The town of Mount Savage, Maryland, is a small blue-collar town nestled at the base of Big Savage Mountain in the Allegheny Mountains, between Frostburg and Cumberland. The town began as a small farming settlement in the mid-1800s, but it was not until 1844 that the region was put on the nation's map with the pressing of the first iron rail in the United States. After this claim to fame, Mount Savage became the fifth largest city in Maryland. Named as the headquarters for the short line railroad and the Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad, the area was deemed an industrial center. In addition to the rail businesses, Mount Savage attracted a foundry, two brick refractories, and several local merchants. In this company town, the industries shaped the economy and topography of Mount Savage, building housing for workers and donating land for schools, churches, and other public buildings. The town was a cultural melting pot attracting English businessmen and Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Italian, and German workers. With this diverse mix of cultures, the identity of Mount Savage was molded into a close knit community. Despite the loss of the industries to the region, Mount Savage continues to celebrate its hard-working traditions. The photographs contained in Images of America: Mount Savage offer a fascinating look into the irreplaceable memories of the people and places that have made Mount Savage what it was, is, and will become.

Robert R. Pyle Our sense of place and community is made up of memories—personal memories of first-hand experience; oral memories that recount our ancestors’ experiences; and f- mal, codified civic memories set down in laws, ceremonies, and rituals. Together they are vital building blocks of citizenship. In a vivid and meaningful way this book p- serves memories relevant to understanding the roots of communities on Mount Desert Island, Maine. The surnames of many of Mount Desert’s earliest settlers are still found in today’s telephone directories. In these families many oral traditions are passed down from generation to generation, building outward from a historical core like the rings of a tree. “Dad used to farm this field,” Fred L. Savage’s great-nephew Don Phillips told me once, gesturing toward an alder growth. “His father grew vegetables for the hotel, and my great-grandfather grew grains. This road used to go right on up over the hill, and they used it to move the cemetery up there from where the hotel is now. ” Describing the field, Don ignores the alders and the towering evergreens beyond them, for in his mind’s eye he sees yellow, waving wheat and rye, bare ground, and a narrow cart track leading up the hill into the distance, on which his ancestors tra- ported the remains of their own forebears to a new resting place. Oral traditions, living memory, set the stage for him, and he accepts the reality of things he has never seen.

Winner of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award for General Engineering from the Association of American Publishers Originally published in 1996. By applying their abundant natural resources to ironmaking early in the eighteenth century, Americans soon made themselves felt in world markets. After the Revolution, ironmakers supplied the materials necessary to the building of American industry, pushing the fuel efficiency and productivity of their furnaces far ahead of their European rivals. In American Iron, 1607-1900, Robert B. Gordon draws on recent archaeological findings as well as archival research to present an ambitious, comprehensive survey of iron technology in America from the colonial period to the industry's demise at about the turn of the twentieth century. Closely examining the techniques—the "hows"—of ironmaking in its various forms, Gordon offers new interpretations of labor, innovation, and product quality in ironmaking, along with references to the industry's environmental consequences. He establishes the high level of skills required to ensure efficient and safe operation of furnaces and to improve the quality of iron product. By mastering founding, fining, puddling, or bloom smelting, ironworkers gained a degree of control over their lives not easily attained by others.

CONTENTS.--Vol. I (1897)--Vol. II (1898)--Vol. III (1899)--Vol. IV (1902)--Vol. V (1905)--Vol. VI (1906)--Vol. VII (1908)--Vol. VIII (1909)--Vol. IX (1911)--Vol. X (1918)--Vol. XI (1922)--Vol. XII (1928)--Vol. XIII (1937)--Vol. XIV (1941)