THE DIARY OF JACOB ENGELBRECHT: CHRONICLE OF
LIFE IN FREDERICK, MARYLAND FROM
1819 UNTIL 1878
By WILLIAM ROGERS QUYNN
Frederick, Maryland, is fortunate in having an almost day-to-day
account of some sixty of its 215 years of existence in the form of a diary
kept by a second generation Marylander of German parentage, Jacob
Engelbrecht.¹ The author of the diary was the son of a German soldier,
Conrad Engelbrecht, taken prisoner with the regiments which surrendered
at Yorktown, brought to Frederick where he was released and allowed to
stay in this country.² Conrad spent the rest of his life in Frederick, plying
his trade as a tailor and taking an active interest in the German Lutheran
Church there.³ He married a woman of German descent and had a good-
sized family, whose descendants have an honorable place in the life of
Frederick today.
Conrad's son, Jacob, was born in 1797 and followed, during much of
his long life, his father's trade. He was an amiable eccentric, who did not
hesitate to be different from others. He was educated in both languages.
For a person of his profession, he was a wide reader, at least in English.
He took a keen interest in politics, local, state, and national, being on the
conservative side, and he was mayor of Frederick at the end of the Civil
War. He was very patriotic, and, among other interests, he collected
letters of signers of the Declaration of Independence, Presidents of the
United States, and other eminent men. Fourth of July celebrations always
attracted him, and one year when there was no public observance in
Frederick, he walked out to the Monocacy river, sat down on its banks
and sang the "Star-Spangled Banner" all by himself. He even visited
Fort McHenry in order to be able to sing the national anthem where the
bombs had fallen.
Jacob Engelbrecht had an insatiable curiosity about the affairs of other
people and had an excellent intelligence system covering all the town of
Frederick. There were newspapers in Frederick, of course, but they empha-
sized national and foreign news, since everyone knew what was going on
in the town. Engelbrecht had a good sense of history and often recorded
for posterity information he picked up from aged residents of the town, who
had crossed the Atlantic as immigrants in the 18th century or who had
served in the Revolution on one side or the other. He had a hardy, rustic
sense of humor and shows us what made people laugh in those days. How-
ever, he always maintained a certain dignity and there are no traces of
coarseness in his entries. The diary gives us an excellent idea of how the
American language was developing during his lifetime.
1
The diaries of Jacob Engelbrecht remained in the possession of his decendants in Frederick until
recently when they were bequeathed to the Frederick County Historical Society. They were accessible to
Dr. Dieter Cunz while preparing his book The Maryland Germans and Cunz quoted several passages
pertaining to the Civil War. At present, Professor Quynn is preparing the diaries for publication at a
later date.
2
Conrad Engelbrecht came from Eichig, near Bayreuth. His son, Jacob Engelbrecht (1797-1878)
was mayor of Frederick from 1865 until 1868. Cf. Dieter Cunz. The Maryland Germans (Princeton,
N. J., 1948), 291-292.
3
Abdel K. Wentz, History of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Frederick, Maryland (Harrisburg,
PA.,
1938), 318.
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The diary consists of some 21 volumes of assorted sizes, plus three
devoted to local marriages, deaths, and real estate transactions. Occa-
sionally entries are in German, spelled by ear, for he probably spoke German
at home and read it rarely. He took great pride in his journal and often
reread and altered entries years later. Several times he wrote in his own
blood and checked later to see if it had lasted. The greatest value of the
diary probably lies in the rich picture it provides of Frederick in an impor-
tant period of its history, but it also contains comments on various details
of State and national history. Jacob Engelbrecht's tailoring shop was for
a time on the road leading from Baltimore to the west. The main stream
of western emigration passed before his eyes and he frequently encountered
and interviewed celebrities.
Engelbrecht had a great interest in weather and in funerals. We learn
from him that Frederick County weather followed the same rugged pattern
as now; if anything it was worse. He made a hobby of attending funerals
and was distressed when only a few people followed the bier. Out of the
goodness of his heart, he would often, on his day off, make a point of adding
one more to a slender group of mourners. He lived a rather, simple, austere
life, fought a losing battle most of his years in an effort to give up his one
bad habit, snufftaking. He was well over 60 when he first tasted eggnog and
thought he had not been missing a thing. He was a great churchgoer,
attending several times on Sunday and sometimes during the week. He
liked especially long sermons by distinguished visiting clergymen. The
sermons were often in German. He was a good musician and in the German
tradition he played in a local band and led the choir in one of the churches,
not his own, which was Lutheran.
Through Engelbrecht's eyes, we see the coming of the railroads. The
B. & 0. to Frederick from Baltimore was the first railroad in the United
States, hence of great importance. Almost everyone going west would go
to Frederick and from there travel by stage. Engelbrecht himself was a
great traveler, first in the stagecoach, then in the "cars." He was an
inveterate sightseer, and of the cities he visited, Alexandria, Washington,
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, he examined every possible square
inch, climbed all the church steeples and wrote down what he saw. None,
he thought, could compare with his native town. He was an enthusiastic
walker to the end of his life and liked especially to walk out to the Monoc-
acy and to the rugged Catoctin Mountains to the west of Frederick.
Life in 19th century Frederick, as seen in the pages of Engelbrecht's
diary, was neither monotonous nor uneventful. There was a continuous
stream of visitors passing through, sometimes spending a day or two to
wait for proper connections with the west, or to rest after the long journey
east or north. Amusements were varied and included visiting preachers and
lecturers on a great variety of subjects. There were the theatrical troupes,
ventriloquists, circuses, and wild-animal shows. Among other popular diver-
sions were parades of the military, volunteer firemen, and fraternal orders.
There were also balloon ascensions, temperance conventions, and camp
meetings. Sometimes Engelbrecht would amuse himself, with the help of
a friend, by taking an informal census of the number of pianos or houses
in Frederick. The making of sauerkraut was an important annual event,
solemnly recorded each year with all necessary details. There were even
crime waves. On one occasion when a bank was robbed of an enormous
sum of money, emissaries were sent from Frederick to New York to nego-
tiate with the robbers and successfully returned with part of the loot.
Frederick was repeatedly the site of court martials of national importance.
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Our Victorian ancestors were not squeamish and public hangings attracted
crowds from the city and county. It was a period of duelling, indulged in
by the great and near-great, with various weapons, sometimes even rifles.
Life was not free from danger. There were continual battles with fires
and with the floods from the raging waters of Carroll Creek which flows
through the town. People were drowned even in the streets of Frederick.
Innumerable epidemics were a constant threat. Cholera took its victims by
the dozens and scarlet fever could leave a family mourning three children
one one week.
The volume of the diary which deals with the Civil War contains some
200 pages and starts with the John Brown raid in nearby Harpers Ferry
in 1859. The approaching storm, with its attendent political skirmishes,
is viewed by the diarist with indignant alarm. Frederick was a divided town
and lay at the crossroads used by both armies going in all directions. Which-
ever army passed through, one-half of the population was pleased and the
other half unhappy. There were several skirmishes in and near Frederick
and the guns of Monocacy, Antietam and Gettysburg were plainly heard
in the streets of Frederick. The diary comments on the Barbara Fritchie
episode and mentions the ransoming of Frederick for $200,000, exacted by
the Confederate general Jubal Anderson Early. Engelbrecht was a staunch
Unionist and on this occasion when Frederick might have been burned were
the ransom not promptly paid, he wrote in his diary: "These are awful
times, one day we are as usual and the next day in the hands of the
enemy—but whatever is the final issue, I say, Come weal or woe—Come
life or death, we go for the Union of these States forever—one and insep-
arable." Feeling ran high in Frederick and the four agonizing years left deep
scars. When soldiers came home from the opposing armies at the end of
the war, there were bitter episodes. But the town gradually pulled itself
together and resumed its normal life.
Engelbrecht's diary is an excellent sociological study of the life of an old
and homogeneous town which grew from a population of 3,637 to only 9,000
in 60 years. It remained essentially the same despite minor changes. It is
interesting to follow in the diary the language changes during that period.
Finally, and by no means unimportant, is the picture it gives of Engel-
brecht himself as a colorful and original character. It is the moderate
success story of the immigrant who came to America, not as a peaceful
civilian, but nominally at least, as an enemy soldier, and who with his
family established himself firmly and usefully in the fabric of their chosen
home.
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