
Sandgates, Cole's Creek, and another property owned by Col. John H. Sothoron, The Plains (today's Golden Beach neighborhood), were the only farms seized to become federal government farms in Maryland during the Civil War, according to the historical trust.
Sothoron fled the county after shooting and killing Lt. Eben White in October 1863, who was recruiting slaves to join the Union army. A local jury acquitted Sothoron of murder in his absence.
