The Skeletons in Baltimore's Closet

Adam Horn (1792-1843)
NYC (Staten Island) and
Baltimore Serial
"Hatchet Killer"

   Being the time of the Halloween season, when talk of carved pumpkins, baseball playoffs and the World Series are interspersed with that of haunted houses and ghouls, it seemed appropriate to bring to light some of Baltimore's macabre past. While there have been some mysterious visitors to Edgar Allen Poe's grave and odd apparitions that were supposedly witnessed at a few of the city's notable tourist locations like the U.S.S. Constellation, Fort McHenry, and some of the bars in Fells Point said to harbor ghostly inhabitants, there are no historical accounts of documented haunted homes with any notoriety.

  Over the last two centuries, whether their ghostly spirits have remained nearby or moved on to more temperate climates, what is fact is that Baltimoreans have been unearthing skeletal remains with surprising frequency. Slightly more bizarre are the locations where these discoveries have been made - backyards, construction sites, and the basements and closets of Baltimore homes.

   In many cases, urbanization has encountered the city's old or forgotten cemeteries or private burial sites and in earlier times often trumped their preservation only to result in the relocation of what was supposed to have been final internments. For those that believe that ghostly paranormal activities and hauntings are the result of the departed whose eternal rest had been disturbed, be forewarned of the following locations - they may just be the grounds under which you live, work, or walk.

Northwestern District Police Station -
Corner Penna Ave and Lambert St
(Photo: Courtesy, Kildruffs.com)

  Corner of Broadway and Monument Streets (currently bounded on 3 corners by Johns Hopkins University Hospital and Mama Mia's Restaurant and Carry Out on the other) - A Baltimore Sun article from April 1860 eerily described one such event when workmen were laboring for weeks to remove a graveyard and the "disgusting spectacle of exhumed decayed remains has been presented to the gaze of the passer-by...the skull of a human being, evidently a female, with long hair flowing from the bone, was exhumed and exposed to the gaze of the public...It is a shame that such things should be.

   Corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Lambert street (currently a playground) - In April 1873, according to an article in The Sun, workmen engaged in excavating the site where the North-western district police station was being built came across a skeleton from a grave when it was formerly a graveyard.

Old Cemetery Closure - Baltimore Sun
(Notice of April 1873)

   Old Cathedral Cemetery (1816-1876 burials of those from St. Peter's pro-Cathedral) currently in the residential area immediately east of Bridgeview-Greenmount and north of Harlem Park neighborhoods - Newspaper accounts from December 1877 reported on ten to fifteen disinterments each day for over a year.  Among hundreds of skeletons were the remains of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (already transferred once from Dougherton Manor), 28 Sisters of Charity, 13 Oblate Sisters of Providence that were all moved to Bonnie Brae (or the New Cathedral Cemetery). For a year or more, ads (like the one pictured in this post) were placed in The Sun as notice to those whose loved ones may need to have their remains transferred or risk being forever lost.

   In a lot on the 1900 block of McCulloh Street (currently homes between Robert and Presstman Streets) which was formerly the burial place of St. Alphonsus's Church, in April 1881 a Sun article reported a man was engaged in digging to get brick off his lot when he came upon a vault containing a coffin containing human remains. "The man on discovering the skeleton dropped his tools and fled" before the police were called and properly secured the premises. It is said that the celebrated Andrew Hellman (aka Adam Horn), a NYC and Baltimore famous cold-blooded hatchet and ax serial killer of the 1840s, was buried in this long forgotten cemetery location.

   149 North Calvert Street (current location of the Baltimore City Circuit Courthouse) - In July 1883, the bones of an infant were found in a box under the back of a building as reported by The Sun.

   In a Canton lot between Boston, Clinton and Tome Streets, was excavated the skeleton of a human person buried in an upright position about three feet from the surface.  According to a May 1895 Sun news article, the skeleton was that of a body placed in a box and buried on what was the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company.

SW Corner Pleasant St and Courtland St)
(Photo: Courtesy MD Hist. Society)

   City Jail Tower - In the heat of July 1896, inmates of the Baltimore City Jail were put to work removing trash and refuse from top of the central tower when they discovered a human skull which was partially crushed.  It's a mystery as to how it ever got there according to a newspaper account in The Sun at that time.

  432 West Pratt (currently the Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards) - Found beneath the kitchen in a home at this location was a four and one-half square foot vault built of bricks containing the full skeleton of a man, according to a July 1897 Baltimore Sun account.

   Southwest corner of Courtland (currently St. Paul) and Pleasant Streets (near the location of Mercy Hospital) - Likely to have been what remained of an earlier horrible murder was the skeleton of a full-grown man  in a coffin located between the ceiling and the roof of the old one-story building.  It was reported by The Sun as found by a carpenter in November 1904 shortly before the referenced photograph.

The Biltmore, Corner Fayette and Paca Sts
(Photo: Courtesy, Kildruffs.com)

   Biltmore Hotel (once at the corner of Fayette and Paca Streets) - In March 1955, a skeleton was
reported in The Sun as being found by perplexed hotel employees in the closet of a room at the Biltmore Hotel.  The 6-foot set of bones had been reported as missing by the 104th Medical Regiment Armory for 19 days but, after two Chicago truck drivers had occupied the room and checked out, it was now suddenly found.  The incident ended when two Armory men retrieved it and, with one holding the head and another its feet, marching the wayward skeleton back along Fayette street to its original resting place.

(Note: Article sources are courtesy of The Baltimore Sun.) 

Faded Hints of the Past Series: William Hollingsworth Machine Company

Ghost Ad, 227-229 Holliday St
(CharmCityHistory.com)

  The second in Faded Hints of the Past series focuses upon a brick building with a near fully obscure ghost ad, nestled between the Brink's Building (built circa 1947) and the Peale Museum (built 1814), on the east side of the 200 block (227-229 Holliday Street).  Departing from a recent City Hall visit, I came across this vertically placed white backgrounded ghost ad reading "ollingsworth..."  A few other clues were even less visible and barely recognizable from weathering and time, it diagonally reads "Rotary Press."

Early Morning Software,
Current Occupant (Oct 2013)

  A business by the name of Early Morning Software Incorporated currently occupies the building at this address having signage above the door.  In comparison to the Peale Museum adjacent to the south, the building's brick facade seems to have been less maintained and one would be inclined to guess it to have been built earlier, but this is likely not the case.
  After some investigative work and with the help of Sanborn insurance maps, we can determine that as of 1902, this building consisted of two separate smaller buildings having the address of 227 and 229 Holliday Street.  The second floor of the more northern section, 229 Holliday, was occupied by a "machine shop."  From the same map, it sat adjacent to a building that once occupied the north lot from 1847 to 1908, a bell foundry and brass works that was (according to Baltimore Sun classified ads) originally known as Clampitt & Regester, and finally J. Regester's Sons Co. (it is from this location that the original Baltimore City Hall bell was fabricated).

William T. Harris'
Gasoline-Powered
Motor Vehicle 1893
(Courtesy: U.S. Patent Office)

2nd Floor Machine Shop
at 227 Holliday St
(1902 Sanborn Insur. Map)

According to research, the machine shop was owned by a William Hollingsworth who rose from being an apprentice at age 14 after coming to Baltimore from his birthplace in Hartford County, Maryland to being a foreman and then superintendent.  Born in 1869, by his 31st birthday, he began his own business here on Holliday Street.  He was an avid inventor and well known in his trade, having been cited numerous times in the "American Machinist" journal.

  Most notably, according to The Antique Automobile, Vol. 33, in 1892, "a man" came into Mr. Hollingsworth's machine shop at this Holliday Street location wanting a steam-propelled passenger wagon for a sight-seeing bus for the World's Fair, but was instead persuaded to change to gasoline power and designed the car.  With high certainty the man, referenced in the above book, was a certain William T. Harris who is credited by Encyclopaedia Britannicaas being one of the earliest builders of a gasoline car.  In fact, one the earliest patent filings (No. 495733) for a vehicle motor (possibly THE earliest gasoline powered) is that of William T. Harris of Baltimore, MD, likely as a result of Hollingsworth's idea that day.  By 1896, William Hollingsworth invented and patented a "Mechanism for Drying Varnished Paper," in 1909, a "Ticket Vending Machine" and in 1926, a "Bronzing Machine," all in addition to the routine manufacturing of positive pressure blowers and combustion engines.

The Wm. Hollingsworth Building,
Circa 1900 (Courtesy: MD Historical Society)

   The building has had its share of catastrophic events in the early 20th Century.  It appears that late in 1906, Mr. Hollingsworth's machine shop was temporarily moved next door to 227 Holliday while he was in the process of reconstructing both addresses such that once rebuilt, it would be a single four-story structure business.  Unfortunately, on January 10, 1907, shortly after the roof had been joined across both portions and without warning the 3rd floor of 229 gave way, caved in, resulting in two men hurt and one worker buried dead beneath the debris of brick and mortar.   Just one year later and four years after the Great Baltimore Fire, in the early morning of January 24, 1908, a devastating fire started at J. Regester's Sons Bell Foundry which, as the Baltimore Sun reported, resulted in the death of three firemen and ruined plant - the Hollingsworth's machine shop suffered serious water damage and burned window sashes.

"Hollingsworth Bldg."
(1914 Sanborn Insur. Map)

  By 1932, his business at this location had grown to the point of being incorporated as the William Hollingsworth Machine Company, but its founder unfortunately died in 1941 without history crediting him with the notoriety of being the brains behind one of the earliest pioneers in modern automobile history.  Getting back to our original hint to this part of Baltimore's past, the Hollingsworth ghost ad is at least 70 years old.

(References Courtesy of: Baltimore Sun Newspapers, The Antique Automobile, Vol. 33, Encyclopaedia Britannica, American Machinist Journal)